Everyone loves looking over their shoulder to see what other companies are doing and how it’s working for them. To that end, Multichannel Merchant recently conducted a survey of catalogers, comparing 2011 marketing plans with what they did in 2010.
When asked about plans for 2011 prospecting, respondents only planned to increase their use of three media, and they all surprised me. (Click on the headline for more…)
Last week, the Direct Gardening Association hosted an excellent webinar on 40 Tips to Improve Margin & Profitability. Presenters Gina Valentino of Hemisphere Marketing and George Mollo of GJM Associates offered up a fast-paced series of money-making and money-saving tips on marketing, inventory management, creative, offers and much more.
One clever suggestion from Gina on choosing which products to feature on your catalog covers: (Click on the headline for more…)
It’s rare for catalogers to devote valuable selling space to anything other than product, but pushing product isn’t the only way to sell. A case in point is the 2011 catalog from Botanical Interests, which breaks away from the traditional catalog format in three respects: (Click on the headline for more…)
At once time, every catalog included an order form with attached reply envelope bound into the center of the book. Now, some argue, so many people order through the Internet that the order form and envelope have become an unnecessary expense. Is this really true? (Click on the headline for more…)
In an excellent presentation on catalog design at last week’s Mailorder Gardening Association conference, Lisa Hodgson Balch of Sargeant House Design Studio explained how the concept of “gaze motion” is especially important in the gardening world.
In a nutshell, gaze motion means (Click on the headline for more…)
When economic times are hard, it’s tempting to call a halt to prospecting in order to conserve cash. Sounds harmless enough, but think twice before you do. Unless you replenish the buyers you lose to attrition, it’s amazing how fast you can dig yourself into a hole that’s awfully tough to climb out of. Here’s what I mean: (Click on the headline for more…)
A catalog company recently asked my opinion on cutting the number of pages in their catalog by more than half in order to save money. It’s a common question. The logic is that a website can feature your full product line, while a catalog cannot, so why not just refer people to the website? More and more orders are coming through the web anyway, so why go to the expense of printing a big, fat catalog?
(Click on the headline for more…)
Our last post outlined the wide variety of guarantee policies among the Garden Watchdog Top 30 companies that sell live plants. A handful had no stated guarantee, while another handful guaranteed their plants forever. The vast majority put some kind of condition on refunds or credits. While that’s certainly understandable, many could have chosen their words better. Here’s a sampling of the guarantees that might give customers pause: (Click on the headline for more…)
How do you handle asking copywriters and designers for changes on work they’re doing for you? Here’s an example of what not to do. (Click on the headline for more…)
At the recent NEMOA conference, Andrew Davis of Tipping Point Labs gave an information-packed presentation on The Social Media Tipping Point: Monetizing Incremental Commerce. I found Davis’ common sense approach to today’s “social media madness” (the NEMOA program guide’s words, not mine) refreshing. So it was with great interest that I read his take on how catalogs need to evolve in order to stay viable. (Click on the headline for more…)
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