Mailing list prices dropped during spring 2009 across nearly all categories, with permission-based consumer e-mail lists showing the biggest year-over-year price and percentage decline, according to the most recent List Price Index from Worldata. The consumer magazine category was a runner up, in terms of price and percentage drops.
“The consumer side of email list rental has really become oversaturated with supply of new lists while existing lists on the market have cut pricing significantly to stay attractive to marketers in this down economy,” said Ray Tesi, senior VP of Worldata, in a statement.
Average prices for permission-based international e-mail lists remained at $407/M, the only category to hold steady. According to Worldata, this reflects businesses expanding globally and investing in ways they can reach prospects overseas.
“The ROI is clearly still high on marketing to those files,” Tesi added. “The supply is still very limited in this category due to the difficulties in gathering data in certain regions outside of North America.”
Among the study’s other findings:
Permission-based e-mail B-to-B is the highest-priced category, with a spring 2009 average price of $290/M, a decrease of $4/M from last year.
Public sector and newsletters both rank in the second highest-priced category range, with average prices of $173/M and $170/M respectively, each decreasing $1/M from last year.
Donors remains the lowest-priced category, with an average list price of $83/M, a $1/M decrease from last year.
In terms of changes on a dollars-per-thousand-names basis, the permission-based consumer experienced the biggest drop, a $29/M plunge from spring 2008. It also experienced the largest percentage decline (19.3%).
The second-largest price decrease occurred among consumer magazines files, which dropped $7/M from the previous year – a 6.5% decline, which was also the second-largest percentage drop. According to Worldata, direct marketing to consumers has increased mailbox and inbox clutter, forcing list owners to make serious price sacrifices to stay competitive.
Attendees/members is the only category that showed a price increase over the previous year, with a straight average price of $129/M, a $1/M increase from last spring.
The lowest price decreases occurred within the donors, newsletters and public sector categories, each of which dropped $1/M from last year.
The lowest percentage decrease occurred in the public sector and newsletters categories with 0.57% and 0.58% decreases, respectively.
Attendees/Members had a 0.78% increase in price, the only increase across the board.
