As list brokers, we are often asked “What is a typical response rate for a B2B direct marketing effort?”
Response rates for business and professional direct marketing efforts run from fractions of one percent to as much as 5% or more depending on the nature of the offer.
As you might expect, an offer of a free webinar on a topical business issue is very likely to pull many more responses than one for an expensive laptop computer. There is no “average” response rate.
And predicting the response rate for an untested list or new offer is impossible.
The question to ask is not, “What response rate will I get?” but rather, “What response rate do I need to get?”
And the answer can only be found by “testing” the list.
“Testing” a list is the process of mailing a sample of it under controlled circumstances, recording the response it produces and projecting this result over the list’s entire universe. This avoids wasting money by using unprofitable lists in their entirety.
For most marketers income from a mailing, relative to its costs, provides the answer to this test.
If the income generated by a list test exceeds the costs to use it, plus the cost of fulfillment, then the list is probably worth a continuation mailing or a re-use.
If a list produces less income than its total costs, it is probably not worth a continuation or re-use. In close situations it might be worth re-testing to be sure of your decision.
Remember: savvy marketers set financial goals for individual lists as useful benchmarks for response analysis.
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