• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, August 3, 2017

Just saw an announcement about an email list of interior design professions. Looks like a good B2B file. But there’s no price on it.

Just as well — we suspect it’s open to negotiation. List costs are falling steadily, to the point where it’s a buyer’s market, judging by the Summer 2017 Price Index from Worldata.

And it doesn't look like they are about to recover.

“List prices fell across many categories over the last 12 months,” states Jay Schwedelson, CEO of Worldata.

We’ll say. Permission-based consumer email lists now rent for $60/M, the lowest-priced category in the 30-year-plus history of the index, according to Schwedelson.

The second-lowest category this summer is the aggregated database business at $67/M.

The overall decline starts with B2B lists. Why? Market glut.

“The large drop in email pricing for business-to-business lists directly correlates to the growing number of new sources that continue to enter the marketplace,” Schwedelson explains. “Demand cannot keep up with supply, which is driving down the cost for marketers in this category.”

These are basic rate-card prices, by the way. All price comparisons are summer 2017 vs. summer 2016.

Let’s look at the numbers.

On a dollar basis, the permission-based medium-large business category took the biggest hit — an $11/M decline to $194/M. That was followed by:

• Permission-based small business email — $ 7/M
• Aggregated email database —  business — $3 /M
• Databases/masterfiles — $3/M
• Newsletters — $2/M

Things look a little different when it comes to percentages. The biggest loss here was a 6.73% decrease in the permission-based small business email category.

The second-biggest loss was suffered by permission-based medium to large business lists — 5.37%. This was followed by:

• Aggregated email database-business — 2.24%
• Permission-based B2C email — 1.64%

These reductions have a dual impact. If you rent your email list out, it’s bad; if you use permission-based prospecting lists, it’s good. It may be a wash if you do both.

Isn’t there any good news (for email list owners, that is?)

Well, it depends. The highest percentage increase occurred in the small business category: 1.11%. Next was permission-based international email, which saw a 1.07% hike. At $378/M, that category remains the highest-priced one.

That’s also up from $368/M last quarter.

And the most expensive domestic lists were in the permission-based medium-large business area. They’re going for $194/M, a $11/M decrease from last year.

Worldata’s spring report in April also showed dramatic falloffs. At that time, Schwedelson said email list availability had increased by 300% in the last two years.

This could be the time to prospect, given those low CPMs.