Picking the right lists for your campaign is NOT about knowing which publications your target audience reads most frequently. Sometimes in fact, magazines whose editorial focus seems ideally targeted for your market can be far from the perfect mailing list. Here's why:

The first criteria to consider in choosing the right list is how well that list enables you to precisely target your audience. Paid publications, for example, that don't offer any type of "selects" (job title, company size, business type) often aren't the best choice because you'll end up taking simply a random selection of names without any idea of whether the people you're mailing to are CEOs or engineers.

On the other hand, free publications (those with "qualified" subscriber bases) typically offer a wide range of selects. Even if their editorial focus is more general, by using the right selects, you can often target precisely the right audience - for example, MIS Managers running financial applications on IBM mainframes at companies with more than 1,000 employees.

Don't ignore the editorial focus of a publication. Just treat it as another select, say "Interest Area". An MIS Manager who subscribes to Network World, for example, is in effect declaring an "interest" in networking technology.