B-to-B

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

Catalogers’ Updates Metrostyle: This unit of New York-based Redcats USA, is emblazoning the cycle two winner of “America’s Next Top Model” TV show, Yoanna House, on the cover of its spring catalog in an attempt to showcase the catalog as a women’s apparel fashion authority. Selecting the contest winner comes after Redcats changed the name of this value-priced book from Lerner. Harry & David Holdings: In April, this multichannel marketer agreed to sell its Jackson & Perkins catalog/ wholesale plants and gardening tools business to an investment group led by Donald and Glenda Hachenberger for $49 million. In a separate deal, Harry & David also agreed to

Professional Uniforms was started in the early ’70s as a retail uniform shop that supplied scrubs and medical apparel to the local medical community. After changes in location and attempts to expand the number of stores, the company hit a wall in the local and regional markets. As a result, the owners, the Fotis family, decided to reach out to large-scale markets through the use of limited mailings in the forms of flyers. Through trial and error, a catalog and brand were coaxed and forged into two successful catalog/Web businesses — Lydia’s Uniforms and MadAboutMouths — targeting the medical apparel market, and one book

B-to-B catalogers’ prospecting list strategy has never been more important. Why? “You have a universe of shrinking names,” says Kim Lowenthal, executive vice president at American List Counsel. “To put it simply, the volume of business names is less than before.” Plain and simple, fewer names for prospecting can slow sales growth. And many mailers trace sluggish sales to list universes that shrank years before they felt the decline on their top lines. To meet your file growth goals, you’ll probably need to use several prospect list selection techniques and strategies. And by selecting the best lists from a variety of sources, you

Finding and retaining good employees tops the list of major concerns for catalogers. Often catalog companies are located in less populated areas, where finding qualified staff is a challenge. If you’re located in a larger city, you face the challenge of losing your trained staff to other companies. Salary, benefits and work environment are important for employees. But an overlooked aspect of employee retention is brand. Brand not only helps attract and retain customers, but it’s also essential for attracting and retaining good employees. A good gauge of whether customers will want to shop at your company is whether employees want to work there.

A crucial point of your brand inventory is to take a look at the most important element of your business: your customers. Who are your customers and why do they buy from you? Why do your customers identify with your company? Are your customers high end, wanting the best? Are they unpretentious with solid reputations? Your customers are identifying with your company. Discover more about them, and you’ll discover more about where your business should focus its efforts. Next ask, who are your employees? Are they highly trained wanting to continue their professional development? Are they innovators looking for new ideas to improve the company?

There’s a very thin line that ties together the two catalogs produced out of 132 Robin Hill Road in Santa Barbara, Calif. Founded in 1994 as Surf to Summit, a B-to-B catalog of kayakin g equipment, the company in 2001 spun off After 5, a consumer catalog of quirky — often wacky — products for wine and martini parties. After 5 came to life after the company found that its customers were responding briskly to the cocktail party-related novelties that it first offered almost as an afterthought in Surf to Summit. But that’s where any similarities between the two catalogs end. Although the

In the two and a half years since its faltering performance led to the resignation of CEO Bruce Nelson, big box multichannel retailer Office Depot has struggled to regain its footing. But in an interview with Catalog Success Editor in Chief Paul Miller during last week’s National Retail Federation convention in New York, current president, North American Retail, Chuck Rubin said he believes the company is carving out a solid niche for itself alongside not only its two top rivals, Staples and OfficeMax, but also other multichannel retail powerhouses like Target, Wal-Mart and even Costco. Catalog Success: How do your different marketing channels work in

Multichannel marketing, the catch-all phrase that typically groups consumer marketers’ catalog, Web and retail channels, often represents a different scenario for B-to-B catalogers, with diverse marketing channels, business practices and goals. Coordinating the assorted multichannel B-to-B mix of outbound telemarketing, field sales, tradeshows and others with catalog and Web channels is a challenge that often requires extensive cooperation between sales and marketing departments, regardless of the channels involved. “In an ideal B-to-B multichannel marketing environment,” says George Hague, senior marketing strategist at Mission, Kan.-based catalog consultancy J. Schmid and Associates, “sales and marketing vice presidents should discuss how they’re going to contact

As B-to-B sales often aren’t as discount price driven as consumer sales, e-mails to a business audience can’t necessarily tout the latest promotional offer. Myriad other sales channels complicate the situation, making the decision of what and how often to e-mail even more perplexing. Following are successful e-mail communication strategies from three B-to-B catalogers and how they decide what kind of e-mails to send. VWR International The two-year-old e-mail marketing program at this scientific equipment catalog generally is coordinated around specific events, such as catalog mailings or buying cycles, says Lynn Homann, VWR’s director of marketing communications. “If we’re selling into the food and beverage market