Proper Positioning
4. Access true hotline buyers. Bagdan points out that package inserts allow you to reach hotline buyers even before their names are on the market. If your success rate with prospecting demands hotline names, inserts should be a component of your prospecting strategy.
Strategic Retention Benefits
1. Test products and concepts “on the cheap.” “Inserts in your own packages are close to free,” Faith points out. You can test anything in your own packages, easily, inexpensively and quietly.
Headsets.com even will test with a simple, photocopied insert to gauge basic customer interest before spending more money in promoting a particular item or offer, Faith says.
2. Introduce new products to your existing customers. Barb McCann, marketing specialist at DrawingBoard Printing, says that inserts are an important element in the stationery cataloger’s strategic marketing plan. “We include inserts for selected products into our monthly direct mail promotions to generate add-on sales for products not featured in our catalogs, such as our personalized calendar business,” she says.
With its new Web-to-print sister company, 123print.com, DrawingBoard uses package inserts to drive DrawingBoard and Grayarc customers to the 123print Web site with introductory offers specifically targeted to those customers, McCann says.
3. Cross-market products to different customer segments. Inserts allow you to put your best foot forward in getting your existing customer to try another merchandising category or to buy from a second catalog you publish.
A cataloger with both apparel and accessories catalogs can cross-market accessories to apparel buyers by promoting the most popular “first purchase” accessory item in their packages. An insert will allow you to have a special offer and focus more on those most popular prospecting items that likely will be the first purchase existing customers make when expanding their buying with you to an additional category.
