The Puzzling, Frustrating 1 Percent Response Rate

When should you completely ignore the 1 percent rule?

The 1 percent response rule applies only to prospect mailings. Different rules apply for house lists. And the 1 percent response rule also doesn’t apply when you’re mailing to lists that you already own, but which don’t have anything to do with your catalog operation. This often comes up when an existing business has decided to add a catalog to their existing mix of marketing channels. They typically will have several random mailing lists already in house (warranty-card respondents, buyers from other marketing channels, gift recipients, etc.), and the question always arises, “What response can we expect if we mail to these other lists that we already own?” And the answer is, nobody can even guess. For such mailings I’ve seen everything from 0.01 percent up to 5 percent or better. All you can do is test and find out.