Groundbreaking Survey Part of Big Package

In sitting down to write this month’s Editor’s Take, I first took a good look at all I’d just edited for the issue and man, not to take anything away from our other issues, but this one’s packed. Great tips to be had here throughout, great writers, veteran industry experts; it’s all here for you. Read this issue cover-to-cover, implement the million-dollar ideas that apply to you, and bingo, you’ll be ready to retire before you know it (kidding... well, sort of).

What I’m most pumped about, however, is the groundbreaking survey we conducted in late August in partnership with the La Crosse, Wis.-based multichannel marketing ad agency, Ovation Marketing (see IndustryEye). This is the first of four quarterly surveys we’ll be conducting jointly going forward. For the complete methodology, please turn to the survey.

I chose to use this space to give you two of the more revealing sets of results we got from this survey. We don’t have space for either of these in the main article because they’re both short-answer questions. So here are the questions and answers.

We asked, “How many more base (primarily all-new) catalogs do you have in the current year compared to last year?”

* 56 percent said 1 more;

* 26 percent said 2 more;

* 4 percent said 3 more;

* 0 said 4 more;

* 2 percent said 5 more; but

* 12 percent said more than 5.

(Mean: 2.02 more)

Why More?

Here’s the juicy part. Then we asked if you could explain why you increased the number of base catalogs this year. Here are some of the responses given (verbatim):

* more products, more market segment insight;

* increased volume;

* more prospecting;

* added a sale catalog;

* implemented a new contact strategy;

* identified new product segment;