Catalog Doctor: How to Grow Your Small Business This Year
Try selling new services or products to your existing customers first. If your customers want them, it's more likely new prospects will, too — likewise if your customers don't want them. Do the same when upgrading existing programs.
To get an idea of what your customers want, ask them. Surveys are easy and inexpensive nowadays. Try them on the web at checkout, by email or with reply postcards in outgoing orders. (If you survey through the mail, have customers use their own stamps — you'll still get a surprisingly high response.)
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.
