The Puzzling, Frustrating 1 Percent Response Rate

Susan McIntyre is president of McIntyre Direct, a catalog consulting company based in Portland, OR. Author of the regular column “Cataloging Rules of Thumb,” she can be reached at (503) 735-9515.

Why 1 percent?

If you mail 5,000 names and get a 1-percent response, that means you’ll receive 50 orders, and statisticians have mathematically determined that 50 responses is the minimum number of responses needed to make our results “statistically significant.”