Reduce Your Direct Selling Expenses
16. Avoid select charges on outside names. List selection charges add to the cost of the names you’re renting by as much as 25 percent to 50 percent. Don’t request certain selects unless you think they’re absolutely necessary.
Take, for example, a list costing $120/M to rent (base price). The manager wants an additional $41/M for a $100-plus dollar select. The average order size of this high-ticket gift catalog list already is $135. In this case, paying an additional $41, or increasing the cost of the list by 34 percent, probably is not cost-justified.
Steve Lett graduated from Indiana University in 1970 and immediately began his 50-year career in Direct Marketing; mainly catalogs.
Steve spent the first 25 years of his career in executive level positions at both consumer and business-to-business companies. The next 25 years have been with Lett Direct, Inc., the company Steve founded in early 1995. Lett Direct, Inc., is a catalog and internet consulting firm specializing in circulation planning, plan execution, analysis and digital marketing (Google Premier Partner).
Steve has served on the Ethics Committee of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and on a number of company boards, both public and private. He served on the Board of the ACMA. He has been the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. He is the author of a book, Strategic Catalog Marketing. Steve is a past Chairman of both the Catalog Council and Business Mail Council of the DMA. He spent a few years teaching Direct Marketing at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
You can contact Steve at stevelett@lettdirect.com.
