This article originally was published in Total Retail Report. In a Direct Marketing business, a customer list, i.e., house file, is your most valuable asset. Therefore, it is important to manage your house file and to keep it segmented and always up to date. To keep...
List rental income has been down the past few years for most list owners. Mailers have shifted away from renting outside lists to selecting prospect names from a cooperative database. There has also been a shift away from renting lists to exchanging names as a way to...
Catalogers, like you, always want to know what can be done to maximize printing, paper and mail distribution programs. This is relevant topic especially due to raising paper and postage costs. This month, I want to discuss effective ways to reduce your costs and to...
Nobody could have predicted how the first half of 2020 has transpired, and it's just as impossible to predict the remainder of the year. Everyone has been affected, whether it be personally, through business, or, most likely, both. As a retailer, surviving the...
For decades, most retailers depended on foot traffic to their brick-and-mortar stores much more than the website they felt compelled to build late in the last century. Further, “Direct To Consumer” isn’t really a new concept; thousands of prosperous companies marketed...
Approximately four years ago, the United States Postal Service (USPS) increased the maximum weight limitation for piece rate catalogs from 3.3 to 4.0 ounces. This was a significant event for catalogers. Why was this such a big deal? It meant that catalogers could...
I began my catalog career over 40 years ago. I have learned several lessons over the years about the dos and don'ts of catalog marketing. I'd like to pass along some of what I have learned and the principles we follow today as we advise our customers. Over the years,...
Postage expense accounts for approximately 50% of the total costs to print and mail a catalog. The basic carrier route rate is $.383 per catalog mailed compared to about half that amount 10 years ago. Here is a history of postage rates. Postage rates continue to...
One year from this month postage rates are expected to increase from 13% to 20% which is not good news for catalogers. This will be the first rate increase since mid 2002 (when we had three rate increases within two years!). I chose this topic as the subject of my...
