If your business has been around the marketing block before and your plan builds on years of experience, you can more safely favor economies of scale over flexibility. (Economies of scale are the cost savings from doing things on a larger scale.) But always leave yourself at least a little wiggle room, because reality never reflects your plans and projections 100 percent of the time.

Adjust your marketing plan to favor economies of scale if you feel confident that you can make sound judgments in advance. Advertising is cheaper and more efficient if you do it on a large scale, because you get deeper discounts on the design of ads and purchasing of ad space or air time.

If you know a media investment is likely to produce leads or sales, go ahead and buy media in larger chunks to get good rates. And don’t be as cautious about testing mailing lists with small-scale mailings of a few hundred pieces.

A good in-house list supplemented by 20 percent or fewer newly purchased names probably warrants a major mailing without as much emphasis on advance testing.