When you are list building, you want your lists to be as tightly targeted as possible. The reason for this is that the tighter your lists are targeted, the more effective your mailings can be to each member of your lists.

For example, imagine that you have a web site that specializes in pet products. Imagine that you provide pet products for a wide range of pets, for example, dogs, cats, and birds.

If you create one mailing list, you will have dog, cat, and bird owners on your list. When you mail to them, only 1/3 of the offers and information you send will be relevant to each subscriber (assuming you mail 1/3 of your offers on each topic: dogs, cats, and birds).

2/3 of the mailings you do will not be well-received. Your subscribers will begin to feel that your mailing is not relevant to them – even though 1/3 of the offers you sent applied to them.

Now imagine that you build 3 separate lists, one for dog owners, one for cat owners, and one for bird owners. In this scenario, assuming that you have exactly the same total subscribers on these 3 lists combined, your response rates will be much higher. The reason for this is that the dog owners will only receive offers that are relevant to them, as dog owners. And of course the same applies to the cat owners and the bird owners. They will only receive offers that make sense to them, and will feel as though the bulk of your emails are relevant to them.

Now imagine that you could break this down even further. Imagine if one your dog lists, you have products that are specifically designed for a specific breed of dog. You could literally have one list for each breed of dog.

In this case, your conversion rates and response rates should again go up, although the increase might be marginal, and not enough to compensate for the additional time that is necessary for the upkeep of the additional multiple lists.

So there is some sort of balance that needs to be maintained, although in general, the more tightly you target each list, the more profitable will each list become.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 900 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.