The Renaissance in B-to-B Lists

JOB TITLE? Business class? Sales volume? Business-to-business mailers are no longer satisfied with those old-time list selects alone. Now they want to know where these potential customers eat, sleep and what they’re spending at lunch.

And list owners are finding out for them.

As B-to-B lists are increasingly enhanced with demographic, lifestyle and business information from suppliers like InfoUSA, mailers are demanding models based on this data. Now, even consumer DMers are giving B-to-B files a second look.

Consider Wine Enthusiast magazine, now a “continual purchaser” of the Registered Rep, a list of over 90,000 young, highly educated stockbrokers with six-figure incomes. Several cigar publications have also utilized the file.

“More and more consumer mailers are looking at business lists as an untapped source of names that they’re not getting from the consumer arena,” says Libby Kelly, sales manager for list management at American List Counsel Inc., Princeton, NJ.

Aware that consumer mailers have traditionally shied away from B-to-B lists because of their small universes, some list owners are combining individual lists to create a master file, according to Kelly.

Despite all these bells and whistles, experts say B-to-B files continue to have a reputation for unreliable business addresses. To the extent it’s true, it hurts list owners in their own mail efforts, along with anyone who rents their files.

“Business lists require a lot more address information than consumer lists in order for them to become deliverable,” says Steve Roberts, president of Edith Roman Associates Inc., Pearl River, NY. Some of the most crucial elements are the person’s name, company, division and, in large firms, mail-stop information, he adds.

Edmund Scientific Co., a Barrington, NJ cataloger, asks customers for help in keeping its 1.7-million-name database current. It sends an annual mailing to 500 companies, asking mailroom supervisors to update names. The mailing includes a cover letter, a copy of the names from that company and instructions for correcting or deleting addresses. The package is sent via Federal Express, and contains a prepaid FedEx envelope.

The result? A 70% response rate.

Mailroom supervisors who respond receive a gift worth $25; this year, it was a pair of binoculars. The updated lists are returned just in time for the cataloger’s major fall and January mailings, says Edmund Scientific’s vice president of sales Jeff Barney.

“It’s a major undertaking for us but it’s something we’re committed to,” Barney notes. “By cleaning the list before the mailing, we see fewer returns and delete requests after the mailing.” The cataloger sends out 2.5 million catalogs per year, each weighing 15 ounces. With the average cost per piece of $1.75, including postage, Barney wants to make sure the catalogs get where they’re supposed to go.

One critical element in a business address is the mail stop-the location within a company to which the piece will be delivered. Firms like General Electric have returned “entire mailbags” with no mail stops to the post office to be returned to sender, Roberts says. “Trying to deliver a mail piece in a large corporation without a mail stop is comparable to taking an airplane to Chicago for an important business meeting without the local address,” he says. “You’re in the right vicinity, but you’ll never get there.”

Another problem is that a number of companies-like Kodak-will no longer deliver bulk mail, and have asked their employees to have magazines and other bulk mail delivered at home, Barney says. These firms have “made a determination that all third class mail is basically advertising mail and therefore is costing the company money to distribute what they consider to be optional,” Roberts adds.

Edmund Scientific mails over 1,000 catalogs a year via first class to Kodak to ensure delivery. But that’s costly, so the mailing includes a letter informing the customer of Kodak’s mail policy, and requests their home address for future delivery.

Other list owners are gathering home address information at every turn. For example, Electronic Products, a 127,000-name subscriber file managed by Edith Roman, offers 20,000 names with home address. And as B-to-B list owners have become more willing to apply data to their files as well as release more of their own data, modeling has become popular, says John Carter, who oversees analytical services for Acxiom/Direct Media in Greenwich, CT.

“More mailers are asking for the models, perhaps because response rates are down and costs are up,” Carter says. “They’re looking at modeling as a way to improve their prospecting efforts.”

Tim Barlow, president of The Lake Group in Rye, NY agrees, adding that modeling offers mailers a higher quality name as well as increased sales growth.

Some pros have even seen a proliferation of mailer requests for fax numbers and list owners are complying. Of 10 million U.S. businesses, 2.2 million have at least one fax, claims Bob Dunhill, president of Dunhill International List Co. Inc. in Boca Raton, FL. Fax broadcasting is less costly than direct mail, and mailers don’t need an address or even a name, he says, noting the medium is popular in the financial, real estate and insurance industries.

Worried about finding enough names for your B-to-B mailings? In January Abacus’ business and technology services division debuted a B-to-B cooperative database, now featuring 14 million names and close to 50 participants. Though still in the early stages of development, “the names are working well enough for people to mail now and the modeling itself is going to get better with a critical mass of data,” says division vice president Janie Smith. Abacus hopes to build the file to 40 million business contacts at work.

Acxiom/Direct Media also has plans to introduce a business co-op next year called Business SmartBase.

Carolyn Woodruff, vice president of Uni-Mail List Corp. in New York, says co-ops “aren’t the greatest thing since sliced bread,” but they will help small catalogs reach a known multibuyer in a business environment. “Abacus and SmartBase have not replaced hotline buyers, but they have increased the client’s ability to get net multibuyers into the mail.”