Rewind: Is the List Industry Dead?
Talk about duck-and-cover. I went on medical leave for a month just as the question “Is the list industry dead?” appeared on the front cover of the December 2007 issue of Multichannel Merchant.
Well, a year later, is the list industry dead? Is it still serving the needs of multichannel merchants? Or are list firms still staving off extinction?
What we were told last year was many list firms were morphing into full-service consultancies. Some firms added modeling service, others embraced the Internet. But the general consensus was they weren’t keeping up with the times.
Merchants were still using list firms for management purposes, but were leaning towards the co-ops to get prospects. InfoGroup was still swallowing up list firms as of this past summer (before Vin Gupta was dethroned as part of an SEC agreement). And now we’re even seeing consolidation among the consultancies, as Marketsmith joined forces with Lett Direct.
A year later, where are we? Merchants, do you feel the brokerages are still relevant to your businesses? List firms, are you working to become everything to everyone?
Please, enlighten me with your thoughts.
Related Topics: Lists & Data, Catalog, Multichannel Surfing, Etc. - General
November 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Rumors of our untimely demise are grossly exaggerated. We are morphing, certainly, but lists will always be a necessary component of many marketing initiatives. Although real-time live counts, CD’s of 250,000,000 consumers by demographic breakdowns, and Sales Wizards (read between the lines) are more ubiquitous than ever, we ain’t dead yet.
In the 10 years since I’ve been in this business, it certainly has become a different environment, but the days of getting a list in, omitting a couple of states, and sending it out are WAY behind us. Sophisticated marketers are employing zip+4 files, E-Mail Matching, NPA-NXX files for LEC billable data, by internet connectivity are selections that nobody would have dreamed of years ago. In addition, the need for agencies to understand the complexity and superabundance of data companies can be easily understood when you do a search on the SRDS for “automobiles”.
Likewise, understanding the applicable laws regarding Automotive, Presence of Children, Credit, Telemarketing, Can Spam, and the myriad other laws applicable to our industry make lists and list professionals worth…. well… over 250/M.
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