Evolution of list fulfillment

The Evolution of List Fulfillment
By Ray Schultz

Research Commissioned by

Generations of Count and Fulfillment Systems

Broker Manager Service Bureau Database Disadvantages

The number of hands
involved
The likelihood of inaccuracy
Delays

The clerical burden placed
on managers
The number and variety of
service bureau systems

Manager loses opportunity
to assist the broker
The number and variety of
service bureau systems

Approve

Describe these quirks to an outsider, and they
Introduction will ask how a data-tech business can operate this
way, says Fran Green, president of ALC SMART
Mailing lists are the lifeblood of direct mail. Data Solutions.
But they are rented through an outmoded process Such inefficiencies might be bearable during
that wastes time and money. periods of triple-digit growth. But postal mail
List professionals complain about how it volume is in a freefall, and email list rentals have
works--few defend it. But it can be easily not yet made up the revenue difference for many
improved, for the problem is as much attitudinal as firms.
technological. List managers, thanks to these and other
The answer, many experts say, is a universal problems, have seen their margins tighten. The
list fulfillment system that frees managers and proof is in the ongoing consolidation of
brokers for more creative tasks. management-brokerage firms.
How do we define list fulfillment? As the Not all these issues can be resolved in the short
process of obtaining a mailing list, from research to term. But list fulfillment can be streamlined.
the delivery of names. What would a 21st Century fulfillment regime
It starts with the simple act of getting a count. look like? Ben Perez, former CEO of Millard
In most cases, brokers request them from Group, would welcome “anything that’s quicker,
managers, and managers retrieve them from service smoother and has less hands on it. No list company
bureaus, using proprietary tools. has as many people as even three years ago.”
The systems have improved, but the division of The purpose of this paper is to trace the
labor is the same as it was in 1990. The burden evolution of fulfillment through four generations.
falls on the manager, and it’s a costly one, given The solution is in the fourth.
the need to maintain a support staff. Our timeline is imprecise, for memories differ
No less daunting is the wide disparity in service on some points and there is a great deal of overlap
bureau systems. Most serve counts “with fullest between the eras. We define the generations not by
Boolean logic in a matter of minutes,” as James technology, but by who
has access to them, and
“We still work with service bureaus that do on the range of lists they
cover. The main question
not make counts available online.” is: Who enters the
query—the service
Lenny Medico, senior vice president of list management, bureau, the list manager
Lake Group Media or the broker?
A perfect system
Johnson, an advisor at International Response would allow brokers to
Management Co., puts it. But some don’t. request counts and order virtually any list, using a
“We still work with service bureaus that do not single, industrywide interface. Here’s why.
make counts available online, meaning we have to
work with static count report systems,” says Lenny Background
Medico, senior vice president of list management Direct mail goes back to the earliest days of the
for Lake Group Media. Republic, and prospecting lists for almost as long.
Then there’s the actual ordering of lists. But the mailing list business as we know it started
Managers often find themselves reentering data in the 1960s.
because there’s no standardized order form.

The rental process was, before that time, solely “It was cumbersome,” adds David Schwartz,
in the hands of brokers. They found lists, just as the former CEO of 21st Century Marketing and
they do now, and they offered “exclusives.” But now president of Executive Confidential,
direct mail was booming, and brokers could no Organizational Consultants. “The service bureau
longer serve as both media buyer and seller, so a would have to enter all of these line items in, and
new player emerged: The list
manager, whose job was to
“market mailing lists the way “I would ship SCF counts that weighed
independent space reps market
advertising space in newspapers
five pounds.”
and magazines,” veteran Ralph Pete Carney, CEO of Carney Direct Marketing
Stevens wrote in a 2004 article
entitled “The 10% Club.”
they weren’t really charging for them.”
That was accompanied by the arrival of the ZIP
When the counts were finally produced, they
Code and computer service bureaus, Stevens
were printed on “green-and-white greenbar paper,
added. Lists were now stored in mainframe
perforated in both margins,” recalls Pete Carney,
computers, powerful units that appended ZIPs and
CEO of Carney Direct Marketing. “I would ship
merged the lists in a mailing (a far cry from the
SCF counts that weighed five pounds.”
Addressograph plates that had housed them for
Worse, this process was fraught with error. At
decades).
times, “a staggering quantity of ordered lists would
There was one problem. “You could run
come into the merge, and you’d find the 4 million
Finland with one of those computers, but try
you were expecting was only 3 million,” Batrouney
getting a count from them,” says Geoff Batrouney,
says. He adds: “If you were looking for hotline
executive vice president for Estee Marketing
names, the technology wasn’t there to support the
Group Inc.
concept.”
In a typical scenario, a manager would wait two
The First Generation or three days, maybe longer, to find out that the
Rudimentary counts could, of names he needed weren’t there. “You anticipated
course, be easily obtained from 100,000 or more, and you end up getting a quantity
count books and other sources. In a of 7,000,” Schwartz says. “Now you’re saying to
1966 New Yorker article on the list the manager, ‘How can that be?’ And he’s looking
business, author Calvin Trillin up at God and saying, ‘Your guess is as good as
mentioned “‘data cards’—the five- mine.’”
by-eight cards that brokers The average turnaround time for a list order?
circulate on each list they are Two weeks, according to Fran Green. And it took
offering.” even more time for the list owner to get paid,
But mailers needed more up-to-date thanks to the “infamous merge-purge report,” as
information, especially as mailings increased in Schwartz calls it—a page of green paper with
volume, frequency and complexity. So the players, confidential information whited out or cut out in
over years, jerryrigged a process for getting it. thin strips. Fights would ensue over terminology
The broker phoned the manager, and asked for and other disputed points, resulting in long delays
a count. The manager called the service bureau. in checks being sent, he adds.
And the bureau manually pulled the information Granted, this process served the industry
But the latter was done only on certain days of the through a period of explosive growth. But some
week. service bureaus remain stuck in it. They’re

©2010 NextMark, Inc. Page 4

unwilling or unable to invest in getting to the nextattribute available in combination, randomly
stage. allocate or prioritize and to key code and postal
sort for final mail prep,” says Mark Zilling, senior
The Second Generation vice president at MeritDirect, who worked at
Direct Media starting in 1986.
Charles D. Morgan was How did managers get counts from LOFS in
willing to invest. In 1975, the early days? From dumb terminals that were
Morgan was CEO of installed in their offices and connected to leased
Demographics Inc., a Conway, high-speed lines between New York and Conway.
AR data processor that handled Thus, the desktop terminal was “connected to the
everything from payrolls to Acxiom mainframe,” Yafchak says. “It had what
billing for local companies. we now refer to as a green screen—a flickering a
Hoping to expand his client black screen with green writing on it.”
base, Morgan visited Direct She adds: “It was not pretty, but you got the
Media, and its founder Dave count instantly, maybe in a few minutes. And if
Florence, in Greenwich, CT. you didn’t like the results, the dumb terminal was
He thought the order- in front of you—you could change the query, and
processing room was “in complete chaos, with there was no calling or faxing.”
paper flying everywhere and people screaming, and In addition, “LOFS was able to do what we
he had an epiphany: ‘This is process that refer to now as waterfall counts, where you can
computers could automate,’” says Mary Jo say, ‘I want all of these people who look like this,
Yafchak, vice president of product management for and when I run out of those, fill it in with these,’”
Acxiom, based on a recent conversation with Yafchak adds.
Morgan. (Demographics Inc. ultimately evolved There was one more benefit: That with LOFS,
into Acxiom). Acxiom “eliminated the standalone merge-purge
Morgan vowed to build a system to facilitate process to calculate royalties—owners quickly
two-day list order turnaround in six months. It was received appropriate fractional credit for the data
a huge job on a mainframe, but he did it, working that had been sold on their behalf,” Yafchak says.
24/7 with Alex Dietz and other team members.
Morgan wrote some of the code himself. Generation 2.5
LOFS LOFS had no real competition for 15 years,
according to Morgan. Eventually, though, it
The resulting List Order Fulfillment System, or became easier to replicate the system’s capabilities.
LOFS, debuted in 1976. Don Hinman, senior vice For one thing, standard query language allowed
president at Epsilon Targeting, describes it as “the programmers to use English terms to write queries
quintessential list fulfillment workhorse.” It for relational databases. In addition, businesses
featured a query language that allowed the use of began to migrate to PC client server systems
English terms in count requests. instead of mainframes, making it easier to do the
The first client—and for a time the only one-- programming.
was Direct Media. Thanks to LOFS, it was able to But some early systems were “simplistic, often
automate its list fulfillment process and make it one-dimensional, quick-count tools,” says Tom
faster and easier to serve its clients. Hinman recalls Berger, CEO of Cross Country Computer. “They
that Direct Media initially used LOFS to generate weren’t able to integrate real-live production
lists from its Yellow Pages business. results into the queries—they looked at static data
“LOFS provided the capability to select records sets.” Hinman adds that “you couldn’t do much
in a pre-merged database environment, using any scoring or modeling.”


