E-Commerce

The 1st Catalog Success Latest Trends Report on Multichannel Mailing & Marketing Practices (October 2007)

The 1st Catalog Success Latest Trends Report on Multichannel Mailing & Marketing Practices (October 2007)

The 1st Catalog Success Latest Trends Report on Multichannel Mailing & Marketing Practices (October 2007)

Good news for American multichannel marketers: The growth rate of the Internet continues to make China’s economic expansion seem paltry. After all, China is only growing at a measly 11 percent! But there’s bad news, too: 10 years of uninterrupted, 20-plus percent growth has encouraged software companies to produce a seemingly never-ending flood, or plague, of new site features. Who has the time, energy, money or development staff to try all these new site features? So how do you know which one(s) to work on? And how do you make sure you get the most out of the ones you do invest in?

Some family-owned businesses have trouble adapting to change. At times, that’s been the case with cataloger-retailer Edwin Watts Golf. But as it nears its 40th anniversary, Edwin Watts has rolled with the frequent punches in the discount- and brand-driven golf equipment industry. Founder Edwin Watts opened his first retail store in 1968 and launched a catalog eight years later. The company debuted its Web site (www.edwinwattsgolf.com) in 1998, one of the first online golf equipment shopping sites in the industry. Through the years, the company has managed and prospered from change. Yet, no change may prove to be as worthwhile as an investment it’s

As a cataloger/multichannel marketer, you’ve long understood the importance of double-checking all aspects of your marketing programs to make sure everything is in order. No doubt, you visit your printer when you’re on press to monitor print quality. You do bindery checks to inspect book assembly. You likely use mail decoys to confirm delivery. You also probably “mystery shop” your own company to monitor your call center and shipping teams. You surely double-check your printing and postal invoices for accuracy. The same attention to detail applies to online marketing. As paid search marketing grows in importance and consumes a larger share of catalogers’

Welcome to our groundbreaking benchmark survey on catalog/multichannel mailing and marketing practices! This is a joint venture with multichannel ad agency Ovation Marketing, and the first in what will be an ongoing, quarterly series of surveys covering different aspects of the catalog/multichannel business. The survey contains a statistical analysis of a questionnaire we sent to the entire Catalog Success e-mail list in late August. The first two questions screened out any noncatalog decision makers. That left us with completed surveys from 175 catalogers — 97 consumer, 78 B-to-B. Click on any or all of the sets of responses under “Related Content,” to the right.

You’d think that writing an article addressing methodologies to determine which products to feature on a Web site vs. a print catalog would be a no-brainer, right? Web pages are unlimited; printed pages are expensive real estate. It’s easy: Just put your best-sellers in the catalog and dump everything else you have in stock on your site. How difficult can that be? Most Web sites feature the full assortment of products offered by a company, but exposure on a catalog page is a more deliberate decision. For Russ Gaitskill, president/CEO of the Garnet Hill home furnishings and apparel catalog, decisions for catalog products are based

In the September (print) issue of Catalog Success, I discussed the opportunity catalogers and multichannel merchants have to aggressively pursue the older end of baby boomers, some of whom are now in their 60s. In Portland, Maine, on Sept. 20 for the fall NEMOA Conference, I was taken by the opening presentation given by Claire Spofford, senior vice president and chief brand officer for the Orchard Brands unit of Golden Gate Capital, (formerly Appleseed’sTopCo). Having joined Appleseed’s earlier this decade to bring a retail and brand accent to the mature women’s apparel cataloger, Spofford now presides over a thriving multititle multichannel business that’s as

Consumers are increasingly drawn to rich Web content — information that’s engaging, visual and intuitive. And online retailers and brand marketers are responding by building dramatic, fun and innovative marketing micro-sites, as well as interactive product displays to meet this desire. According to Forrester Research, the largest interactive marketing firms are growing at annual rates between 20 and 40 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that even the leaders often fail to make commerce a seamless part of these interactive marketing experiences. Instead, customers usually are faced with a disjointed experience where they browse and interact with the brand in