List firms are suffering from the same downturn as companies in other fields, judging from the 2008 Direct/Multichannel Merchant list survey. And so are their clients.
Of the direct marketers polled, 44% are mailing their house files more and only 19% are boosting their outside list use. Both numbers are the same as they were in 2007.
Yes, there’s modest growth in some areas—31% of the marketers are using more postal lists, an improvement of five percentage points over last year. But the survey hardly documents a booming industry.
E-mail list use continues to grow—but not as rapidly as it did. The number of DMers reporting an increase fell to 62%, eight percentage points lower than 2007.
Of the list executives surveyed, 42% say their company revenue has risen this year. But that number is down from 68% in 2007, and 30% report a decrease.
And the volume of names rented has increased for only 40% of the vendors, compared with 61% last year.
Given that the survey sample was smaller, the vendor results should be viewed as snapshots. But they show that brokerage revenue fell for 33% of the list firms, and rose for 27.6%. Management dollars increased for 25% and dropped for 23%.
In 2007, 50% of the list suppliers handled more tests than they did the year before. That number was cut in half this time around. But there was a six percentage-point rise in the number of firms seeing more continuations—to 39%.
And the sheer volume of names went up for 40% of the providers (the same percentage reported a decline).
Meanwhile, 45% of the vendors said that the volume of new lists is lower this year. And 30% feel that the number of lists being taken off the market is higher.
The results are based on 214 questionnaires returned by qualified participants. Roughly 103 described themselves as marketers, 60 as list vendors and the remainder were classified as “other.”
The full results are reported in the September issue of Direct.
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