We've rounded the corner and thank goodness we feel the country is on the backside of the COVID pandemic. What a ride it has been! It's far from over, but under control. For many consumer companies, COVID caused a surge in business with more people working and shopping from home. It has put pressure on…
Stephen Lett
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are important to any print catalog or digital marketing business. Knowing how often and which KPI to track can make a huge difference to your profit and loss (P&L) statement. You need to separate the “nice to know” from the “need to know” information. Tracking nonessential KPIs might make you feel…
2020 is a year we will always remember, yet one we would like to forget. It was a year that changed our lives forever. Some have been affected more than others, but we all have a story to tell. People talk about “the new normal,” but what exactly does that mean to retailers and direct…
Amazon.com is big. Powerful, too. The vision of Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is remarkable. It's astounding to consider Amazon’s ascension began just 26 years ago in 1994. While I don’t always agree with Amazon’s practices, I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Bezos as an entrepreneur, a visionary, and for the brand…
The coronavirus has been a life-changing event. We've never experienced anything like this before. Baby Boomers were young when polio was nearly eradicated with the Salk vaccine in 1955. At that time, very little was known about polio, which paralyzed and often killed young children. Science has greatly advanced since then. Even so, until we…
Our purpose for this blog is to share our direct marketing experience, particularly around direct mail, catalogs, paid search, and website optimization. Since Stephen Lett founded Lett Direct in 1995, retailers and e-tailers across the country have valued its transparency and educational approach to improve their profitability by planning, executing and analyzing their marketing programs.…
For years now, critics have been saying the print catalog is dying. Going away. A relic that's being replaced by the internet. It was almost like the word "catalog" was dirty. Something out of date or old fashioned, or so it seemed.
It's a new year and the Lett Direct team has put together "50 Best Tips for 2015" that will help you increase your profits. While not in any particular order, these suggestions are being made to help you improve your print catalog and digital marketing programs. Some of our suggestions might be obvious while other tips might stimulate your thinking. Regardless, we hope our tips and suggestions for 2015 will benefit your business.
I began my catalog career over 40 years ago. I've learned several lessons over the years about the dos and don'ts of catalog marketing. I'd like to pass along some of what I've learned and the principles we follow today as we advise our customers. I've seen companies with the best of intentions make decisions opposite of what they should have done. Often these decisions have been an attempt to save money (or at least they thought). In many cases, adding rather than reducing is the better choice.
There's a favorable relationship between the incremental costs of adding pages vs. the actual return. Pages generate a high return on investment. For example, increasing page count from 52 pages to 60 pages yields a 15.4 percent increase in the number of square inches of selling space. Yet, typically the cost is only 7.4 percent more for the eight extra pages (again, this is approximate depending on the quantity printed).
Catalog executives always seem to have a great deal of interest in their average order size. They become concerned when they see it decrease. What's more, catalogers often spend time trying to artificially increase the average order size without really understanding the implications of doing so. That's why I want to provide a good understanding of what's behind the average order size and other measurements that might be more important to your analysis.
Print catalog circulation is starting to increase for a number of reasons. First, mailing a catalog drives business to the internet. We know that up to 80 percent of all orders placed online were the result of mailing a catalog. Second, the lifetime value (LTV) of a catalog buyer is higher than other channels. For example, if a consumer goes to a search engine for a particular item, they might buy it at the right price, but it doesn't mean they'll buy again. However, if the order originates via a catalog, the consumer is more inclined to make repeat purchases.
Approximately 60 percent of consumer catalog sales and 55 percent of total orders generated annually are received during the holiday season (October through December), according to data we compiled at Lett Direct, Inc. This three-month period represents all or most of the profit for catalogers during the year. Therefore, it's critical to make certain your business is hitting on all cylinders during the busy holiday season.
Catalog response rates have been flat or trending down the past few years … or so it seems. The web is certainly a factor, but there are several other reasons why this is the case. When response rates start trending down, what action should you take? How should you alter your print circulation to compensate for lower response rates? Often, the actions management take are the opposite of what should be done.
While the best marketing strategy for 2014 is to leverage all channels, here are a few print catalog recommendations for the new year:
