Email marketing list rental prices drop

New figures from Worldata have revealed that prices for email marketing rental lists fell in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The company's Winter 2009 List Price Index showed that permission-based email business-to-consumer lists experienced the second largest price fall after consumer magazines.

Permission-based international email marketing data fell slightly compared with the third quarter, with businesses making greater use of this information to boost their marketing operations.

"Because marketers are making such reductions on direct mail, they are relying more on email campaigns and adding to the issue of inbox clutter," commented Ray Tesi, senior vice-president of Worldata.

He added that list owners are now prompting a fall in cost-per-mile as they try to make their data more appealing to marketing executives.

Carrie Hill of Blizzard Internet Marketing wrote in a Search Engine Watch post earlier this month that small businesses may find it more beneficial to build their own email marketing lists rather than buy them as in-house lists are likely to be of a higher quality.