Direct Marketing Association

The Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) on June 4 formally approved the USPS's proposal for a "summer sale" on Standard Mail postage, which largely affects catalog mailings.

Last year, 12 states had do-not-mail legislation under consideration. But none of the bills were enacted. This year, however, bills already have been refiled in some states, and new bills have been introduced in Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey. With varying enforcement mechanisms, the laws would prohibit mailing unsolicited direct marketing materials to persons who enter their names and addresses to state-maintained registries.

Catalogers can’t afford a postal rate increase of any size in 2009, yet come May the USPS is raising rates at an average of 3.8 percent. This news comes on the heels of Postmaster General Jack Potter's warning that the USPS is staring at a possible $6 billion loss in fiscal year 2009. The USPS’ costs are unmanageable, and it simply doesn’t have enough Flats Sequencing Systems (FSS) equipment available today to generate savings based on automation. Catalogers don't have the luxury to wait for the USPS to pass along the savings generated from the FSS automation.

Earlier today the Florida House of Representatives was supposed to vote on its version of a do-not-mail bill (HB 781). Luckily for Florida and the rest of the country, and our economy, the vote never happened.

As a presenter at the Direct Marketing Association's Catalog on the Road Conference held in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month, I provided the audience with eight creative tips to help grow sales during this most difficult selling environment. Here's a look at my “eight quick fixes”:   

I got lots of feedback to my column last week on the USPS and its brainstorm about going to a five-day workweek. Most of the comments showed up in my inbox or on my blog (which gets heavily promoted throughout the blogosphere). And most of them were pro-mailer, agreeing that the USPS needs to wake up. 

Our entire interview with industry veteran Brendan Edgerton, including what he believes the catalog industry must do to remain relevant in these uncertain times

Don Buck, a B-to-B catalog executive at C&H Distributors, died on Dec. 12 from an apparent heart attack after finishing a game of racquetball. He was 56.

With the holiday shopping season upon us, many multichannel retailers are scrambling to find a new marketing approach to salvage something positive out of this troublesome year. Enter customer-centric retailing, the enterprise-wide use of customer data to establish a comprehensive understanding of customer behavior as a foundation for maximizing the relevance of cross-functional retail strategies. In a webinar from the Direct Marketing Association last week, Customer Centric Retailing — Making the Shift to a New Paradigm, presenters Miguel Pereira, director of consulting and analytical services at the customer retail strategies firm Precima, and Nicolle Scavuzzo, director of client services at Precima, outlined how customer-centric

GOLD INK AWARDS The 21st annual Gold Ink Awards continued to call attention to the print industry’s finest projects. This year, North American Publishing Co. (parent company of the Gold Ink Awards and Catalog Success and Book Business magazines, the latter of which presented the awards) received nearly 1,500 entries. A team of judges with backgrounds from across the print industry pored over the submissions, awarding Gold, Silver, Bronze and Pewter honors in a total of 46 different categories. In all, 488 entries were selected for awards. Here’s a look at the gold and silver winners in the business and consumer catalog divisions.