How the ‘New’ Fingerhut Refurbished its Customer Database

As Johnson pointed out, the file from the former Fingerhut incarnation aged fairly quickly. In 2003, 95 percent of Fingerhut’s customers came from that legacy file. But this year just 2 percent remained. So Fingerhut implemented a non-legacy strategy.

The cataloger, which caters to a lower-income audience that prefers to buy items at full price in easy payment installment plans, expanded its acquisition efforts targeting prospects from similar catalogers, co-op databases, magazines and demographic sources. The company revived previously successful best practices, tested new concepts, and identified and attracted customers similar to those positively performing legacy populations, Johnson said.