Even LOFS “showed its limitations by The Age of the Internet
restricting the total number of selections that could
be made in a single campaign to 260 and limiting But there was a better way.
max/site restrictions to one value across the whole Otis moved to the Web around 2000, and was
campaign, a restriction that more advanced renamed WebOtis. “We built it in such a way that
marketers found quite limiting,” Mark Zilling any database could fit into it,” says Rubin. “It’s
writes. built not on Web pages, but on Web applications,
One notable second-generation system was so people can do true multi-tasking and threading,
Otis, launched in 1996 by Applied Info Group which are typically not possible on the Web.
(AIG). Mailers can run multiple counts at the same time
“We made the decision to have people and have them dedupe against one another.”
communicate with us by email, and in 1996, most This was mirrored by advances at other
people were not consistently using email, nor were companies. Accudata Integrated Marketing had
they online all the time,” says Mitch Rubin, CEO been a LOFS user, but “we were in the point-and-
of AIG. “A user would set up the count in the click age, and we wanted to give clients more
system, the query was transported by email and the flexibility,” says Yafchak, who had joined
response returned by email.” Accudata in 1993.
The first iteration of Accudata’s system
List Counts on Discs appeared in 1996. Users received a small
application that they loaded on their computers.
Prior to email, information had been exchanged Queries went straight to the Accudata server, and
in some quaint ways. were answered by fax.
One innovation, circa maybe 1985, was to Yet that was only a temporary solution.
provide list counts on discs. Accudata, through its new Alvion subsidiary, then
“We called it List-on-a-Disc,” says Schwartz. created an online fulfillment application called
“We had the service bureau put some standard ListKey, with input from Acxiom. It debuted in
information from extracts of the list into an Excel 2000.
program, and we would host these high-level ListKey is “built on modern technology, with
counts in a spreadsheet. The broker would put in high-speed database applications that can be
the 3 ½-inch floppy disc, and query this relational in nature,” Yafchak adds: “The queries
spreadsheet.” are lightning-fast, if I may say so, with an average
Another method was Fax-on-Demand. A time from initial query to data delivery being less
broker could dial a toll-free number 24 hours a day, than six minutes.”
make the request and get a return fax with the In 2008, Acxiom, which had used ListKey to
counts. In the beginning, these were sent by QUIP, offer its InfoBase product to resellers, acquired
one of the first fax machines—a technological Alvion. LOFS is still available, but “we’re in the
wonder at the time. Carney had a fax machine in process of migrating almost everything on LOFS to
his bedroom, and could hear the queries coming in ListKey,” Yafchak says.
at night from the East Coast. These are hardly the only tools that exist, and
Acculist USA tried something even more we’re in no position to say they are the first or
radical in 1988. “If one of the vendors had a best—our goal here is to trace the technological
CompuServe or Prodigy account, we would email evolution. Advanced interfaces, which both house
count requests,” says David Kanter, CEO of and fulfill lists and databases, are also offered by
Acculist USA. infoGROUP, owner of several venerable list
management-brokerage brands, including Edith
Roman Associates, Direct Media Millard and


Walter Karl; Blue Hill Marketing Solutions; have to train our people to be adept, accurate and
Epsilon Targeting; Experian; KnowledgeBase quick.”
Marketing; Cross Country Computer. They are also Some of these bureaus house multiple files,
offered by prospecting database providers and others have one, but even the latter are important,
other firms. MeritDirect has what it calls the and the sheer number complicates the clerical
Database Query System, or DQS, which has chore.
analytics and profiling capabilities. Any omissions “It’s not like keystroking and data entry,”
to this list are inadvertent. Green explains. “We have had to train staff to write
But here’s the rub: “If you
look from one service bureau to
another, you’ll see a significant “It’s not like keystroking and data entry.
difference in features,” says
Eric Smith, CEO of
We have had to train staff to write
ListFusion/DataTree. “They Boolean logic to get a count.”
differ in the service, the
Fran Green, president, ALC SMART Data Solutions
technology and the ability to do
it quickly.” Boolean logic to get a count.”
And whose job is it to make sense of this She adds that it takes six months of training
Tower of Babel? The overworked list manager. before a person is good in this customer service
role. “At the same time, we want to give the kind
The Manager’s Burden of service that the marketplace has come to
expect—and that requires very fast turnaround,”
Today’s systems would be unrecognizable to a she says.
practitioner who retired in 1985. So would the way How many people are needed to process
lists are delivered—from labels (1960s) to mag queries? “It depends on the size of your business,
tapes (1970s) to cartridges (1990s) to FTP and how many properties you manage and the number
email (2000s). But those of us who dislike change of counts and orders processed,” Green says. “But
can take comfort in this: The list manager still most managers would probably agree that you need
enters the count query and gets the information to as many customer service reps as you have sales
the broker. and marketing people.”
How do managers handle this chore in the This, she adds, “has a huge impact on the P&L.
digital age? Many run inhouse units to conduct If some of that could be automated, it would make
queries, and train their personnel to use this variety a difference.”
of tools. Rewarded for their speed and accuracy, Lake Group Media has 12 people in customer
these employees become skilled at running queries service, and they handle both counts and ordering,
because of the repetition and frequency of those Medico says. The average support person can
requests. process, say, 20 orders a day or 100 per week, he
But “speed” is a relative term—it usually adds.
means, “We strive for same-day service.” And Fran
Green calls the running of this infrastructure “one The Sales Imperative
of the more challenging parts” of list management.
At ALC, to name only one example, “most of our Here’s another downside to the second-
managed accounts come with their own service generation system: The average counts clerk lacks
bureaus,” she says. “We work with 32 different the skills, knowledge and empowerment to cross-
service bureaus, 32 different count systems, some sell, upsell or do any form of selling. Yet a broker
online, some not, some user friendly, some not. We requesting a count is THE ideal prospect for an


added sale because they are making a purchasing back or answer emails. Poor service can
decision. “materially influence list management sales,
“A good manager knows that if you want one- because experienced list brokers and mailers have
month hotlines, maybe you want three-month long memories,” David Kanter wrote in an article.
hotlines, too,” Green says. “When it becomes Several list firms operate their own service
robotic, you lose the sales and marketing bureaus. Specialists Marketing Services has one,
opportunity.” and it also has a count-and-query system that can
At ALC and other firms,
senior sales and marketing
people review all count “With the current list management service
requests, and often contact the
senior broker or marketer to
environment, it would be great to have a
make additional self-service model where brokers who
recommendations. ALC also
trains its staff on when to
need count validation can get it.”
escalate calls—for example, Carolyn Woodruff, senior broker, Direct Media Millard
when there’s a very complex
count or pricing request. be accessed by sales staff and production
“You can get active subscribers to the Wall assistants. “They are able to give counts out very
Street Journal, but when you start to get into quickly when calls come in for count requests,’
multiple enhancements and promotional says Lon Mandel, CEO of Specialists Marketing
definitions—someone who came on as an agent, Services.
then renewed as a direct-to-publisher—you need Carney Direct started a service bureau seven
the sales and marketing expertise to help structure years ago because “it looked more profitable” than
these database pulls,” Green says. list management, says Pete Carney. All of Carney’s
But the answers given by counts clerks are management clients keep their lists at this bureau,
only as good as the questions they are asked. John so his account people need only one source of
Papalia, CEO of Statlistics, argues that brokers information. He adds: “We don’t have an online
were better trained when they relied on their own count system. I want someone saying something to
somebody.”
Still, most managers are trapped in
“A busy manager can waste half a the second generation, the one in which
day emailing counts” the job of making the query falls on
them. The solution? “With the current
list management service environment, it
data card files. “Brokers were involved more in would be great to have a self-service model where
hands-on research, and they were probably more brokers who need count validation can get it,” adds
competent in determining what each data card Carolyn Woodruff, a senior broker at Direct Media
contained,” he says. Millard.
On top of that, a busy manager can waste half a This kind of interface would let brokers specify
day emailing counts back. One manager, only half exactly what they’re looking for,
jokingly, claims that a “broker emailed me 15 and limit the data to the selects
times in one day with count requests. I would like and the values available on the
to say, ‘You’re cut off for today.’” list. This would eliminate
The aggravation cuts both ways. Brokers have miscommunication and
been heard to gripe that managers don’t always call


