Testing Creative for Higher Response

It is more efficient for Crutchfield to keep our two major product categories, home audio/video and car audio, in the same catalog rather than separate them. Through testing we’ve found that our home customers typically like our home covers best and our car customers like our car covers best. This was a revelation, since in the past we had sent only one catalog cover per mailing. Now, we send up to four different covers with each mailing—home, car, multi-product, and a fourth test cover (i.e., with a fake dot-whack or another offer)—and match them to the customer according to the panel’s feedback. We see an average 5-percent decrease in response when we mail the “wrong” cover to a customer, e.g., a car cover to a home buyer.