The Causes of List Fatigue

As a result, she says, “[catalogers] are constantly mailing the same customers. The same is occurring with their housefiles, which has led to customer burnout and reduced the responsiveness of those house names.”

The economy also is a determinant because it made some mailers hold off and not prospect as much, suggests Michael Grant, president of Michael Grant Direct, a database marketing consultancy in Scarsdale, N.Y. “List universes have shrunk a bit, since people didn’t mail quite as much last year. So there are fewer new buyers,” he notes.