Can Database Marketing Work for Catalogers? (1,457 words)

In theory catalogs could be personalized, with Arthur Hughes getting a catalog containing things that the sender assumes he would be interested in, and Helena Hughes getting a catalog from the same company with a different selection of products. No one does this. The reason is simple: The increased sales from print personalization would not be sufficient to cover the cost of personalization. Catalogers print 200,000 or more identical copies, trying to get the per-piece cost as low as possible. They mail their housefile plus thousands of rented names. This method keeps the marketing costs to a minimum.