translation errors. But is it enough? These flaws in third-generation systems have
prevented them from taking hold in the field of
The Third Generation managed response lists.
The third generation of list fulfillment exists
more in theory than in fact (except for compiled
The Fourth Generation
lists). A more promising solution is to skip the third
Brokers are free to use the systems run by generation and go right to the fourth: A universal
compilers—they can even order from them. interface for all mailing lists.
ListKey is used by managers, brokers, Under this plan, the broker can get
resellers and end-user marketers—so- counts regardless of where the data resides
called mailer directs, Yafchak says. or how it is stored. The interface
But brokers are excluded from most automatically translates requests into
interfaces for managed response lists. language understood at each of the service
“I didn’t see a lot of unrestricted bureaus housing the data. Ideally, this
access,” Hinman says. “The databases, solution would integrate directly with the
in most cases, are set up for access for list broker’s data card and list
a particular set of people.” recommendation system.
That’s true at the Lake Group. “We Wouldn’t the manager lose a selling
don’t give access to brokers,” Medico opportunity? No. This access for brokers is
says. And it’s equally true at “mediated”—that is, the manager would be
Specialists Marketing Services and instantly alerted when a broker requests a
with managers whose clients use service bureaus count, and asked to approve its release.
like AIG. “There are brokers who use the system, This would remove one of the major objections
but to a lesser extent,” Rubin says. “It’s manager- to direct access for brokers.
and mailer-based, with brokers being more of a “We love the idea, but we need visibility,” says
secondary market.” But Rubin adds: “It’s a shame ALC’s Fran Green. “We need to be pinged if
more brokers aren’t given access.” somebody’s running a count.”
Why are brokers blocked at the front door? In Hinman also sees the benefit. “An astute list
some instances, list owners fear competitors will manager gets pinged, and then calls to say, ‘By the
use these streamlined tools to go on fishing way, you didn’t put in left-handed Lithuanians.’”
expeditions. In others, list managers want control Fourth-generation systems keep the list
over the information, and they want the manager involved at critical points in the process.
opportunity to cross-sell, upsell and just plain sell. And the manager gets the best of both worlds: the
That’s a huge consideration. While more efficiency of process automation without the loss
efficient from a processing standpoint, direct of the human element.
broker access cuts the manger out of the sales Unlike earlier systems that are unique to a
process. The manager is unaware of count activity particular service bureau or are limited to the data
and can’t provide guidance. connected to a particular installation, fourth-
The question remains of whether brokers even generation systems provide an open application
want direct entree. Given their workloads, the last programming interface (API) that enables easy
thing they need is to have one more clerical chore integration of data sources with the count request
dumped on them. Brokers need access to every interface. This enables universal access to all list
mailing list on the market. But to get it under this data.
plan, they would have to learn 50+ different
systems. That would be like learning 50 languages.


