With software like Hubspot, you can track opens on emails, gain metrics on clicks, and measure the response rates of campaigns — which tells you the level of success and profitability you can expect from a conversion. But what did direct marketers do before the era of digital metrics and tracking? Catalogers relied on key codes to track response by customer segment. Most orders arrived either by mail...
Take a scroll on your Facebook or Instagram feed and you’ll be surprised at the number of Shopify stores that tout themselves as e-commerce retailers. Selling everything from drop-shipped T-shirts sourced on AliBaba, to hats, pop-cultural tchotchkes and even sweaters with a pouch to hold your cat, the age of digital has given way to the age of e-commerce. So maybe you’re already well-versed in the world...
Marketing without a well-thought-out strategy, be it catalog marketing or otherwise, is just like building a house without a blueprint. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you will never get there, but there will be a lot of wasted time and resources before you do. Equally as important, is for you to remember that no strategy is fool proof, regardless of how much thought and analysis was put...
We need to talk about the “D” word. Digital? Data-Driven? How about, “all of the above”, plus one you may not have expected: Direct mail. If you’ve been drinking the “Kool-Aid” served up by industry bigwigs, you might think that direct mail is not only a relic of yesteryear, it’s actually a casualty of digital. But that’s where you’d be wrong. Direct mail is far...
In this ever more digital age, catalogs would seem like an outdated marketing strategy used by people in decades past. Yet, this could not be further from the truth. Direct marketing is, in fact, a key part of the consumer buying process. If used correctly, catalogs can be a highly effective tool for generating income and reaching out to new customers. Direct marketing print catalogs...
Clean data is critical for data analysis and data mining activities. Organizations of all sizes often struggle with the ability to get and maintain clean data. To better understand how you can make sure your data becomes and stays clean, we will first discuss what ‘clean’ data really means. What is ‘Clean’ Data? If you have clean data, it means that the data currently stored...
A popular discussion these days is how to compete with Amazon. Mega retailers with physical stores and/or well-designed ecommerce platforms often hold the best cards when working with their suppliers. Strong merchants in their own right, including leading apparel brands, often need mass merchants like Walmart and Amazon, to boost the volume sales and distribution of their products. In August, Amazon announced that its Marketplace...
Acquiring new customers at an acceptable cost is becoming a huge challenge for many catalog companies and eCommerce retailers. A common complaint among catalogers that are accustomed to leveraging co-op databases for low-cost prospecting is that their models are performing less effectively and response rates have decreased, driving up their customer acquisition costs. And even in digital marketing, brands have found that increased competition in...
Direct mail is expensive. Up to 97% of the catalogs sent do not convert. How do you determine which customers warrant the investment of mailing your catalog? Holdout tests. What is a holdout test? A holdout test measures the profitability of a catalog mailing relative to a customer segment. For a mailing, a small group of customers from your mail file is marked to withhold...
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