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Glossary of Direct Marketing Terms

Actives: Current subscribers or recent purchasers.

A-I-D-A: Shorthand for the four key components of direct marketing copy. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

BRC: Business Reply Card. A postage-paid postcard used to place an order or respond to a company to request additional information.

Buyer or Subscriber List: A list of people who have purchased a product, service, or subscribed to a magazine.

Call to Action: Asking the recipient to place the order or get more information (call now, yes, I want to start my subscription).

Compiled List: A list of names created from a variety of sources, such as newspapers, directories, or telephone books. These lists will generally get a poorer response than a list of buyers or subscribers.

Controlled Circulation: Free magazines that require subscribers to qualify for a subscription. Generally, subscribers must be in particular industries and have certain job titles that give them the authority to make or influence purchasing decisions and make them appealing to the magazine's advertisers.

Co-op Mailing: Two or more companies join forces, and share expenses, to send a promotional mailing (examples include valu-pak coupons, or third party statement stuffers in credit card bills).

Data card: A breakdown and description of the contents of a mailing list (number of names, location, business size, etc.).

De-dupe: To remove duplicate names from a database to prevent recipients from receiving multiple copies of the same mailing.

House List: A company's list of its own customers, prospects, and/or former customers.

Indicia: A printed box in the upper right hand corner of an envelope. This indicates that the mailer has paid the appropriate postage.

Involvement device: A means for the reader to interact with your mailing piece, often with stickers, or labels that the consumer pastes in a particular place on the order form.

Key Code: A combination of letters or numbers that identify mailings. Add these to your order forms so that you can measure the response from your mailings.

Lettershop: A company that prepares mailings. This can include stuffing and sealing envelopes, addressing the mailing, sealing self-mailing brochures, adding postage, and delivering the mailing to the post office.

Merge/Purge: The process of eliminating duplicate names from a list or multiple lists from several sources.

Negative Option: An agreement to for a customer to receive regular shipments, or automatic renewals, until he or she specifically asks to stop.

Net Names: An agreement to pay only for actual names used, after removing duplicates, rather than the total number sent Nixie: a mailing piece that is returned because of a bad address (like a hard bounce in e-mail).

Nth name: Sampling a list by selecting every 3rd name (or other number) up to a fixed number. This is helpful with new or untried lists as a means of testing how well the list works for your company.

Offer: The terms of the product or service that the mailer is offering (such as buy two, get one free).

Perfect-bound: A book with a smooth spine (either hardcover or paperback). This format is suitable for larger, bulkier, documents.

PMS color: Pantone Matching System, used to specify standards for producing a particular shade, and ensure that the color remains consistent.

Poly-bag; A clear plastic bag used for mailing. This is often used for magazines or co-op mailings.

Pressure-Sensitive Labels: Labels that peel off.

Response Rate: Number of orders or replies received as a percentage of total pieces mailed.

Saddle-stiched: A booklet that is stapled or stitched through all the pages of a booklet, binding them together (usually used for booklets with a limited number of pages; larger documents should be spiral-bound or perfect bound.

Seed: A decoy name inserted into a mailing list by the list owner. This allows the owner to track when the list is used, and by whom, in order to catch any unauthorized (and unpaid for) mailings. It can also be added to a list to track the actual mailing date and delivery time.

Split- test: Dividing a list into two pieces (also called an A/B split) in order to test different offers, a different mail format, or another variable, and determine which yields a greater response.

Title Slug: Addressing mailing pieces by job title, rather than to a person by name.

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