When to Administer Mailings

Consider a strategic plan that lays out the frequency of your mailings. Moreover, think about how long customers and prospects should stay on your mailing list.

Dropping customers from your list is a marketing decision that should be based partly on the products or services you sell. A

well-known high-end cookware company, for example, will maintain that it's never time to drop a customer from a mailing list. Once you buy something from them — anything — you're a customer for life. A maternity catalog, on the other hand, probably has very different expectations for mailing list longevity. Most likely, your own customers fall somewhere between these extremes. Over time, you should be able to discern how long it takes before the cost of the mailings exceeds the revenue from customers who reorder.

How frequently you mail to a customer is another marketing decision. If possible, segment your list by date of last order, frequency of orders, and average order value. In this way your mailings can remain as cost-effective and customer-centric as possible.