B-to-B Cataloger Goes Digital

Paying Dividends
White highlighted several benefits the Council for Economic Education has realized because of its digital catalog:

• multimedia presence online — the company has introduced video clips from teachers on how they've successfully used the Council's products;
• cost-effective — noting that it costs $100,000 to $125,000 per year to create, print and mail its catalogs, White said the digital catalog has proven to be very cost-effective;
• takes very little time and employee resources — the Council just sends a high resolution PDF version of the catalog to Nxtbook, and the vendor takes care of the rest, White said; and
• the ability to track the effectiveness of it — metrics such as clickthrough rates from e-mail campaigns, the amount of time spent viewing the digital catalog and the number of pages viewed are easily measured, allowing for smarter marketing decisions in the future.

So far the digital catalogs have proven to be a hit with customers, White said. Visitors on average spend more than two minutes per visit with the digital catalog. While there, they look at an average of nine pages per visit. This has resulted in an incremental lift in response.