A New Solution “The real value of a list broker is in finding
good lists and providing good advice,” Joe Pych
In 2009, responding to this marketplace need, says. “What these systems do is eliminate the grunt
NextMark introduced NextMark Select, a service work.”
that links counts from service bureaus with data Carolyn Woodruff seems to agree. Freed from
cards from list managers. “You can think of it as an clerical chores, brokers can “take on more
electronic bridge, that allows the data card to talk responsibilities for the prospecting process and
to the data,” says Joe Pych, founder and president help their clients grow their ROI,” she says. “Most
of NextMark. “It uses a standard, secure internet of the end users have such limited staff as it is.”
protocol as the communications network.” Fourth-generation systems are easy to use.
Cross Country Computer was the first service Getting a count is as simple as clicking a button.
bureau to integrate this fourth-generation tool with There are no additional systems or logins. No need
its own counts system. for training. With NextMark Select, the broker sees
What are the benefits to the parties in the food a “get count” button on the top of every data card.
chain? With prior-generation solutions, the broker had
The broker gets “faster access to exact to take great care to compose a request that would
universes of targeted prospect names,” says Tom not be misinterpreted by the manager or the service
Berger. This will lead to “targeted and more bureau. And when an error did occur, the process
precise procurement and better management of net- had to be repeated, wasting more time. A point-
name deals. When you know what segments are and-click interface speeds the composition of count
available at what resolution and with exact counts, requests and eliminates the risk of translation
you can negotiate from a position of strength.” errors.
For the manager, a fourth-generation system It’s also easier to keep track of count requests.
“eliminates the expense of procuring and updating Since all queries are being requested through a
data counts—as soon as an update is done, a new common interface, the system can track the
data card is on the market immediately,” Berger lifecycle of each one from the initial request
continues. “There’s better
promotion, with a lot more “You’d hope that with economy the way it
resolution.”
And from the service is within our industry, people would seek
bureau standpoint? “We’ll run out those types of efficiencies.”
fewer no-charge counts
because people have access,” Mitch Rubin, CEO, Applied Info Group
Berger adds. “The more clients through response. It will automatically maintain a
we help to promote those counts, the more revenue queue of open requests and red-flag the late replies
we’re going to realize.” But that’s not the only so they can be addressed.
upside for the service bureaus. That doesn’t eliminate the need for human
“If there’s demand for it, we’ll pick up some intervention. The broker must perform what
business as a result,” Berger says. “If ultimately Woodruff calls “due diligence.” and have the
there is not a lot of demand, we’ve still extended manager validate or explain counts. “You want to
our best of breed tool via this integration.” know what’s changed, and why it’s up or down,”
she says. “You go back to the prior year for that
The List Broker monthly hotline vs. the same month this year. You
want that ammunition before you go to the client.”
But what about list brokers? What will fourth- Ben Perez adds that managers and brokers will
generation systems do for them? always be needed for their expertise. “There may


