What’s In Your Catalog’s Future?

Customized Databases

Third, I believe that the list industry will become almost entirely the creators and managers of custom, proprietary databases and the liaison between catalog merchants and catalog customers.

Compiled lists are nearing extinction as a service of list professionals; they are available online and downloadable from ZapData and similar companies that recognize that compiled names are now a function of automated processes and are not an innovation. The advocates for the millions of consumers who and businesses that truly desire to participate in direct marketing, e-mail marketing, e-commerce and catalog marketing are the list brokers and managers of the future. They are not likely to emerge as traditional brokers or managers but as two-way facilitators of permissions, privacy, consumer interests and seller niches. It is possible that these new specialists will manage market and product relationships and control access to those relationships for both the consumer and the merchant in specific commerce areas, such as clothing, food, children’s educational products, office supplies or safety products. A consumer with an interest in gourmet food may go to a specific facilitator to “sign up” and to have his or her interests represented and managed.