A huge new source of mailing lists may soon come to market.
The national political party committees are likely to be given the green light by election officials to sell or rent their mailing lists to any buyers, including businesses and labor unions, according to news reports.
The move is expected to open up a new source of income for parties looking to compensate for the loss of millions of dollars in corporate and union soft money banned by the nation’s new campaign finance law.
"To the extent that more information of the sort becomes available, we would be interested in looking into it," said Gary S. Laben, chief executive officer of KnowledgeBase Marketing.
Laben continued, "I would not assume that [the committees] would become competitors to traditional direct marketing players. We take this information and combine it with all sorts of other information to make our products."
Laben downplayed the value of certain political lists, such as donor files. "We don’t acquire donors because they are not as helpful for the information we would like and the businesses we serve." He added that donor lists are usually considerably smaller than the tens of millions of names compilers like to acquire with a single purchase.
It is unclear whether the political party committees would solicit list management firms to manage their files or handle them internally because of the sensitive nature around how the donors were acquired and privacy issues, said Chris Paradysz, CEO of list brokerage firm Paradysz Matera in New York.
Paradysz added that not all of the committees are likely to make their donor lists available.
Even so, the millions of names that would likely become available for rental would be a boon to mailers and the list industry.
"I think it’s a good thing," Paradysz said. "But we’re just going to have to be very careful, in the end we need to protect the donor."
A vote is expected over the next few days after lawyers for the Federal Election Commission develop a policy.