be peripheral questions, other pieces of intelligence the burden of accuracy falls not on the system but
you need before you make a final decision,” he on the people supplying the data).
says. “Maybe there’s a list that should work that’s Some objections may be classified as resistance
not working, and the broker can work directly with to change. Robert K. Sher, principal in RK Sher &
the manager or owner to come up with other Associates, recalls that list brokers were unhappy
recommendations.” when SRDS came out with its first print directory
of lists. “They banded together, and did not want
Hurdles SRDS to publish,” he says.
Sher adds: “I don’t know why the response list
Despite these benefits, there are three obstacles owners would be concerned about people having
to adoption of a universal tool. access to their list as long as they know there are
The first is service bureau resistance. A small safeguards built in as far as who can get it and who
bureau that wants only to fulfill list rentals is “not can’t, and what they can’t select.”
going to swing an R&D budget” to integrate with a The old way is hardly a comfortable one. But
fourth-generation system, Berger says. And there is people have found a way to live with it. Sigmund
no real pressure from clients to do so. Feud noted that “it’s easier to suffer than to act.”
It would take a large firm like Wal-Mart to Solutions providers have to demonstrate the
drive standardization, Rubin argues. Wal-Mart’s benefits of the “new way,” and show a clear and
suppliers have no choice but to conform to its risk-free path to trying it.
systems, but the direct mail business lacks “a 500-
pound gorilla” like that, he adds. Technological Roadblocks
But Rubin adds that there would be “a lot of
productivity advantages” to a fourth-generation Then there are technical challenges, one being
system. “You’d hope that with economy the way it the uneven quality of the systems used in the
is within our industry, people would seek out those industry. Some list owners use one company to
types of efficiencies,” he says. house their data and another to send emails, Rubin
says. B2B publishers, to name only one market
List Industry Resistance segment, use wildly varying terminology on their
qualification cards, making integration more
Another obstacle is that not all list pros have complicated.
warmed up to the idea. Some managers
fear they will be supplanted, and that
researching and ordering lists will “This stuff has been used in other
become, like booking travel, an online
process that eliminates the need for
industries for many years.”
agents. Joseph Pych, President, NextMark
There’s one answer to that—that
managers will control the process. But fourth- And standardization is a tall order when there
generation systems providers will have to prove are still some mailers using Cheshire labels. Kanter
that to gain universal acceptance. says there are. Indeed, some list owners “maintain
Some fear losing the personal touch. The information internally, and batch-process counts
counter argument? That a streamlined fulfillment and orders on certain days of the week,” he adds.
system will, in fact, free managers to make sales “There are simply too many variables as to
calls. Others worry about accuracy. “The software how lists are fulfilled and how companies want
adds up incorrect information perfectly,” their databases set up,” Lon Mandel comments. “I
Batrouney wryly notes. (His point seems to be that believe this task has been taken on by some very


large companies—many, many years later, we are Mailers can already place orders online.
basically in the same place.” Abacus, through its Fastpath system, allows
Fourth-generation systems will not likely participants to query and order all the prospecting
handle 100% of all requests. One defining feature names they need. They can attain 100% of their
of the fourth-generation system—the simple circulation needs with little effort on their part. The
universal interface—is also one of its drawbacks. It key, of course, is list performance. It’s the same
may be able to automate run-of-the-mill requests, with other databases. And small mailers can order
but earlier systems will be required for the unique lists from compilers and resellers as easily as they
and highly complex requests. can purchase books on Amazon.com
But technology is not the main issue—as in all But some list executives oppose a universal
such situations, these problems will be overcome. ordering system, and a big reason, expressed
As Joe Pych says, “This stuff has been used in during many previous attempts to create one, is
other industries for many years.” reluctance to standardize. Fran Green expresses
frustration at the industry’s resistance to a
Ordering standardized order form. “My position is that it's
appropriate to be proprietary about things that
There’s more to list fulfillment than getting distinguish your company from a
counts. The next step in the process is ordering. sales/marketing/service perspective,” she says.
But this job, too, has several hands on it as it’s now “But order forms? That's why the conversations
done. broke down.”
“Every list company has its own internal David Schwartz agrees. “The thinking man
system,” Medico says. “But if it’s not married to would ask, ‘What are the priorities?’” he says.
the service bureau system you’re working with, “What do you want from a good broker and media
you have to reenter the order, so there’s a lot of service? A lot of this is commodity.”
double entry. Ideally, there would be one universal But progress has been made in removing other
place to send all the orders.” types of bottlenecks. Not long ago, sample mailing
Is a universal ordering system a possibility? pieces had to be mailed by Federal Express or UPS
Yes. NextMark is developing one, and some to the manager, for clearance by the owner. Mailers
observers say they would welcome it. can now scan the pieces, then FTP them or send
“It would make perfect sense” says Don PDFs.
Some firms even have
“This task has been taken on by some online libraries that managers
can access to get the creative,
very large companies — many, many years Kanter adds. And if the client
later, we are basically in the same place.” hasn’t quite finalized it, the
owner or manager can visit
Lon Mandel, CEO, Specialists Marketing Services the client’s Web site and get
information on the company.
And in the future? We
Hinman, regarding a “list of lists” allowing near-
will truly have what Hinman calls “self
universal fulfillment access. A broker or mailer
fulfillment.”
would log on and “ask for a certain kind of target
Eric Smith says “data will be captured directly
audience,” he adds. “It would give you the recco,
from Web forms, merged, validated and made
almost like an automated broker. You click on the
available for purchase—all done instantly.”
file name, and it takes you to the order fulfillment
It’s already happening to some degree. “There
system. However, I don’t see anything like out
are more and more instances where the list buyer is
there yet.”


