10 Proven Ways to Increase Your Outside List Performance

Gross sales...
minus customer returns and allowances
minus cost of goods sold
minus direct-selling expenses (printing costs, outside lists, postage, etc.)
equals incremental breakeven.

Accept the fact that you need to spend in order to grow or simply maintain the current size of your 12-month buyer file. How low you mail below the incremental break-even point depends on the financial strength of your company, the size of your existing housefile and how fast you want to grow. I always caution against overmailing and trying to grow too fast.