Catalog Doctor: The Lost Art of Effective Cataloging
1. You Must Work Really, Really Hard so Your Customer Doesn't Have to
This hard work is mostly hard thinking: study, analysis, logic, devil's advocating. Apply it to every facet of your multichannel marketing scheme to eliminate all barriers between your customer and getting a sale. Barriers stand in the way of sales, lowering response rates. Therefore, removing barriers opens the way to sales, lifting response. Barriers include catalog copy that forces consumers to go online to get their product questions answered; difficult or confusing return policies; a website that forces consumers to sign up before they can place an order; an email program that's hard to opt out of; unclear or hard-to-scan design and copy (see below); and too few or too many catalog contacts.
Susan J. McIntyre is Founder and Chief Strategist of McIntyre Direct, a catalog agency and consultancy in Portland, Oregon offering complete creative, strategic, circulation and production services since 1991. Susan's broad experience with cataloging in multi-channel environments, plus her common-sense, bottom-line approach, have won clients from Vermont Country Store to Nautilus to C.C. Filson. A three-time ECHO award winner, McIntyre has addressed marketers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, has written and been quoted in publications worldwide, and is a regular columnist for Retail Online Integration magazine and ACMA. She can be reached at 503-286-1400 or susan@mcintyredirect.com.