J. Schmid & Assoc.

When we consult with catalogers about merchandise, we’re asked questions about products that didn’t sell as well as expected. Some clients often wonder if they should try selling the product again, and if so, how many times and in how many different ways before finally giving up on it. These are legitimate questions, and some time should be spent on determining the answers. However, catalogers often waste too much time trying to revive losing items when they should instead spend time on those things that offer a bigger bang for their efforts. Questions & Answers The question “Should you try selling the

At the conclusion of my most recent hotel stay, I nearly went into sticker shock when I got my bill. Not only was the nightly rate exorbitant for a plain old room in the major hotel chain (my colleagues and I chose it solely for its proximity to the town’s convention center), there were numerous add-on charges that made the total fee downright outrageous. “For that much,” I thought to myself, “I should have been slathered in luxury, not given teeny bars of soap and small, scratchy bath towels.” On top of the base room rate were sales taxes, city taxes, occupancy taxes, business

Growth is one of the greatest long-term challenges for any catalog company. Whether yours is a small catalog or a behemoth, adding significant growth year after year is, to say the least, a difficult task. Why? In general, catalogers aren’t adding significant numbers of new catalog buyers to the universe of names available for prospecting. This universe currently is comprised of more than 50 percent of U.S. households, but many of these customers have purchased only from the largest books, such as J.C. Penney, L.L. Bean and Lands’ End. This means we’re all mailing to a fairly fixed audience that’s constantly being pummeled—especially

Few catalogers link their merchandise results to a thorough analysis and review of their sales results by segment. But doing so has many benefits. What Are New Customers Buying? Since growth through new-customer acquisition is the key goal of many catalog companies, concentrating on what contributes to those acquisitions is critical. One key area to focus on is the merchandise offering. After you perform a square-inch analysis and begin selecting items for the next issue, take another look at your item performance. Run a report using both your order-level data and customer database to determine which items new customers purchased most often. Compare

There are breakthroughs lurking in all of our businesses. They are in the mind of someone in your organization and are just dying to get out there to be tested. One of the things I love about being in the direct marketing industry is the relative ease and low cost of testing. As responsible catalogers, we should test something in every mailing. “Test, test, test” is my mantra for catalogers. By testing you might find ways to cut expenses, achieve incremental revenue or dramatically alter the course and performance of your business. But to find ‘em, you gotta test ‘em. In this

Here’s a breakthrough idea for enhancing your Web site to make it perform more effectively: Apply the catalog rules you already know! After all, catalogs are a visual medium and so is the Web. When you’re selling products, the product picture and other graphic elements are kings. Though good catalogers already know the key rules of catalog design and merchandising, for some reason these rules are not being applied consistently to even the best Web sites. Let’s focus on a few of the key catalog rules you should be applying to your e-commerce site. Maximize Your Hot Spots. We know that a print

If you’ve paid attention to popular culture during the last 40 years, you’ve come to learn there are certain things in life that money, apparently, can’t buy: love, happiness and all of those priceless things mentioned in the MasterCard commercials. But in the world of direct marketing, we have another to add to the list—customer loyalty. The Customer Hierarchy If you segment the customers in a cataloger’s database to fit into a typical customer hierarchy, you’ll see various levels of buying activity and inactivity that move a person from being a prospect to a “trier” to a buyer and so on until loyalty is

By Phil Mininx Growing a new or small catalog takes time, energy, commitment, passion, risk and even a little luck. As it begins to grow, or hit some natural plateaus, there is often something fresh or innovative a cataloger can do to move the needle. Yet, many of these actions are not practiced by start-up or small catalogers because of the additional time or resources required, or simply because everyone has been too busy getting the business off the ground. However, if yours is a small- to medium-sized catalog, I encourage you to read the seven ideas below to make sure you're

Sergio Zyman and Scott Miller echo something I’ve been saying for a while: “It’s no different in the world of clicks than in the world of bricks-and-mortar. It’s business. It’s about selling stuff and making money. Brands today and tomorrow will be built the way they were yesterday: They will be built on the basics.” Amen. So why should catalogers read “Building Brandwidth: Closing the Sale Online?” At first glance it appears Zyman, consultant and former chief marketing officer at Coca Cola, and fellow co-author and business partner Miller wrote this book primarily for the dot-coms. But “Building Brandwidth: Closing the Sale Online”

We all read so much these days about customer relationship management (CRM). Seems it’s now in vogue to spend a lot of money on new computer software and hardware that will enable companies to have an ongoing relationship with their customers. Indeed, companies are trying to aggregate all their customer and consumer information from disparate systems and sources into one database that will give them a better picture of customers’ and prospects’ behavior, thereby helping them manage their contacts in a more effective manner. It sounds great ... but as a consumer, I haven’t noticed anything yet. I haven’t noticed my favorite catalogs treating