Why are there minimum order charges for mailing lists?
The minimum order charge is primarily due to the fact that most mailing lists are maintained at third-party service bureaus. These computer service vendors process nearly all orders and require that list owners pay them a minimum fee per order.
Service bureaus earn most of their revenue based on "number of names produced". And it takes essentially the same amount of service bureau computer and staff time to produce a 100 name list as it does a 100,000 name list. To ensure that their true costs are covered, a "minimum order" charge is applied to all orders.
Each year technology lowers the cost of list production, but the multiple vendor set-up of the list business preserves a system where most mailing list owners think "it's not worth their time" to accept list orders of less than 3000-5000 names.
One of the benefits of using a mailing list broker is that the broker can often persuade a reluctant list owner to waive the minimum order requirement for small, targeted mailings.