More to merge/purge than meets the eye: mailers need to look beyond some of the so-called conventional wisdom

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 1, 1990 by Susan Hovey

More to merge/purge than meets the eye

NEW YORK CITY -- Publishers are all talking about mailing smarter, but many of them continue to stare right past valuable information when running their customer files against rented lists during the merge/purge process.

"The objective is no longer just to get rid of duplicates," notes Printronic Corporation of America president Leo Yochim, speaking at the Direct Marketing Association's annual List Day. "There are lots of free benefits from the merge/purge process. You hear about overlays and NCOA (National Change of Address), but you're going to pay for them."

Yochim recommends that publishers include subscriber expiration dates in their mailing lists. This, he says, could provide the renter with some important clues as to how a prospect might respond. But list users should not be hasty in purging duplicate names that will expire in two to six months, he says.

"We're finding there are a great number of individuals out there who will only respond to could mail -- they believe they will get the best price for the magazine," he explains.

Yochim also suggests reversing the norm when it comes to match rates between customer files and rented files. "If you find that you have a 25 or 50 percent hit rate against some list that you're testing, I think you should immediately call that list owner, take all the [non-dupe] names he has and mail them," Yochim urges. "Some people think dupes are bad for them. But in this case, the more dupes against the list rental file, the more that file is like your own, and in all likelihood should respond like your customer file."

In fact, the match rate can be used to evaluate lists without actually having to mail to the names, Yochim notes. If a list proves to have among the lowest match rates of those you've rented, the chances are that doing a big mail test on it will not be worthwhile.

Mailers could also benefit by combining the merge/purge with a postal analysis. While most mailers measure a list's response based on average postage, Yochim says they should instead base it on individual postal rates -- categorized, for example, by whether the piece was sent as part of a residual mailing, or by five-digit pre-sort or carrier-route code. "This way, you may identify kinds of mail that maybe shouldn't be sent in that manner. By putting information into the list, you'll get back many fold in savings."