Three Years and $3 Million to Break Even

How many names must I have on my housefile to achieve that kind of breakeven?

Extending the above calculation, if your housefile contains 15,000 buyers (over the past three years), and if you mail each of these buyers four times per season at an average response rate of 5 percent per mailing, you’ll generate a total profit of 15,000 x 4 x .05 x $17.50 = $52,500, which is enough to cover the loss on 2,333 prospect orders, meaning you can pay for a total prospect mailing quantity of about 233,333 (at a 1-percent prospect response rate). Adding this prospect mailing quantity to our prior buyer mailing of 60,000, we get a total print run of about 300,000. And figuring that you’ll receive about 10 catalog requesters on your housefile for each buyer, your gross housefile count will consist of 15,000 buyers plus about 150,000 non-buyers, giving you a total housefile size (buyers plus non-buyers) of 165,000.