Broker Roundtable: Should Mailers Start to Prospect More Aggressively Again?

Welcome to Broker Roundtable, a new weekly feature in Direct Listline. Every month, we’ll select a different panel of list brokerage professionals. Then each week for that month, they’ll tackle questions about pertinent industry issues and offer tips for mailers.

Our current panel features Claire Carpenter of Carney Direct, Amy Benicewicz of ListBargains.com, Paul Kolars of Trimax Direct and Mark Hammar of Total Data Solutions. (Would you like to be considered to be a member of our Roundtable? Contact Larry Riggs at [email protected].)

This week’s question: Are mailers again starting to prospect more aggressively? Should they?

Take it away, brokers:

CLAIRE CARPENTER, LIST BROKER, CARNEY DIRECT:

The last few years have changed our industry dramatically. Mailers cutting circulation has caused shrinking list universes. At the same time, many brick and mortar companies have brought their non-direct marketing names to market in hopes of keeping their revenue on target. These names saw a lower then average ROI. But the times, they are a-changing. Mailers are going back to basics and realizing that they have to change their circulation strategies, timing and offers. We’re seeing mailers dive back into direct mail and multichannel programs with a newfound dedication. I think the time for mailers to jump back into the mail is now. Companies that are not looking to make a strong impact in the mail in 2010 will lose potential customers to their competition—and these customers won’t be easy to regain in the future.

AMY BENICEWICZ, PRESIDENT, LISTBARGAINS.COM:

Yes, companies should always prospect, especially in a downturn. Now is a great opportunity to grab business from competitors with attractive coupons and discount offers. No matter the economic climate, companies must always be prospecting just to keep sales steady, as attrition happens in the natural course of business. So, in order to keep building their brands and customer bases, businesses must continue to aggressively prospect at all times. Some mailers did stop or slow down their marketing efforts in 2009, particularly credit card companies. But this is a new year and most of the companies are prospecting for new customers again. There are new offers out there, and some companies are using more internal databases for reactivating previous customers, or using prospecting databases to save on costs. Eventually all mailers will need to turn to outside data and marketing opportunities to keep their customer base fresh and growing.

PAUL KOLARS, PARTNER, TRIMAX DIRECT

I think mailers are slowly starting to prospect more aggressively. I just don’t know anyone who has had strong list sales in the last 18 months. This is a reflection of mailers concentrating on their internal customer lists for prospecting. If your revenue model is based on outbound mailing and your in-house customer list has been the workhorse, you will need to work in new blood by prospecting. So yes, at some point, I would think mailers will need to do more prospecting with outside lists. We’re seeing some of this on our management files but mailers are still very conservative and are also looking to mix in e-mail, search and other Web opportunities to augment their in-house files.

MARK HAMMAR, PRESIDENT, TOTAL DATA SOLUTIONS:

Our requests and projects are up from last year at this time but “aggressively” is too big a word for me to say yes. I’d say the forecast looks very good but our first quarter showed just a marginal increase over 2009 and still no increase over 2008. Should they prospect more heavily? Absolutely. The companies that continue to brand themselves will be successful. The companies that take too long a break will likely fail when they try to get back into the game and are probably dropping into a deeper and deeper hole as we speak. There are new players jumping in that are counting on gaining position over the companies that have been holding out.

Would you like to be part of a future Broker Roundtable? E-mail [email protected]