FAQ's

For the most part, if you can think of an audience, it’s likely available or we can model a data set to get you to those that look like that audience.  But to be more specific, there are over 50,000 direct mail and email lists on the market at any given point in time.

List Solutions has deep expertise in reaching both consumers and businesses.

Better than list all of the lists available, give our team a call or shoot us an email at [email protected] or 888.764.4430.

Great question and something that ultimately needs to be layered into your metrics to determine what type of response rate you need to make your program hit your target ROI needs

• Consumer Compiled Data: Prices vary great and can range from $14 per thousand records to $80 per thousand records with an average of about $50 per thousand records
• Consumer Response Data: Again, prices vary greatly and on the response media side prices can range from $85 per thousand records to $225 per thousand records with an average of about $105/m.
• Business Compiled Data: A good ballpark CPM for compiled business data is $70/m
• Business Response Data: Similar to consumer data, prices have a great variation from about $100/m to $400/m with an average of $150/m.

Most lists are rented for a one-time use only.  There are many compiled files that offer the marketer the opportunity to rent the file for a 2 time use or even for 12 month unlimited usage.  If a prospect from a list you mail responds to your offer, that person is now yours and can be added to your house list without any additional requirements on the part of the list owner.  But never hesitate to ask us about a special use case, a reuse of a file, etc.

List Solutions works with a wide array of media owners, aggregators and compilers.  One benefit to working with List Solutions is we bring to you the best in breed media solutions but now and again we still get the question about deliverability.  All compiled media rented through us are 95% deliverable, guaranteed.  A list must be mailed in full and undeliverable mail must be returned to us within 60 days of the order date to receive credit.  Our liability is equal to the list cost for names returned for each undeliverable name over 5%, depending upon class.  We don’t guarantee the accuracy of phone numbers.

• Electronic (email, ftp, sftp)
• CD ROM
• Why not labels?  Most facilities are no longer printing lists on labels so in most cases this is no longer an option.

Compiled lists have a $250 minimum.  Most response files have minimums between 5,000 and 10,000 records.  If your needs are less than that please call us at  888.764.4430 and let us see if there’s a way to reduce the minimum.

Great question!  Response lists are made up of responders to direct mail solicitations where a very specific act was done to be included on that list.  This may include a subscriber to a specific magazine such as Martha Stewart Living, a donor to an organization such as March of Dimes, a buyer from a catalog or website such as Sur La Table or a member of an organization such as The Nature Conservancy.  A compiled file includes names that were collected from a variety of sources which include public record data, newspaper clippings, online surveys, warranty cards, b2b directories, etc.  Compiled records generally include an unbelievable ability to segment and target to get to the right audience.  A consumer compiled database may include demographic info such as age, income, gender, homeownership, home value, presence of children, interest level data (pets, wine, sports, etc) and hundreds upon hundreds of other criteria.  A business compiled database includes an array of firmographic data that may include employee size, industry type (SIC Codes or NAIC Codes), sales volume, location type, number of years in business, franchise indicator, ICC filing data and other selections including the ability target specific titles at a business.

Merge purge is a data process that combines and merges two or more lists and removes (purges) duplicate names.  If you are renting two or more lists and/or have an existing customer file that you want to suppress from your mailing you should consider running lists through this process.

Hotline refers to a subset of a list that is based on how recently they were added to the file.  In general, hotlines tend to be 1 month, 2 month, 3 month, 6 month or 12 month new adds.  By renting only a 60 day new to file segment, you should see a lift in response as compared to renting a 12 month or 24 month segment of the file. Depending upon the file there may be an upcharge for selecting recency.

A SIC Code, or Standard Industry Classification Code, is a 2, 4, 6 or 8 digit code that allows you to target businesses by type.  A 2 digit code is a very broad whereas 4, 6 and 8 digit codes allow marketers to drill down deeper and target more specific types of companies.  A good example would be SIC code 61.

• SIC Code 61 = Educational Services
• SIC Code 61110 = Elementary and Secondary Schools
• SIC Code 611210 = Junior Colleges

Having your test list order represent a random sample of the entire list is critical to ensuring that your test results will be repeatable.  After all, that’s one of the primary reasons direct mail is so powerful! Taking an “nth select” is a selection technique for a list test mailing where the list owner selects names based on the size of a test sample in relation to the size of the list.  For example, if your list segment has a total of 100,000 names available and you only want to test 7,500 records from that list selecting an nth will ensure that the 7,500 records are pulled without prejudice to a recency, geography, etc beyond what was stated in the universe segment.