Headsets.com

This helpful guide offers cross-channel retailers the opportunity to learn from experts in their space on a variety of topics critical to running a successful (i.e., profitable) business, including mobile marketing, operations and fulfillment, search engine marketing, and much more!

Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe, but 2012 is here and in full swing. Hopefully you had a busy and productive holiday season and are now ready to jump into 2012 no-holds-barred. Before you get started, however, make sure to check out this guide. We’ve assembled a top-notch group of cross-channel retail experts to offer you their best advice for the year ahead. W

In late November, we surveyed the All About ROI editorial board members and other marketing insiders to gauge their views on the year ahead. At press time on the eve of the 2009 holiday homestretch, with their hopes for a better sales outcome than 2008 looking modest at best, few saw an especially bright light shining by December. Instead, many settled in to make the appropriate adjustments for reduced demand.

Hopefully, you’ve been keeping up with our coverage of a no-holds-barred, all-telling session during MeritDirect’s recent Business Mailers Co-op in White Plains, N.Y., in which four B-to-B mailers discussed how they’re surviving the current economic malaise and their plans for emerging from it once the economy turns around. In part 1 of this recap last week, we detailed how they’re holding up. In part 2, they discussed how they’re preparing for better times ahead.

In a no-holds-barred, all-telling session during last week's MeritDirect Business Mailers Co-op in White Plains, N.Y., four B-to-B mailers discussed how they’re surviving the current economic malaise and their plans for emerging from it once the economy turns around.

In a session during the July 9-10 MeritDirect Business Mailers Co-op in White Plains, N.Y., four B-to-B catalogers and All About ROI On the Web columnist Terry Jukes candidly discussed how they’re going to retool and ready themselves for an economic recovery, all while enduring the current recession.

Few catalog/multichannel merchants include inserts in their prospecting or retention media plans, a fact that continues to baffle those who use inserts profitably. Most catalogers use bounceback catalogs as a kind of retention insert (though most don’t think of them as inserts). Few consider the strategic value of inserts to their retention rates, not to mention prospecting media mix. But there are countless other strategic benefits of including inserts in your prospecting. The assorted retention plans that can help you achieve overall business goals are worth looking into. Consider the strategic value of inserts for prospecting and retention separately. Strategic Prospecting Benefits 1. Inserts are an

Top executives from catalogers Acorn Media, Lillian Vernon, Plow & Hearth, The Nailco Group and Headsets.com, were named to the 2007 Catalog Success Editorial Advisory Board, effective this issue. Board members are consulted on a regular basis to help bring forth improvements to the content of the magazine. Incoming board members are Miguel Penella, president of video and gifts cataloger Acorn Media; Mike Muoio, president/CEO of general merchandise cataloger Lillian Vernon; Jean Giesmann, vice president creative services at home and garden products cataloger Plow & Hearth, a unit of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM; Larry Gaynor, president of B-to-B beauty salon supplies cataloger The Nailco Group; and Mike

Beyond death, taxes and postal rate hikes, most catalogers’ primary worry in life is retaining customers. Aside from continuously offering appealing products and services, there are a number of effective approaches you need to take to keep your customers happy and doing repeat business with you. Naturally, the question is, “What methods can I try that I haven’t already tried 10 times?” For a few possible answers and techniques for you to test in different departments, consider the strategies offered by several catalog experts. Customer Service Good customer service starts with the first interaction you have with customers. And if your call center

How can you get more e-mail sign-ups from your site visitors? E-mail sign-up is simple: a few clicks followed by a handful of keystrokes. But the same process of close comparative scrutiny also can improve complex processes, such as cart and check-out. This article focuses on the e-mail sign-up process at 45 multichannel retailers. For this study, I pulled 45 sites at random, taken from some of the larger merchants in the country. I signed up for e-mail at each using a fresh Gmail account. (For the full methodology and detailed scores and notes for each site, visit www.rimmkaufman.com/e-mail-sign-up-study.) I conducted these tests in