The Rise of Direct Marketing Freeconomics
Getting intel from datacard search tools
July 2008 By Chris DeMartine
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Direct marketers are finding out that when it comes to business intelligence, you may actually get more from what you don’t pay for. As risk tolerance changes with the economy, so does the level of financial accountability. Pencil sharpeners battle with creative minds over the beta for ROI calculations, while marketing budgets often take the biggest hit—a financial compromise that’s far from optimal. Many direct marketers are left to find answers in the public domain, leading to the rise of “direct marketing freeconomics.”
The supply of online information has increased exponentially since the turn of the millennium—and demand has certainly kept its pace, as indicated by the February $44 billion Microsoft bid for Yahoo. The deal didn’t make it through, but that’s a pretty high price to pay for a combination resulting in just a little more than one-fourth of the search engine market. On the flip side, no coin is required to benefit from the wealth of data that these engines process. Many direct marketers are already engaged with freeconomics online. They’re neither freaks nor geeks, but a category of business-savvy professionals who’ve learned to extract valuable marketing information from online list data providers.
The Power of List Marketing Data
So what is this valuable marketing information? How can it be found when a Google search on “free marketing information” returns nearly 22 million results? That’s not so bad when you consider that a search on the word “free” alone returns more than 4 billion listings. It’s no longer free when you consider the opportunity cost of time spent to page through the clutter to find the golden nugget. If the search engine results page isn’t the answer, then what is?
It’s the datacard. Yes, datacards are promotional documents, but they also contain valuable and actionable information. List brokers rely on them for making new list test recommendations, but they’re most often working from private or paid system versions that contain list manager and/or owner information. Furthermore, these brokerage applications provide much more than a search engine—including custom list recommendation modules, advanced search, reporting and analysis, competitive usage, and integrated technology for list order processing. Mailers and agencies rely on these industry experts to do the heavy lifting, and that includes much more than being a “list picker.” Customer profiling, campaign planning, response analyses and data warehousing are just a few of these value-added services used to help lower customer acquisition costs and improve lifetime value.
Today, these datacards are also available in the public domain and updated instantly by list managers or owners. Take a visit to the Direct Marketing Association’s free mailing list search portal (located at http://lists.the-dma.org and, in the interest of disclosure, powered by NextMark) and learn not only how to keep an eye on your direct marketing competition, but also how to leverage more than 60,000 summaries of psychographic, demographic, behavioral and attitudinal metadata sources. Yes—the datacard has utility, and it’s not just for buying and selling names, although that is the primary intent. Here’s an example:
1) Enter “Target Marketing” in the DMA’s mailing list search portal and run the search.
2) Click on the “Target Marketing” list title to view the entire datacard—look familiar?
3) Extract some market intelligence, or take action to get more information about the file.
Not only is there information about the subscribers (maybe you) of this magazine you’re currently reading, but there’s also competitive intelligence. Take a look at the highly correlated lists in the lower right-hand corner of the datacard. These are the titles with the highest correlation based on mailer list recommendations. This information is not subjective, and it’s not a secret (although the technology behind the analytics process is patented). But it is free and available for all direct marketing consumer and business categories.
Insights for All Sectors, From All Sectors
If you’re a catalog merchant, take a look at segment counts and compare yours to your competitors’. For example, L.L. Bean’s list manager posted 1,394,430 buyers for the first quarter of 2008. Subtract that from the six-month buyer count, and you’ll get the total number of holiday buyers (3,555,344 – 1,394,430 = 2,160,914). Divide that number by the 12-month count, and you’ll get the seasonality percentage for holiday buyers (2,160,914 / 4,468,043 = about 48 percent). So, there you have it—about half of the buyers purchased during the fourth quarter with an annual average sale of $75.
For a magazine publishing example, take a look at Forbes. In a tough economy, you may want to go after the folks with the highest average income. There are more than 900,000 active subscribers with an average annual income of $275,000. There could be some newfound wealth out there, based on an assumption you may choose to make about the hotline names. It’s no surprise that Fortune, Worth and The Wall Street Journal are listed as highly correlated lists, but what about the others? A “correlation revelation” may lead you to request more information about Hearst’s Town & Country magazine mailing list. Stay on the same clickthrough path, and you’ll find your way to other high-income files that are highly correlated, such as Neiman Marcus and Veranda magazine. These titles aren’t just for finding liquid investors; they may help you through the tough times.
If a lack of consumer confidence is affecting your ability to attract new donors to your cause, try a quick list search on “humanitarian” or any other search phrase that identifies with your audience. It’s an election year, so you’re sure to find some actionable information by searching “Democrat” or “Republican.” If you’re tired of the conflict and looking to start a Save the Whales campaign, try a search on “save whales,” and give the Consumers for the Preservation of Marine Life a click. You may decide that dolphins are more intelligent and pay an extra $5 per thousand for those contributors, or develop a bond with sea turtles and do the same.
This information is all at your fingertips, but you can take further action either by contacting the list manager yourself or getting your list broker involved.
‘Free’ Is as ‘Free’ Does
The DMA mailing list search portal is just one of many free services available on the Web, all of which can bring value to the direct marketing process. Determining the value of “free” is the greatest challenge in the search engine results page realm of freeconomics. As a mailer, advertising agency, list owner, list broker or list manager, you don’t need to worry about that. Finding lists is key to finding value, and there’s no better tool than the datacard for obtaining market intelligence for free.
As you’ve seen, there is nothing “freaky” about direct marketing freeconomics. It’s merely a behavioral pattern that stems from an unfulfilled need for quality information during a time of limited financial resources—and it’s on the rise!
