How do you know when it is time to alter your Marketing Strategy? What’s more, how do you go about doing so? Altering your strategy is one of the most difficult and risky things you can do. Some would argue that a change in strategy should be gradual and be...
Catalog executives always seem to have a great deal of interest in their average order size. They become concerned when they see it decrease. What’s more, catalogers often spend time trying to artificially increase the average order size without really understanding...
Since 1996, F. Curtis Barry & Company has been benchmarking with hundreds of multichannel companies. FCBCO offers a wide range of services to multichannel retailers to reduce costs, increase productivity improve customer. Our services in operations are layout and...
To Mail, or Not to Mail? Is it better to mail less frequently, but deeper? Or, are more touches to your core buyer file the best approach for your print contact strategy? Before there was digital influence in the path to purchase, these were very easy questions to...
It is expensive to prospect for new buyers. Therefore, it is important to prospect as cost efficiently as possible. Prospecting is critical to the long-term success of any catalog business. How much prospecting you do depends on how fast you want to grow your customer...
Cooperative databases provide a valuable source of quality names for many product offers. For most small and medium-sized catalog companies, 50% or more of prospecting circulation goes to names selected from co-operative databases. Prospect names selected from co-ops...
From time-to-time, we conduct studies to determine how quickly companies fulfill catalog requests (i.e., inquiries). While some firms do a great job turning around catalog requests, many do not. Yet, unsolicited (and solicited) catalog requests can be extremely...
Like most catalogers, we strive to maximize the amount of contribution to profit and overhead generated from the mailings we make. Attempting to maximize profit contribution can (and often does) conflict with trying to grow your business. In other words, do you want...
Circulation planning is critical to the success of every catalog. In fact, over 60% of the success of any mailing is dependent on the lists used and on the circulation plan in general. Not always is enough time spent on the critical steps to effective and proper...
