One-to-One Marketing

Lords of the Library

Gaylord Bros. is the one-stop catalog shop for all things library. The company distributes items ranging from furniture and shelving to A/V equipment and archival supplies. Its customer list ranges from large institutions to individual buyers preserving a family Bible.

This year the company will mail 1.2 million catalogs in 14 editions. Each edition will include some degree of customer personalization. “[Personalization] allows us to perceive and react to each customer as an individual,” says Brian Shenker, vice president of database marketing and e-commerce at Gaylord Bros. “Take the institutions with which we have contracts. We may personalize a message for them that emphasizes their user contract number and explains what their contract entitles them to. At the other extreme, we may have a customer who has a small camera shop and wants to preserve a few photos. Maybe he has bought from us only once before. … We may entice him with a highly targeted message about a special offer.”