Know Your Housefile

One you’ve determined you want to increase their AOV, develop an offer that’s tied to a dollar qualifier such as x amount off shipping and handling for any order of $60 or more. Don’t set the qualifier too high, since that actually may deter response.

Core Customers

Be sure your marketing and merchandising efforts will continue to satisfy this core group of customers. If your core group are 1X, zero-to 12-month buyers with an AOV of $50 to $75, mail to them frequently enough and be sure your catalog offering characteristics haven’t changed so much that these results will be difficult to achieve. In other words, if you’ve been averaging 1.8 items per order with an average price offered of $35, be sure your average price offered doesn’t jump to more than $40—or that AOV will be difficult to maintain without a decrease in response rates.