Consumer List Rental Prices Show the Most Decline in Spring ‘09

Decline in prices continue across most major categories.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Not much has changed since Worldata released its List Price Index for Winter 2009—the Spring 2009 index also shows a continuous decline in almost all major categories with consumer lists declining the furthest from last year.

Permission-Based Email B-to-C showed the largest price decrease by $29/M followed by Consumer Magazines, which dropped $7/M. Permission-Based International Email data, however, remained steady at $407/M from last quarter.

“The consumer side of email list rental has really become oversaturated with supply of new lists while existing lists on the market have cut pricing significantly to stay attractive to marketers in this down economy,” Worldata SVP Ray Tesi said in a statement. “These two factors have led to a steep decline in consumer email list pricing year-over-year. On the positive side, International business email files are holding their averages—the ROI is clearly still high on marketing to those files. The supply is still very limited in this category due to the difficulties in gathering data in certain regions outside of North America.”

Continuing the trend from Winter ‘09, Attendees/Members is again the only category that showed a price increase over the previous year, with a straight average price of $129/M, a $1/M increase from last spring. The lowest price decreases occurred within the Donors, Newsletters and Public Sector categories, each dropping $1/M from last year.

Permission-Based Email B-to-B is the highest-priced category, with a Spring 2009 straight average price of $290/M, a decrease of $4/M from last year. Public Sector and Newsletters both rank in the second highest-priced category range, with straight average prices of $173/M and $170/M respectively, each decreasing $1/M from last year. Donors remains the lowest-priced category, with an average list price of $83/M, a $1/M decrease from last year.

The Worldata List Price Index serves as a barometer for the pricing and trending of all list rental pricing and is reported quarterly, providing a comparison of list prices during any given 12-month period and tacking price fluctuations, as cost per thousand (CPM), for lists in various categories.