The list terrain is fairly barren right now, but there are techniques to help mailers navigate it, said a panel of list experts at the List Vision conference in New York on Tuesday.
Besides a list universe that’s shrinking in size, marketers are mailing less and putting old names on the market, they said. Worse, lists that are on the market are often of poor quality.
How are mailers digging up fresh names?
Prospecting mailers have taken to mining their own house files to find new names, said Paulette Schlotman, vice president at MeritDirect, who handles business-to-business files.
In BTB, “mailers are looking for nontraditional segments, like hotline in qualified circulation publications,” said Steve Tamke, senior vice president of brokerage at Mokrynski & Associates.
Base prices have decreased as a result and bargaining has become commonplace. “Over the past five years, you feel like Monty Hall, with ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ everyday,” said Britt Vatne, vice president in the list management group at American List Counsel. “Mailers used to start with the price on the datacard, now it’s closer to net-net.”
Another coping mechanism: mailers are approaching their competition and working out deals. They are exchanging lists and charging each other a minor fee.
“Almost any female apparel marketer, if they work hard, can find names that work among other apparel marketers,” Tamke said. If you garner 50,000 good names from 10 companies, that’s half a million names to mail, for example.
Cooperative databases are a great resource, too, he added.
Other mailers find success renting out of category. “We’ve been able to have our catalog clients effectively use publishing names,” Tamke said. “We just have to work harder—it takes longer and longer every year to do a circulation plan.”
Nonprofits have turned to consumer files for prospects, Vatne said. “It’s expensive for nonprofits, but they’ve had to do it to continue to mail.”
Consumer files have even been made to perform for BTB mailers, Schlotman said.
In the e-mail arena, prospecting is mainly done on a cost-per-click or cost-per-acquisition basis, the panel said.
E-marketers are using affinity marketing, placing other DMers offer in an e-mail to their customers. They are also attaching e-mail “ride-alongs.” “Response rates for these are usually higher than for a rental file,” Tamke said.
Integrating e-mail and postal mail is a technique that has helped to boost marketers’ response rates. Catalogers typically see a decline in response during the third week the catalog mailed. Sending an e-mail at that moment bumps up response a bit, he added.
It is important that all of a cataloger’s departments get their promotions straight, however, Tamke said. One major gaffe: a big hardware cataloger sent a catalog promoting full-price products. Three days later an e-mail with a big sale went out to the same customers.
“My client was livid with her e-mail department,” Tamke said. Months later, that catalog’s departments are integrated.
List Vision 2003 is sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association.
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