Lett Direct Inc.

List-rental income for most list owners has decreased during the past few years. Mailers have shifted from renting outside lists to selecting prospect names from a cooperative database. There’s also been a shift from renting lists to exchanging names as a way to save money. With the use of outside rented lists down as much as 40 percent, what can you do to maximize the amount of list-rental income you generate? This month I’ll explore ways to maximize your list-rental income during these times of uncertainty and change. 1. Grow your own housefile. The biggest factor that affects your list-rental income is

Evaluating a service bureau is a tough task. Comparing one service bureau to another is even more challenging. Do you compare pricing, services or products? I say compare everything. Just as keeping a check on processing costs is important, postage discounts equally will affect your bottom line. Choose a stable company, as well as one that takes some risks to improve its product line — a service bureau must have the technology necessary to assist its clients. Following is a basic checklist of what to look for when choosing a service bureau. Check prices. Look not only at actual costs but also

Some catalogers prefer mailings that are based on in-home dates, while others use mail dates. There appears to be some confusion about which strategy to employ and why. Compounding this dilemma is the fact that some catalogers tend to use the terms “in-home dates” and “mail dates” interchangeably. But significant differences exist between the two. This month I’ll explore the pros and cons of each. I’ll also try to provide guidance regarding which mailing strategy is right for your catalog-distribution plan. Terms Defined Mail dates are defined as the day the mailing is to begin. The mailing generally takes place during a five-day

The idea of creating a smaller prospecting catalog (same trim size but with fewer pages) full of best-selling pick-up items is appealing and sounds like a logical thing to do for a consumer cataloger. It saves money (or so it seems), and in theory has little, if any, impact on performance. But in practice, this generally isn’t the case. This month, I’ll discuss why it’s more cost-efficient for consumer catalogers to prospect with more pages and the advantages of doing so from a financial perspective. In other words, I’ll examine why you should prospect with the same catalog you mail to

By Stepen R. Lett How do you know if a list you're testing for the first time will work, or if it's even the right list to test? Obviously, there's no way to know for sure prior to mailing. But studying the list data card in advance and really understanding what it tells you can help minimize the risk of testing. This month, I'll review what a list data card says about a file and how you can better interpret this important information. Market and demographic profile.

Many metrics are used to run a profitable catalog business. For example, an apparel company may set a goal for its overall return rate of 22 percent, while a gift mailer may strive for less than 6 percent. But one thing is universal among catalogers: The ideal metrics or ratios are those that lead to profitable income statements. After all, if you manage by the ratios, the dollars will take care of themselves. Remember, dollars go into the bank, not percentages. Key metrics to calculate and watch include service levels (e.g., how long customers wait in your contact center’s queue), response levels (e.g.,

At Lett Direct, we sometimes conduct studies to determine how quickly companies fulfill catalog requests (i.e., inquiries). While some catalogers do a great job turning around requests, many don’t. Unsolicited (and solicited) catalog requests can be extremely valuable, and a high percentage convert into buyers. Therefore, inquiry fulfillment needs to be monitored more closely and given a higher priority. This month, I’ll discuss the importance of inquiry fulfillment and provide results of a recent study we conducted. Unsolicited catalog requests come from many sources. We don’t always know their origins, but we do know inquiries are “diamonds in the rough.” If someone takes

Last month, I discussed the importance of the merge/purge. This month, I’ll examine what goes into a list merge and what you should know about using outside prospect lists. I’ll review what to look for when testing a new list, how to expand your prospecting universe maximizing contribution performance and important considerations when starting a new catalog. Planning your circulation strategy from the bottom up and knowing how to prospect is critical to the success of any catalog. Questions to Ask When Examining a New File How actively is the mailer prospecting? When testing a list for the first time, it’s always

Planning your circulation strategy is about more than just selecting which prospect names or housefile segments to mail. Merge/purge is critical to the success of your mailing, too. How you instruct your service bureau to run the merge can affect your mailing results. This month, I’ll discuss how to assign list priorities, treat multi-buyers and deal with family groups. Of course, the main reason for running a merge is to identify and eliminate duplicates from your mail file. A merge will identify two types of duplicates: duplicates between files (known as inter-file dupes) and duplicates within a file (or intra-file dupes). When duplicates

About 10 percent of all consumer catalogers and an estimated 25 percent of business-to-business catalogers don’t rent or exchange names with any outside companies, according to a leading list-management company. This month I’ll discuss the different aspects of putting your No. 1 company asset — your customer list — on the rental market. Caveat: I believe it’s healthy and necessary for a catalog company to rent and exchange names with others — providing the proper controls that govern the use or unauthorized use of the names are in place. Consumer catalogers that don’t rent their lists often rationalize this practice