Catalog Doctor: The Amazing, Portable, Low-Cost, Handheld Device for Delivering Sales
Keep your eye out for trends in behavior when determining your catalog circulation strategy. For example, customers who first came to your brand via an online channel and purchased via the web can actually perform better when mailed fewer catalogs.
Catalogs Communicate Your Brand Better
A catalog offers a larger canvas on which to meld your brand message, products, offers, support editorial, testimonials, etc. You can have all of this on a two-page spread with no clicking, no decision tree, then do it all over again on the next spread in an entirely different, fun, creative way. And what if you want consumers to read your guarantee, your mission statement, your history or your made-in-the-USA story? Many folks looking at your catalog cover will turn inside to see your branding story on pages two and three, but few people on your homepage will click on a link to the same story. Your brand can come across both better and more pervasively in your catalog, helping increase brand interest and long-term brand loyalty.
Susan J. McIntyre is Founder and Chief Strategist of McIntyre Direct, a catalog agency and consultancy in Portland, Oregon offering complete creative, strategic, circulation and production services since 1991. Susan's broad experience with cataloging in multi-channel environments, plus her common-sense, bottom-line approach, have won clients from Vermont Country Store to Nautilus to C.C. Filson. A three-time ECHO award winner, McIntyre has addressed marketers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, has written and been quoted in publications worldwide, and is a regular columnist for Retail Online Integration magazine and ACMA. She can be reached at 503-286-1400 or susan@mcintyredirect.com.
