List enhancements: a case study; list rentals, new launches, telemarketing and other areas benefit from Rodale's list enhancement

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Jan, 1988 by Michael Garry

List enhancements: A case study

New York City--although many magazine publishers have yet to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by list enhancements, Rodale Press, for one, has done so in a big way. By appending data to its house file, Rodale has boosted its list-rental business, aided telemarketing efforts and helped target its marketing efforts.

These activities were described by William Duch, marketing services director for Rodale, in a seminar on the uses of databases sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association. Duch's comments come at a time when the magazine industry is increasingly looking to list enhancement as a means of generating list revenue and improving direct mail efforts. (See "More magazines discover list enhancement," FOLIO:, August 1987, page 17.)

Duch outlined the following applications of list enhancement:

* Target marketing. to launch its new magazine, Rodale's Children, the publishing firm used list enhancements to determine how many subscriber households included children between the ages of two and 12. It then used that information to select names for a direct mail campaign. The number of potential subscribers from Rodale's own files, however, turned out to be fairly small, causing the company to seek most of the campaign names from outside lists.

* Telemarketing. R.L. Polk enhancement data, appended to Rodale's customer list, include telephone numbers that enable Rodale to call customers with queries or with invitations to focus group sessions. When Rodale desires telephone numbers for a specific group of names--such as gift subscribers who have not renewed--it contacts Telematch, a data resource firm, which provides the information. Rodale's circulation department calls these individuals after having mailed at least four renewal notices. "The cost of getting the phone numbers and making the calls is advantageous compared to the cost of one more mail effort," noted Duch.

* List rental. Rodale has appended age, sex, income and other data to its customer file in order to break out valuable list selects. For example, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has rented a Rodale list of individuals over 50 years old. Insurance companies have selected lists of people in a variety of age groups, and one magazine rented the names of women over 40 in high-income areas.

* List cleaning. Rodale matches its database against the records of both Metromail Corporation, a direct marketing services company, and R.L. Polk in order to check the accuracy of expire addresses that date back as far as two decades. (National Change of Address, offered by the U.S. Postal Service, corrects only those address changes made within the past 36 months.)

* Testing inactives. To determine whether inactive customers are likely to respond to a mailing, Rodale enhances its file with information from Metromail's database and matches that list against outside lists of fund raisers, catalog buyers or consumer product purchasers. Former subscribers found on these lists, said Duch, are more likely to respond to new solicitations.

* Selective binding. Rodale plans to use information about subscribers to create specific magazine editions targeted to particular subscriber interests and needs. Duch, however, did not offer specifics.

Types of data available

Data on consumers fall into four main areas, said Duch. Household data, for example, consist of age, length of residence, dwelling unit size, number of children and so on. Neighborhood characteristics are compiled by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, but may prove inaccurate because the census is taken only once every 10 years. Lifestyle characteristics--leisure activities, sports interests and the like--are compiled by such companies as National Demographics and Lifestyle, Donnelley Marketing, and others. And real estate data--such as the size of mortgage, length of time property owned--is also available from many list companies.

List enhancement companies for consumer lists include Metromail, R. L. Polk, Donnelley Marketing, National Demographics and Lifestyles, Executive Services and other companies. Fewer sources of data exist for business lists. One major source, said Duch, is the Dun & Bradstreet file, which provides data on SIC codes, company size and sales levels.

Duch described two basic pricing arrangements that generally govern list enhancements. If a publisher's file is fairly stable, and the publisher plans to use a great deal of enhancement data, it may make sense to enter a permanent use arrangement. Here, the publisher is charged a relatively high acquisition cost for the data; once paid for, the data can be kept forever. If, on the other hand, the publisher uses data on a sporadic basis and requires data that are fresh and up to date, then it's better to operate on a royalty basis, paying as the data are used and paying for only the data extracted. Most publishers, said Duch, might be better off with the royalty arrangement, because much of the enhancement data changes over time. Rodale enhances its lists via a royalty arrangement.