Show Me the Numbers; Better Yet, I’ll Show You

Over the past few months, we at Catalog Success have been hard at work to further develop a hefty well of research data for our readers. In October we launched the Catalog Success Latest Trends Report, a quarterly series of original benchmarking research we’ve been conducting with the multichannel ad agency Ovation Marketing.

In the coming months, we’ll also be running a series of mail volume charts provided by several catalog co-op databases. Like the Latest Trends surveys, these will run in the IndustryEye section of our print magazine. And for the past year or so, we’ve been running a regular reader poll. It’s admittedly non-scientific, but it’s been giving us a good idea of what your businesses are like while gauging your opinions on just about every issue relevant to the catalog/multichannel business.

For the past few weeks, I’ve wanted to run a compendium of the results from all these poll questions, but couldn’t find the appropriate medium. It took up way too much space to fit in our print magazine, so I decided this newsletter would be the ideal place.

I’d love to hear from you with any reactions to any of these findings. Please submit a comment to not only share with fellow readers what you think of some of these results, but also exactly how you use benchmarking and other data, such as these polls.

Some catalogers use survey data when determining the size of upcoming mailings. Others use it in determining how to approach search marketing. Still others take such data into account when determining how to staff up for the holiday rush. Here are the results; take a good look, then let’s hear from you.

Beyond Mail Preference
Do you accept catalog opt-out requests from third-party groups, such as the recently formed Catalog Choice, or do you rely strictly on the DMA’s Mail Preference Service (MPS)?
(40%) MPS only
(40%) We’ll honor any requests that come to us
(20%) Just one or two non-DMA opt-out services