Chris DeMartine is director of business development at NextMark, a Hanover, N.H., firm that provides tools and resources that support the use of mailing lists for direct marketing efforts. He can be reached at (603) 643-1307 x114, or via e-mail at cdemartine@nextmark.com.
The supply of online information has increased exponentially since the turn of the millennium—and demand has certainly kept its pace, as indicated by the February $44 billion Microsoft bid for Yahoo. The deal didn’t make it through, but that’s a pretty high price to pay for a combination resulting in just a little more than one-fourth of the search engine market. On the flip side, no coin is required to benefit from the wealth of data that these engines process. Many direct marketers are already engaged with freeconomics online. They’re neither freaks nor geeks, but a category of business-savvy professionals who’ve learned to extract valuable marketing information from online list data providers.
The Power of List Marketing Data
So what is this valuable marketing information? How can it be found when a Google search on “free marketing information” returns nearly 22 million results? That’s not so bad when you consider that a search on the word “free” alone returns more than 4 billion listings. It’s no longer free when you consider the opportunity cost of time spent to page through the clutter to find the golden nugget. If the search engine results page isn’t the answer, then what is?
It’s the datacard. Yes, datacards are promotional documents, but they also contain valuable and actionable information. List brokers rely on them for making new list test recommendations, but they’re most often working from private or paid system versions that contain list manager and/or owner information. Furthermore, these brokerage applications provide much more than a search engine—including custom list recommendation modules, advanced search, reporting and analysis, competitive usage, and integrated technology for list order processing. Mailers and agencies rely on these industry experts to do the heavy lifting, and that includes much more than being a “list picker.” Customer profiling, campaign planning, response analyses and data warehousing are just a few of these value-added services used to help lower customer acquisition costs and improve lifetime value.
Today, these datacards are also available in the public domain and updated instantly by list managers or owners. Take a visit to the Direct Marketing Association’s free mailing list search portal (located at http://lists.the-dma.org and, in the interest of disclosure, powered by NextMark) and learn not only how to keep an eye on your direct marketing competition, but also how to leverage more than 60,000 summaries of psychographic, demographic, behavioral and attitudinal metadata sources. Yes—the datacard has utility, and it’s not just for buying and selling names, although that is the primary intent. Here’s an example:
1) Enter “Target Marketing” in the DMA’s mailing list search portal and run the search.
2) Click on the “Target Marketing” list title to view the entire datacard—look familiar?
3) Extract some market intelligence, or take action to get more information about the file.
Not only is there information about the subscribers (maybe you) of this magazine you’re currently reading, but there’s also competitive intelligence. Take a look at the highly correlated lists in the lower right-hand corner of the datacard. These are the titles with the highest correlation based on mailer list recommendations. This information is not subjective, and it’s not a secret (although the technology behind the analytics process is patented). But it is free and available for all direct marketing consumer and business categories.
Insights for All Sectors, From All Sectors
If you’re a catalog merchant, take a look at segment counts and compare yours to your competitors’. For example, L.L. Bean’s list manager posted 1,394,430 buyers for the first quarter of 2008. Subtract that from the six-month buyer count, and you’ll get the total number of holiday buyers (3,555,344 – 1,394,430 = 2,160,914). Divide that number by the 12-month count, and you’ll get the seasonality percentage for holiday buyers (2,160,914 / 4,468,043 = about 48 percent). So, there you have it—about half of the buyers purchased during the fourth quarter with an annual average sale of $75.
For a magazine publishing example, take a look at Forbes. In a tough economy, you may want to go after the folks with the highest average income. There are more than 900,000 active subscribers with an average annual income of $275,000. There could be some newfound wealth out there, based on an assumption you may choose to make about the hotline names. It’s no surprise that Fortune, Worth and The Wall Street Journal are listed as highly correlated lists, but what about the others? A “correlation revelation” may lead you to request more information about Hearst’s Town & Country magazine mailing list. Stay on the same clickthrough path, and you’ll find your way to other high-income files that are highly correlated, such as Neiman Marcus and Veranda magazine. These titles aren’t just for finding liquid investors; they may help you through the tough times.
If a lack of consumer confidence is affecting your ability to attract new donors to your cause, try a quick list search on “humanitarian” or any other search phrase that identifies with your audience. It’s an election year, so you’re sure to find some actionable information by searching “Democrat” or “Republican.” If you’re tired of the conflict and looking to start a Save the Whales campaign, try a search on “save whales,” and give the Consumers for the Preservation of Marine Life a click. You may decide that dolphins are more intelligent and pay an extra $5 per thousand for those contributors, or develop a bond with sea turtles and do the same.
This information is all at your fingertips, but you can take further action either by contacting the list manager yourself or getting your list broker involved.
‘Free’ Is as ‘Free’ Does
The DMA mailing list search portal is just one of many free services available on the Web, all of which can bring value to the direct marketing process. Determining the value of “free” is the greatest challenge in the search engine results page realm of freeconomics. As a mailer, advertising agency, list owner, list broker or list manager, you don’t need to worry about that. Finding lists is key to finding value, and there’s no better tool than the datacard for obtaining market intelligence for free.
As you’ve seen, there is nothing “freaky” about direct marketing freeconomics. It’s merely a behavioral pattern that stems from an unfulfilled need for quality information during a time of limited financial resources—and it’s on the rise!
Chris DeMartine is director of business development at NextMark, a Hanover, N.H., firm that provides tools and resources that support the use of mailing lists for direct marketing efforts. He can be reached at (603) 643-1307 x114, or via e-mail at cdemartine@nextmark.com.
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