Top brokers describe today’s challenging catalog list market

Catalog Success: What’s the greatest challenge for catalogers in terms of finding prospect names to mail?

Belardi: The biggest challenge is getting strong performance at acceptable acquisition rates. The net-outs from mailing lists are continuing to decline, and subsequently, the cost of finding new buyers is driven up. While catalogers are attempting to mail “smarter” using tighter segmentation and co-op database models, as well as exchanging more, they all end up mailing to the same buyers. Response rates suffer, as well.