One thing that was quite important to me when I was purchasing direct mailing lists was that they were coming from a reputable company. The reason that this was so important is because I wanted to make sure that I was getting high quality lists. In order to make sure that this was the case, I asked for samples from the companies that I was considering doing business with and after receiving the information that I requested I compared the data that I was given and made my decision based on the quality of the samples that I was given.