If you’ve been holding off on e-mail prospecting because you felt prices were too high, here’s good news: In its Summer 2005 List Price Index, Worldata projects that e-mail pricing will drop as much as 25% off the base price during the next three to six months.
What’s more, “the 25% drop in e-mail list pricing will only be the beginning of a major correction that has been a long time coming for e-mail as a prospecting channel,” says Jay Schwedelson, corporate vice president of the Boca Raton, FL-based list services firm.
One reason for the decline: The ever-increasing use and sophistication of e-mails filters has lead to declining rates. “If you take these issues combined with the overall glut of too much e-mail in the inbox you arrive at response rates that are falling off the table,” Schwedelson says. “Most consumer catalogers have long believed that e-mail CPMs [costs per 1,000] were far too high to achieve a positive return on investment.”