Regency Direct has been named exclusive list manager for international mail order company Compass Direct. The list has a total universe of close to 750,000 names. Regency’s experience with international lists and data rules helped the company win Compass’ business from former list manager List Services.
“We had an option of getting some managers in each local country, but that was too unwieldy,” explained Wesley Wood, a co-owner of Compass Direct. “Regency has gotten to be a pretty big force and factor in the international data marketplace, so we decided to monetize our database by going with them.”
Sanj Aggarwal, managing director, Regency Direct, pointed out that less than 20% of Compass’ business comes from within North America, and that Regency specializes in serving the international market.
“List Services had the file for a long time and did a super job, but Regency is more of a boutique specialized firm in marketing that type of data,” Wood added. “In order to streamline our operations and be more efficient in how we manage data, it was much easier to switch to Regency.”
Regency Direct officially took over list management responsibilities for Compass on July 1. It had already been providing brokerage services to Compass for about four years.
Wood said he hopes the new list management will increase Compass’ list rental income and help maintain the integrity of the company’s database.
Compass Direct’s mail order business reaches consumers in 185 countries, including the US, Canada, France, Japan and UK. Later this summer, the company plans to launch online shopping sites, which will add e-mail addresses to its list. About half of the customers in the database are multi-buyers, and a majority are over 40 years old. Men and women are equally represented.
Compass Direct specializes in low-ticket personal items, like leather checkbook wallets, gemstone jewelry and pen and pencil sets, and the average customer purchase ranges from $30 to $45. Dharti Desai manages many of the company’s promotions from offices in India, and marketing director Anita Lai manages the list rental database.
