B-to-B

Hailing from Toronto, I enjoy keeping a close eye on my homeland. Each summer I return for my annual family vacation. When I do, I always check the B-to-B direct marketing pulse of the country.
That said, I begin by asking you to look in your customer file to see how much business you’re doing in Canada. When you look, don’t forget also to look at Burlington, Vt., Buffalo, N.Y., and Bellingham, Wash., three border cities heavily influenced by Canadian purchases. (Many Canadian businesses have delivery/mail pick-up and drop-off services in those areas.)
In recent years, the Canadian dollar has strengthened (currently, it’s virtually

Back in the fall of 2005, Larry Gaynor enlisted the Gallup Organization to work with his company. The founder and president of B-to-B salon supplies cataloger The Nailco Group (TNG) had read about the firm’s extensive business consultancy, most notably The Gallup Path, a method that connects employee performance with a company’s bottom line. With annual sales of $85 million and a talent pool of 315 (at TNG, you’re not an “employee,” you’re “talent”), TNG is considerably smaller than most of the companies Gallup works with. Gaynor, however, believed that Gallup’s guidance on employee and customer engagement would benefit his team and, ultimately, the

Want to increase sales? Increase the frequency of contact with your customers, and coordinate catalog marketing and outbound sales efforts. In B-to-B especially, it can be a powerful, one-two punch. But without a well-planned strategy, one effort can unintentionally undermine the other. Here are four key ways to ensure your sales and marketing efforts are in sync. 1. Brand. Controlling brand in print and online can be relatively easy compared to controlling it in outbound sales efforts. Use gatekeepers to assure that you maintain a consistent look and voice in your catalog and on your Web site. If a wrong font or color slips into

As has been its annual custom, B-to-B list firm MeritDirect’s annual co-op event in White Plains, N.Y. on July 12 was kicked off by a provocative and entertaining presentation by catalog veteran and futurist Don Libey. Having heard Don speak plenty of times in the past (and despite his frequent speaking appearances, rarely does he repeat a single concept, strategy or idea), I’ve long since learned how to filter through his motivational pep talk and the meat of what he delivers. While always entertaining, his shtick is always chockfull of meat, but it often looks beyond tomorrow. And after all, we all want to

BACKGROUND: “In the late ’80s, I realized there was a gap in the electronics accessory distribution market,” says David Lorsch, founder, president and CEO of DBL Distributing. “There were a few people in the Eastern U.S. that were growing the market via catalog and flier. But there was nobody in the West. Around the point I started my company in 1989, there was no distributor specializing in accessories to independent retailers west of St. Louis. I identified what I perceived to be a hole in the market. And luckily, I was right.” BIGGEST INITIAL CHALLENGE: Finding a customer. “I really started with

Catalogers’ Updates PetSmart: The multichannel pet supplies retailer in late April sold its State Line Tack equine assets to PetsUnited, a holding company for a Web-based marketer of pet and equine products, including Dog.com, Fish.com and Horse.com. PetsUnited plans to move the State Line Tack online and catalog business from Brockport, N.Y., to its Hazelton, Pa., facility by July. Cutter & Buck: This apparel cataloger/designer in April agreed to be acquired by the Sweden-based New Wave Group AB, a designer/marketer of assorted apparel lines for the corporate promotional and consumer retail markets in Europe. Under New Wave Group’s ownership, Cutter & Buck

Some of the most exciting layouts and page designs in the catalog industry are happening in B-to-B. And you’ll find them in some unlikely places. It used to be that B-to-B catalogs essentially were commodity lists of products. Today, however, the best B-to-B catalogs take all of the tricks used by their B-to-C counterparts and make them work harder. Here are two quick tips to help you freshen your design and improve sales. The order of products in your catalog acts as either a welcome mat or a do-not-disturb sign to customers. For customers, the order process begins in two places — your

“A couple of years ago,” recalled Ken Harris, CEO of Carson, Calif.-based food gifts cataloger Mrs. Beasley’s, “Mrs. Beasley’s was in the toilet.” But like a rundown West Hollywood apartment overhauled to become a posh and highly sought-after condo, the $17 million Mrs. Beasley’s has undergone a dramatic overhaul over the past couple of years and has turned an 8 percent sales decline into a 25 percent increase. In a session at last week’s ACCM conference in Boston, Harris and two consultants he worked with explained how. The 29-year-old company, which has historically served many Hollywood celebrities and studios (its first-ever customer was Barbra Streisand,

During a session at last week’s ACCM conference in Boston, Anne Vargo, e-commerce supervisor for B-to-B computer products cataloger CDW, and I both concluded that many of the best practices for B-to-B search are the same as consumer. These include comprehensive term lists, smart bidding, focused copy and landing pages, strong tracking and ongoing testing. But we described several unique challenges specific to large scale paid search. We discussed the $6.8 billion CDW’s search program of more than 100,000 active search ads and the “long tail” of search terms, noting that the 100,000 active ads are the “survivors” after testing more than 500,000. Vargo noted

In an exhaustive intensive session on May 21, during the ACCM Conference in Boston, a panel of B-to-B catalogers shared numerous tips on myriad ways to build, activate, reactivate and maximize sales from customers within your housefile. Led by Terry Jukes, president of his consulting firm Business-to-Business Direct Marketing Intelligence, the panel also included Dave Giroux, GM of the Personnel Concepts unit of Brady Corp.; Rich Harney, VP of Conney Safety; and Mike O’Connor, president of Abbott Cards. Below are selected tips from their session. The individual speaker’s attribution is included in each tip. And at the bottom of this story are each of