provided direct online access for running counts and more time marketing our lists,” says Marlies
and in some cases exporting data,” he adds. Duke, list manager at ALEXA Marketing.
Buyers will search for key words on lists, get a ALEXA’s system, which is now tied to the
real-time listing of available files, then click and NextMark interface, allows brokers to get counts
order, Smith continues. “From a technical “anywhere in country at any hour—whether
perspective, creating a partnership between a weekends, nights, or in the California time zone.
mailing list search engine and a capable computer You don’t have to rely on reaching someone in our
service would accommodate both small flat files company.”
and larger compiled files.” Others concur, and think the time is ripe for a
true fourth-generation solution.
Conclusion “I love the idea that I could go into (a system)
All that said, many list
professionals feel that a
“The job of managers and brokers was
universal, fourth-generation never to get counts — it was to satisfy their
interface will help them
eliminate time-consuming
clients’ requests for audiences.”
work. Ralph Stevens
“They hire us for our sales
and marketing capabilities,” Green says. “But we and conceivably send out unique clearance requests
spend a tremendous amount of time and money on to 100 different list owners and mangers and do
things that do not add value to that because of the that without having to prepare individual emails,”
disparity of the systems.” Kanter says.
“The job of managers and brokers was never to Medico adds that a universal system, while not
get counts—it was to satisfy their clients’ requests easy to develop, is the ideal answer.
for audiences,” adds Ralph Stevens. “The rest of it Green concurs.
is a mechanic’s job.” “It’s a win for the business,” she says. “We’re
A fourth-generation system would free all for it.”
managers to spend “less time doing manual work


1960's - Lester Wunderman coins the term “Direct Marketing.” List managers and
computer service bureaus appear. Birth of the SRDS list directory.

Who retrieves the counts: The service bureau
How counts are delivered: Telephone, mail
How lists are shipped: Labels

1970's - Explosive growth of direct mail and catalogs. List Order
Fulfillment System (LOFS) introduced.

How counts are delivered: The manager
Count delivery: Telephone, mail
How lists are shipped: Magnetic tapes

1980's Growth of database marketing. Prodigy and CompuServe
appear. MIN data card service launched.

Who retrieves the counts: The manager
How counts are delivered: Fax, discs
How lists are shipped: Magnetic tapes

1990's - The dot-com boom and the emergence of CRM. Companies
start using email. Fulfillment systems improve. NextMark founded.

How counts are delivered: Fax, email
How lists are shipped: Cartridges

2000's - Rise of e-commerce and digital marketing. Direct mail
flattens, email grows. List fulfillment systems go online.

How counts are delivered: Email, online
How lists are shipped: FTP/Email

2010's - Boom in social media. Decline in postal mail
volume. Universal list fulfillment system introduced.

Who retrieves the counts: The broker
How counts are delivered: Online
How lists are shipped: Online
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Thanks to Don Hinman for his input on this timeline

About the Author
Ray Schultz is the head of TellAllmarketing, a company devoted to custom publishing.
He is the former editor of DM News and Direct, and founding editor of Direct Newsline,
Direct Listline, the Circulator and 1to1 magazine. In 2002, he was named the Direct
Marketing Association’s List Leader of the Year.

About NextMark
NextMark provides the tools and resources that help organizations to buy, sell, and learn about
addressable media including postal, email, telephone, package insert, online, and mobile programs.
NextMark currently indexes and tracks more than 100,000 addressable media programs from 1,400
sources. Its solutions have been proven through more than 7,700,000 media searches and 120,000 media
plans for thousands of catalog merchants, retailers, fundraisers, politicians, banks, telcos, entertainers,
broadcasters, publishers, and other organizations that reach their market directly. NextMark is a
privately held corporation headquartered in Hanover, New Hampshire USA with its Marketing
Information Network list services operation located in Edmond, Oklahoma and on the web at
http://www.NextMark.com.

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