Making the Best Use of Your Catalog Printing Budget

With the cost of printing and mailing catalogs prohibitive for many retailers, those that do need to squeeze every ounce of value out of their catalog budgets. Here are some proven recommendations:

1. Your printing salesperson can be your best friend when it comes to knowing the ways to get the most out of your printing, paper and postage budget. Ask your printer to partner with you to find a laundry list of ways to stretch your printing budget. Your salesperson can get everyone inside his/her organization to spend some time coming up with a list on how to produce the best and most economical printed catalog possible.

2. This holiday season the U.S. Post Office is again offering a 2 percent postage discount if you use a QR code to drive catalog recipients to a mobile-optimized website. A 2 percent postage discount is a big savings for a cataloger considering postage is often two-thirds of the total cost of getting a catalog into customers and prospects' homes. There are some hoops to jump through to capture the 2 percent savings, but catalogers should get the discount for all the catalog drops that qualify.

3. Take advantage of the low-cost marketing tools that your printer can provide. Make sure you have a strong series of ink-jet messages. Ink-jet messages are free and people read them, so use them to give catalog recipients a reason to shop your catalog and visit your website. Blow-in and bind-in cards can generate cost-effective response, so they're worth testing as well.

4. Dry release cards are a newer technology that's proving very responsive and cost effective for highlighting promotional offers and driving brick-and-mortar sales. Dry release cards are the size of a very thin credit card. Consumers can pull them off the cover of your catalog in a way that leaves both the catalog and the dry release card intact. Consumers can then slip the card into their purse and redeem them at your stores.