Chapter 4

CONSUMER AND BUSINESS MAILING LISTS

Consumer and Business Mailing Lists

Three kinds of lists:

• House lists, which are the customer databases of organizations

• Response lists, or house lists of other organizations

• Compiled lists of individuals or companies without any previous indication of willingness to respond, but with some defined and identifiable characteristic(s) such as demographics, psychographics, or ZIP code.

Consumer and Business Mailing Lists

• Profiling is the process of understanding customers by identifying their demographics, firmographics, or lifestyle attributes

• Appending this information to the customer file adds valuable information for targeting future promotions, understanding customer defections, and identifying cross-selling and other new business opportunities

Consumer and Business Mailing Lists

• Data cards provide details on the list size, cost per thousand, its source and history, the average size of the mail-order purchase made by the buyers, and the percentage of the list that is direct-mail generated

• Data cards also indicate the presence of hot lead names—customers who made a mail-order purchase within the last 30 to 90 days—and the selection by which the list can be segmented

Consumer and Business Mailing Lists

• Lists age quickly and should be updated frequently

• Routine updating lowers the cost for address corrections

• Service bureaus can prevent address corrections by standardizing names, editing and reformatting records, purging lists of duplications, and verifying and correcting addresses

Consumer and Business Mailing Lists

• Mailing lists are rented, typically for a one-time use. If after testing a portion of a list, the renting organization wants to re-mail or rollout the list (e.g., in continuation), it must pay an additional rental fee

• List owners make the final decisions on any list rental and may reject rental requests that are inappropriate or competitive

Consumer and Business Mailing Lists

• Privacy concerns often arise when information collected for one purpose is subsequently used for other purposes

• Concerns abate when mailers and list renters offer consumers the opportunity to object to this reuse.

• The National Do Not Call Registry enables consumers to remove their names from contact lists.