MeritDirect

Welcome to Retail Online Integration's annual Resource Guide. This special section offers all the crucial details, company information, contact numbers and addresses of product and service providers to the cross-channel retail industry.

Hopefully, you’ve been keeping up with our coverage of a no-holds-barred, all-telling session during MeritDirect’s recent Business Mailers Co-op in White Plains, N.Y., in which four B-to-B mailers discussed how they’re surviving the current economic malaise and their plans for emerging from it once the economy turns around. In part 1 of this recap last week, we detailed how they’re holding up. In part 2, they discussed how they’re preparing for better times ahead.

In a no-holds-barred, all-telling session during last week's MeritDirect Business Mailers Co-op in White Plains, N.Y., four B-to-B mailers discussed how they’re surviving the current economic malaise and their plans for emerging from it once the economy turns around.

Last week, we recapped the first half of the keynote presentation given by investor, catalog owner and motivational speaker Don Libey during the MeritDirect Business Mailers Co-Op in White Plains, N.Y. In part 2 of our recap below, Libey touches on the importance of having unique products, offering convenience, hiring the right people and getting enough capital.

In a session during the July 9-10 MeritDirect Business Mailers Co-op in White Plains, N.Y., four B-to-B catalogers and All About ROI On the Web columnist Terry Jukes candidly discussed how they’re going to retool and ready themselves for an economic recovery, all while enduring the current recession.

For the many years I’ve listened to Don Libey, the investor, catalog owner, motivational speaker and wearer of many other hats related to the multichannel marketing business, I’ve often enjoyed his crystal ball-heavy looks into the future of direct marketing. I can’t say I always agreed with them — and certainly some didn’t come true — but they certainly got audiences thinking and implementing the ideas they took away from his presentations.

Coming on the heels of the downcast ACCM conference in New Orleans, the American Catalog Mailers Association's (ACMA) National Catalog Advocacy & Strategy Forum offered the 50 or so attendees on hand some potential relief and plenty of optimism.

Recently I had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at the MeritDirect Co-op — the annual gathering of some 400 B-to-B catalog marketers in White Plains, N.Y. As usual, it was a curious and enthusiastic group. I wanted to share my take on the mood of such a group and a couple of important trends I see developing in B-to-B direct marketing today. Here’s a sampling of what I gleaned from the three-day event.
* Cost increases and the slumping economy are weighing heavily on B-to-B marketers’ minds. Their margins and profits are being squeezed.
* Most agree the job of marketing

This week’s edition of Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips continues our coverage of the recent MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op in White Plains, N.Y.

There are some great-looking B-to-B and hybrid B-to-B/B-to-C catalogs these days for both exotic and mundane product lines. But beautiful or ugly, plenty of them compromise response and profit by using layout and copy that ignore key selling and design principles. Applying those principles can help creative teams and management realize full value from their catalog mailing investments. Along with consultant Sandra Blum, author of “Designing Direct Mail That Sells,” I discussed this in a session at the MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op in White Plains, N.Y., last week. By taking the audience on a visual tour and analysis of more than 20 catalogs we