Sales Topper or Door Stopper?

10 steps to help create staying power for your big book

By Gina Valentino

As a business-to-business (b-to-b) cataloger, you know that your large catalog is an essential selling tool, as well as a brand differentiator. Its benchmarks of success may include strong revenues, remarkable customer response and overall profitability.

A good strategy for any catalog's mailing frequency should be based on the book's anticipated order-response curve. But when you create a large b-to-b catalog that's expected to have a shelf life of four, six or even 12 months, how can you ensure that it keeps selling well during its entire campaign?

The following 10 steps can help.

1. Understand the order-response curve. This is defined as the lifespan of the catalog — from the time the book drops in the mail until the last order is taken. This metric typically is influenced by page count, merchandise assortment, customer segments mailed, promotional offers or a seasonal ending date, such as a holiday or a sale expiration date. For example, a sale catalog mailed to your best customers will have a quick order-response curve — perhaps less than four weeks. Most orders will come in the first two weeks, and by week three, nearly 85 percent of all orders for the life of that catalog are tallied.

A big book with a long shelf life has an order-response curve, too. To help determine what it is, review your customer segments to see which customers are buying and how frequently they're purchasing. A merchandise-category review will indicate the seasonality of merchandise, subsequent purchase requirements and product preferences. And understanding who is buying is as important as when they're buying. Once identified, you'll see the lulls in the order-response curve and be able to verify strong performance in certain customer segments and merchandise categories.

Armed with these data, you can deliberately target your contact strategy and develop offers to inspire a purchase. Your goal should be to stabilize the ebb and flow of the order-response curve and sustain your big book's life.

2. Let the orders begin. When a b-to-b big book is mailed, it's the start of a season full of orders, reorders, purchase orders and auto-ship programs. Customers use the big book as a reference guide, information source, specifications guide, wish book and ordering vehicle. By knowing the catalog's many uses, you can create an "order starter," something to jump-start the revenue flow. An order starter can be a special insert included inside the polywrap. Or it can be a spot-glued card or page (on the cover or inside the catalog) with a great offer and an expiration date (to create a sense of urgency).

Develop the order starter with a particular goal in mind such as to announce a new product or a product upgrade, identify an item with a special value price, or offer a promotional product. Offset the cost of creating the order starter with a strong response rate and frequency of purchases throughout the catalog's selling period.

3. Keep the orders flowing all season long. One way to do this is to include promotional violators as bind-in cards, which can strategically interrupt the catalog's flow and announce a product special, a two-for-one offer, a product upgrade or a plug for your Web site. Some b-to-b catalogers have found success by offering a full page of time-dated coupons for monthly specials. Such an offer should be bound into the catalog's front portion or near the index to make for a highly visible selling tool.

4. Use the spine. B-to-b big books usually are placed with other reference catalogs on a customer's shelf. Have your staff design the spine so that it's consistent with your company's brand image. Because it should be distinctive, use a boldface type and vibrant colors. Keep the wording succinct and consistent with your branding message.

5. Involve the Internet. When a customer lands on your splash page (the initial landing page a customer sees before advancing to your home page), a picture of your catalog's front cover is an excellent visual reference. A combination of visual and copy reminders may enhance viewer recall. A special big book Internet promotion can stir a buyer into action.

If you don't use a splash page, include your catalog cover on your home page or use teaser copy to guide customers to the catalog-request page, another place in which a picture of your big book's cover should be shown.

6. Create an electronic order. Opt-in e-mail marketing can be an effective contact strategy to augment sales from your big book. You don't need to wait until the big book is mailed to send the e-mail campaign. One successful e-mail strategy combines promoting the arrival of the big book with an announcement of a new product or service. In the e-mail's HTML versions, include a picture of the book's cover as another visual reference to the catalog promotion.

7. Prompt with a postcard. One successful cataloger mailed an announcement postcard to its best customers alerting them to the impending arrival of the big book. An anticipated best-selling product was featured on the postcard along with a page reference. The result: The test group of customers that received the postcard generated both a higher response rate and average order value for the life of the big book.

8. Qualify the customer. A big book's production and mailing are expensive. Should every customer from the past three years get the catalog? Ask your circulation expert to examine break-even analysis.

Your big book's marketing campaign — which may include other, fewer-page catalogs, solo direct mail pieces and/or online marketing plans — may work well when you display a cover shot of the big book combined with an offer. For example: "Order from this catalog and become eligible to receive our 700-page catalog."

Using this strategy, you entice customers to buy now, and you help qualify them based upon order size, quantity of items purchased or merchandise category.

Some b-to-b catalogers successfully use telemarketing to qualify customers. When calling clients to offer the all-new big book, your reps also can verify the purchasing agent's name and other pertinent information. This helps you avoid mailing to an unqualified prospect or to someone who no longer works for the company. Tip: Devise a telemarketing schedule that takes advantage of the lulls in your order-response curve.

9. Be top of mind. When a customer is ready to buy, you want your big book to be the first catalog he or she wants to open. How do you remain fresh if your catalog mailed months ago? The answer lies in the contact strategy.

B-to-b catalogers successfully use e-mail, telemarketing, postcards and direct mail. But maybe you need to reconsider how your customer shops. Perhaps your response rates would improve if you placed an ad in an appropriate trade publication, sponsored an industry event, exhibited at a trade show, sent a promotional item or provided a message on your customers' credit card statements? There are as many communication strategies as there are customer types. Determine which promotions add the most overall value to your bottom line.

10. Test offers. Prior to mailing each big book campaign, identify at least one test to incorporate into the contact strategy. Some catalogers see positive results with a gift-with-purchase promotion. Products that can be shared at the office (e.g., cookies, popcorn, chocolates) provide a purchase incentive without violating most corporate gift policies.

Conclusion

These 10 steps are meant to serve as a guideline to help you develop contact strategies that can keep your big book generating revenue throughout its expected life cycle. Every time you communicate with your customers, find ways to reference the big book and increase the frequency of orders. Test different offers and promotions to encourage repeat purchases throughout your book's life.

Gina Valentino is the VP/GM at J. Schmid & Assoc., a creative and catalog consulting firm based in Shawnee Mission, KS. Previously, she was Spiegel's CRM director. She has worked for catalog companies such as as Road Runner Sports, Barrie Pace and Disney Direct Marketing. You can reach her at (913) 236-8988, or via e-mail at: ginav@jschmid.com.