The idea of creating a smaller prospecting catalog (same trim size but with fewer pages) full of best selling pick-up items is appealing and sounds like a logical thing to do. It saves money, or so it seems, and in theory has little if any impact on performance. However, in practice, this is generally not the case. This month, we will discuss why it is more cost efficient to prospect with more (not less) pages and the advantages of doing so from a financial perspective. In other words, we will look at why you should prospect with the same catalog you mail to your house file.

Pages increase response. Therefore, having more pages in your catalog will increase the number of orders and revenue you receive. This, of course, assumes page density remains the same. We are suggesting that adding more new items to your catalog and keeping the page density the same, i.e., a larger store, will increase revenue.

It would seem a catalog that included only the “best” sellers would perform so well that it would offset the fall off of a catalog with fewer page count? At first, this might be the case. However, prospects will tire of seeing these same best sellers time and time again. When prospecting, you are mailing many of the same outside names over and over again. In fact, if you are actively mailing prospects, there will be a percent of those people who see your catalog as often as your own customers. Therefore, the importance of introducing new items to stimulate sales holds true when mailing to prospects for the same reason you want to change the catalog when mailing to your house file.

Whether you are considering a smaller version of your catalog, including new and pick-up items, or a “best of” book, you can use the rule of thumb (in reverse) that you will recognize from our previous articles.  When adding pages to your catalog, the revenue will increase by half or 50% the percent increase in pages. In other words, if you increase your page count by 10%, you will see an increase in sales of approximately 5%.  Just as if you add pages you will improve performance, if you reduce pages your performance will decline.

Let’s take a look at the numbers. In our pro-forma income statement example, Exhibit A, you will see the expected prospect performance at various page counts, 48 up to 80 pages.  If your main catalog were 80 pages and you were considering mailing a prospect book of 48 pages, you could save $135,000 on a circulation of 1,000,000 catalogs. Pretty nice. However, you would stand to lose over $333,000 in sales and over $37,333 in profit contribution as our example shows. When considering prospecting with a smaller catalog, it is important to do the analysis and not just look at how much money you will save on paper, printing and postage. You need to consider the whole picture.