State of the Co-ops ’08

This approach is designed to ease a concern among many mailers who belong to more than one co-op: That the same names are constantly mailed, causing low nets.

“We give the service bureaus a suppression file prior to the other co-ops’ selecting,” says Ken Johnson, chairman and CEO. This lets Prefer co-op members acquire the best-performing names all in one spot, significantly reducing acquisition costs. “Catalogers end up mailing the identical names that they would have, while removing the vast majority of duplicates,” he adds. “If we can identify those names, why should the mailer have to pay multiple times?”