Circulation Planning: Five Critical Steps

You also may find that by staggering to under-performing segments, demand per book increases for those segments. By making decisions while considering all drops and segments together — and not just one drop at a time — you’re starting to create a contact strategy.

- Use an overall percentage for orders/gross demand from the Internet, catalog “tails” (i.e., orders and sales that come in from catalogs mailed in prior years), and miscellaneous or unknowns. Your Internet percentage should be in the range of 20 percent to 30 percent; “tails” from older mailings should range from 1 percent to 3 percent; and your percentage of unknowns shouldn’t exceed 20 percent.