What do most catalogers want when they start prospecting? Lists of look-alike consumers who have bought similar items from catalogs.
But Rodale Inc. argues that catalog mailers should try something different — lists from Rodale itself.
“It's not that easy to sell to catalogers who may or may not see synergies,” said Marijke Bekaert, director of marketing database operations for the health/fitness publisher. As an incentive, Rodale typically offers a $20 per thousand discount to non-affinity catalog renters — those that might be reluctant to test a publishing list.
While the lower cost won't hurt a mailer's return on investment, an apparel cataloger would have to make a leap of faith that it has customers in common with Rodale. But Rodale, like other list owners doing the same thing, feels it has science on its side.
Marketers testing the publisher's lists start by creating a profile of their best customers, using a sample of around 100,000 individuals. Rodale compares this slice of its client's file and the 15 million active customers on its database, said Bekaert, speaking at DMD New York.
Managed by Millard Group Inc., Rodale's file is fed by the nine magazines and 100 or so health-related books it publishes every year.
Rodale strives to augment every record on its master file with some 1,500 variables, including promotion and purchasing history, demographic and lifestyle data from outside sources, and information gleaned from events, warranty cards and surveys. This allows the Emmaus, PA-based firm to have a rounder view of consumers on its file. The company then matches the potential client's list against its own file of names, allowing it to generate a profile using overlay information from the master file.
This is basic list appending. But Rodale turns science to magic when it correlates the profile's characteristics with look-alikes from its own lists. If the target audience indexes highly with Rodale's nutrition-enthusiast segment, the client suddenly has a new source of names. These names are put through regression analysis, enabling Rodale's client to select those likely to become good customers.
Rodale offers one more service to put campaigns over the top: attitudinal data. By offering insight into consumers' propensities, Rodale can steer a marketer's campaign to include (or avoid) a variety of likes and dislikes in its marketing pieces. A gourmet food company, for instance, could offer a variation on its catalog cover based on an individual's taste for wine or vegetarian cooking.
Rodale counts catalogers like Harry and David, Pleasant Co., Plow & Hearth and the nonprofit American Heart Association among its successful list users, according to Bekaert.
