The 50 Best Tips

— George Hague, J. Schmid & Assoc., B-to-B Cataloging column, “Four Ways to Coordinate Marketing and Outbound Sales,” August, Catalog Success

✱ Integrate page changes.

Modest page changes from edition to edition of catalogs can improve productivity compared to pages that don’t change. Change 6 percent to 10 percent of inside pages with each monthly catalog mailing to customers. Creative change costs generally increase total mailing costs by 2 percent to 8 percent, but usually deliver much larger gross margin increases. Effective changes include changing category sequences and creating two or three versions of each important product listing (at the same time) and alternating them from month to month.