6 Questions to Ask When Cutting Catalog Circ, Part 2

But “pure” Web buyers may not be able to replace traditional prospecting circ. Consider the following before cutting circ:

• Web buyers coming from pure Web traffic, affiliate programs, paid or natural search, or price comparison engines will prove less responsive to frequent buyer remails. And a large portion of your Web buyers won’t be responsive at all. Web buyers will respond much less to catalogs than traditional catalog buyers with the same RFM.
• Web buyers may be as expensive to acquire as buyers acquired via catalog mailings. The acquisition cost of Web buyers needs to be compared to traditional prospecting costs. It’s hard to know the cost of acquiring a buyer via the Web.
• The list universe of profitable prospecting circ is well-tested for most catalogs. How much prospecting circ a catalog has that's responded above breakeven is a metric most catalogers know in detail. The Web prospecting universe is typically a more difficult one to measure. It's more difficult to know the sales and costs for prospecting using the Web. Catalogers must obtain all the buyers they can prospect for profitably on the Web.
• Flag your Web buyers at birth so you can tell the difference between Web buyers who originated from online traffic and Web buyers who received mail order catalogs and then ordered online.

So before switching your circ plans to focus on increasing the number of Web buyers, know the following:

• The cost to acquire Web buyers.
• The potential to build up your housefile with Web buyers. Will your business scale based on new buyers coming via the Web?
• Whether you can mail Web buyers frequent follow-up mailings and have them respond like traditional catalog buyers with the same RFM. (Hint: We know that Web buyers won’t respond as well.)

5. Where are you getting your e-mail addresses? It used to be a maxim in the catalog industry that your mailing list of buyers was your most important business asset. Now e-mail addresses rank right up there with your buyer file as your most important business asset. You need to know where your e-mail addresses originate from.