And Down They Go

Mailing list prices dropped during this spring 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.

Average prices for permission-based international e-mail lists remained at $407 per thousand (CPM), 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,” said Ray Tesi, senior vice president of Worldata, in a statement. “The supply is still very limited in this category due to the difficulties in gathering data in certain regions outside of North America.”

Other findings:

• Permission-based B-to-B e-mail is the highest-priced category, with a spring 2009 average CPM of $290, a decrease of $4 from last year.

• Public sector and newsletters both rank in the second highest-priced category range, with average CPM prices of $173 and $170, respectively, and each decreasing $1 from last year.

• Donors remains the lowest-priced category, with an average list price CPM of $83, a $1 decrease from last year.

• In terms of changes on a dollars-per-thousand-names basis, the permission-based consumer lists experienced the highest CPM drop, a $29 plunge from spring 2008. Their prices also experienced the largest percentage decline (19.3%).

• The second-largest price decrease occurred among consumer magazines files, which dropped $7 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.

• Seminar attendees per thousand members is the only category that showed a price increase over the previous year, with a straight average CPM of $129, a $1 increase from last spring.

• The smallest price drops occurred within the donors, newsletters and public sector categories, each of which dropped $1 from last year.

• The lowest percentage decrease occurred in the public sector and newsletters categories, with 0.57% and 0.58% decreases, respectively.

• Attendees per thousand members had a 0.78% increase in price, the only increase across the board.

TIP:

DON’T LET ‘EM GET AWAY IN GOOD TIMES AND BAD, DATA IS LIKE GOLD FOR DIRECT MAILERS. DON’T FORGET TO CAPTURE INFORMATION ON PROSPECTS NOT READY TO BUY — EVEN IF IT’S ONLY AS BASIC AS SIMPLE NAME AND ADDRESS — FOR USE IN FUTURE MAIL CAMPAIGNS, NOTES KENT MOON, PRESIDENT OF LOS ANGELES-BASED DM FIRM ADDRESSERS.