List management isn't sexy. Most people equate the activity with an annual dental cleaning: necessary, but not exactly fun. And yet a marketer's list is one of the single most valuable things it has, ranking right up there with an unlimited budget and million-dollar ideas. And yet one expert says that marketers aren't thinking about lists enough or are thinking about them in the wrong way. "I think most marketers use the wrong dimensions when building their lists. That is, they acquire names based on demographics, but don't consider things like past purchase history, [or] propensity to respond to different types of offers," said Shar VanBoskirk, VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research. "[They consider] more attitude or behaviorally based dimensions to determine value of a name. Then they end up getting customers who are demo-graphically attractive but don't have any interest in responding to the types of marketing materials they are sending out."
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