List prices have gone down significantly over the past year, but they seem to have stabilized over the last quarter, according to Jay Schwedelson, corporate vice president at Worldata, which puts out the quarterly List Price Index.

Overall, list prices have gone down because fewer companies are renting lists and more companies are offering them.

“It’s simple supply and demand,” says Schwedelson. “There are a lot of people who’ve come into the market to make lists available, and not as many people are spending marketing dollars.”

Generally, list prices range from donor-related files, which go for about $84 per thousand, to business-to-business e-mail lists that rent for about $288 per thousand, he says.

“The lists that have fallen on the hardest times are definitely consumer e-mail, as well as consumer publishing,” he says. “The areas that are holding strong are business-to-business e-mail and consumer donor-related lists.

“There are so few people donating money now that the people who are on these lists — recent donors — are very, very sought after,” he says.

Some other postal lists are doing okay as well, Schwedelson notes.

“Postal lists are doing well in public sector, meaning government, health care, education, because those categories are getting a lot of funding from the stimulus package,” he says. “More general categories such as consumer merchandise buyers are not.”

What’s likely to happen going forward?

“I don’t think the prices are going to fluctuate a great deal over the next six months,” he says. “I think a lot of people are going to wait and see if marketers come back to the direct mail channel, or if they’re going to continue their migration to e-mail and search.

“If they do come back to the direct mail channel, I think pricing will move upward in certain categories,” he notes.

When it comes to naming rights for stadiums, it’s not just brands that are calculating the ROI. Some of those venues are named for banks receiving federal bailout funds, including the New York Mets’ new Citi Field (above); the Bank of America Center in Charlotte NC, home of the NFL Carolina Panthers (right); and the New Jersey Nets’ planned Brooklyn home, so far named for Barclays Bank, which receives government aid for its stake in insurance giant AIG.

At press time, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has not agreed to Congressional calls to vacate those naming deals or cut off the banks’ rescue money. But House Financial Services chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., has spoken out against the “pure ego” of buying naming rights.

Prospective parents are accustomed to lots of tests: for the health of the baby, for its gender, and for the mother’s wellness. And so when BabyCenter.com, a content site aimed at parents-to-be, wanted to optimize search traffic, it took a leaf from that baby book and did some testing of its own.

BabyCenter is one of the leading parenting sites on the Web; its combination of expert content, interactive tools, online community and e-commerce shopping attracts more than 4 million visitors a month, according to comScore Media Metrix. Expectant parents can enter their due date and then sign up for e-mail newsletters, including a popular one called

If “direct marketing” no longer describes the industry, what should we call it?

There was no acoustic guitar until there was an electric guitar. A change in technology created a change in terminology.

Is it the same in direct marketing? Does the use of new technology like the Internet demand a new name?

The answer is yes, according to Stan Rapp, chairman of McCann Relationship Marketing in New York.

“Direct marketing has had a tremendous boost from the digital economy,” he says. “Direct marketing will never be the same, just as every other aspect of the economy will never be the same.”

His choice? Digital direct marketing.

“Control marketing,” counters Herschell Gordon Lewis, chairman of Communicomp, a division of True North Communications.

“It differs from conventional advertising in that it attempts to perform psychology on the brain of the message recipients,” he explains. “That’s the edge direct has.”

“Call it interactive marketing or interactive strategic marketing,” suggests Joan Throckmorton, president of Joan Throckmorton Inc., Pound Ridge, NY.

Elissa M. Myers, president of the Electronic Retailers Association, favors integrated marketing or multiplatform marketing. Her group, once called the National Informercial Marketing Association, changed its name to better reflect the current practices of the industries it represents.

“You surround everyone with opportunities to buy,” Myers adds. “You bring products to market and come at consumers at every possible range.”

“Or how about customer convenience marketing? Because it’s how the customer wants it where the customer wants it, when the customer wants it,” she says.

“Within weeks of my arrival here, I was asked that question,” recalls Direct Marketing Association president H. Robert Wientzen. Wientzen notes that interactive marketing is the most common suggestion. Other options include integrated marketing, distance buying or remote sales.

Would the DMA want to re-brand itself with a new acronym?

“I’m receptive to name changes,” Wientzen says. “We’ve been the Direct Mail Association and the Direct Mail Marketing Association and perhaps other things as well. There’s no reason why the DMA is going to continue to have that name or that we won’t have something different.”

On the other hand, there are some people who think direct marketing is just fine.

“I have a vision of direct marketing as a set of tools, not so much as a discipline or a tactic, but a set of communications database marketing tools,” says Ron Jacobs, president of Chicago-based Jacobs & Clevenger Inc. and co-author, with Bob Stone, of “Direct Marketing” (7th ed.), set for publication in 2000.

“We will still be calling it direct marketing at the beginning of the next millennium and will continue to do so,” he adds. – – Jonathan Boorstein