Should You Rent Out Your Customer List?

Consumer catalogers that don’t rent their lists often rationalize this practice by saying they’re protecting customers from getting unsolicited mail. They also think their valued customer names don’t appear on other lists. But these customers are proven mail-order buyers, and in many cases, are active and responsive catalog shoppers. As catalog buyers, their names most likely already reside on several other lists and probably on one of the cooperative databases. So while these buyer names are proprietary to your catalog offering, these same customer records probably also appear on many other outside lists.