Omnichannel

Liana Toscanini, vice president of insurgence (yes, insurgence) for Sure Fit Slipcovers by Mail, challenged authority seven years ago when she started a catalog and Web site for the 87-year-old slipcover manufacturer. Retail and wholesale distribution has been Allentown, PA-based Sure Fit’s focus. It has sold its product, ready-made slipcovers, to retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond, and Target, as well as to cataloger LinenSource. With an 85-percent share of the ready-made slipcover market, Toscanini told company president Bert Shlensky she believed direct marketing to consumers was an avenue for growth. Shlensky, a promoter of innovation and creativity among his employees, told

Channel integration is a hot topic these days—and for good reason. Effective marketers successfully are leveraging their retail, catalog and Internet efforts against one another. They’re learning that their best customers are those who interact with them in multiple channels. Examples of multichannel integration include e-mailing to customers coupons that can be redeemed in your retail store, notifying customers via e-mail of an upcoming sale catalog going out to them, and enticing print catalog shoppers to visit and order from your Web site. This list is limited only by your imagination. (I do, however, hope to see an end to Web-only,

In this time of uncertainty, controlling your direct selling expenses is critical to your bottom line. Fortunately, paper prices have remained low, which helps offset the recent postage increase. But the business climate is difficult, and the squeeze on the bottom line is real. This month, I’ll offer various ways to reduce your direct selling expenses. Specifically, the following line-item expenses should be considered direct selling expenses: - catalog creative and production; - paper; - print manufacturing; - outside rented lists; - merge/purge; - bind-in order form insert; and - ink-jet and mailing. These direct selling expenses always should be grouped together

A continuous threat to the health of any company is the loss of customers. That makes prospecting efforts all the more important, because newly acquired customers are worth more in the future. Profits rise because repeat sales rise, and most profits come from repeat sales. Your catalog’s attrition can be mapped using many variables. Recency, or how long ago customers made purchases, is the most common. Total spending, average amount spent, method and type of purchase are common variables used to estimate attrition by customer segments. Demographics and psychographics also may be helpful predictors. A common strategy for marketers is to re-contact all

When direct marketing companies first invested in the World Wide Web, creative strategies and marketing budgets for online and off-line operations were segregated. Some executives believed the new medium required different marketing strategies and personnel, while others wanted to keep staffers and budgets detached, facilitating a lucrative Web spin-off. Today both of these rationales have been debunked. The rules of direct marketing hold fast regardless of channel. But the fallout from these early missteps continues: Catalogers sometimes measure the success of their campaigns in silos, neglecting the influence of campaigns across sales channels. “When people try to track traffic to the

Richard Eaton, vice president, fulfillment services of Highlights for Children, and Tom Kirkham, senior consultant for ESYNC International, spoke to Catalog Success a few weeks before Highlights planned to go live with a new warehouse management system (WMS). Like many catalogers, Highlights for Children’s product-fulfillment operation contends with several distribution channels and myriad product types. Highlights’ in-house distribution center handles fulfillment for three divisions: - Highlights Catalog, a traditional children’s products catalog; - Highlights Jigsaw, an educational toy and book supplier offering products through home parties similar to the Tupperware model; and - a third division that sells business-to-business (b-to-b)

It is imperative to determine the lifetime value of customers by source. Robert Hackett, RRD Direct’s vice president of sales, provides the following formula: Lifetime value is a function of frequency of purchase, multiplied by the gross margin, multiplied by the duration of brand loyalty. What can you afford to pay for a new customer? To make that determination, Gary Hennerberg of the Hennerberg Group suggests you take the following steps: • Research customer lifetime value. • Calculate every imaginable fixed and variable cost associated with selling your products, including cost of goods sold, inbound 800 number costs, business reply mail, postage,

Because 2002 may be a difficult year for many catalogers, I will focus my columns on proven business practices that currently are working for other catalogers. In this way, we can, as an industry, learn from and assist one another through these challenging times. Determining how many times to contact your customers and prospects is one of the most common and important questions marketers ask. But it’s not the only critical question. Discerning when and how best to contact them can help you devise an effective customer-contact strategy. If you’ve never performed a contact strategy test or haven’t updated yours in several years,

One night in 1950, a truckload of grapefruit was late in arriving at Ed Cushman’s tiny fruit packing business in West Palm Beach, FL. Cushman was there supervising as the grower’s truck was being unloaded. As the last 20 bushels came off the truck, Cushman asked the workers, “What the devil is this? These aren’t grapefruit!” Said the driver, “I don’t know. I just deliver what they give me.” Turns out this particular grower had a few trees of Mineola tangelos, and they almost looked like orange bells. “My dad came up with the name ‘HoneyBell’,” says Allen Cushman, now president of

Melissa Payner is a risk-taker. The 43-year-old retail industry veteran has been president and CEO of Spiegel Catalog for only 10 months and already has turned the place on its head with new merchandising, catalog creative, advertising and promotions. It doesn’t matter that the economy remains in a slump and catalog industry sales are down: Payner is excited to be breathing new life into Spiegel Catalog by refocusing on its customers and strengthening its brand image. There’s no arguing that Spiegel needed a change when Payner took the reins. Looking back five or six years, one might describe the catalog’s branding as