What to Consider Before Finalizing Your 2011 Catalog Circulation Plan

Don’t use an early expiration date of a promotion to pull sales forward. Testing shows that while you can pull some sales forward from customers wanting to use a promotion, you’ll also lose sales that you would have normally gotten. The net effect of an early expiration of a promotional offer will be fewer sales than if the promotion ended at the close of a catalog’s normal order curve.

So, how do you get all this experience to know the flaws in statistics that bring down mailing results? Marketers usually learn the flaws and blind spots in their data by making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. Learn from the leaders in the catalog industry who have already made these mistakes.

Jim Coogan is president of Catalog Marketing Economics, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based consulting firm focused on catalog circulation planning. Reach Jim at (505) 986-9902 or jcoogan@earthlink.net.