Target

By Gina Valentino Five ways to sabotage your single-product, direct mail campaign. Smart marketers, sales teams and business owners recognize the opportunity to develop a direct mail piece that exclusively promotes a single product — an item with a strong margin and an identifiable target audience. Usually the item has a high price point and specific benefits for the buyer — as well as a surplus of information that necessitates more space than a catalog page realistically can accommodate. If identifying the opportunity is that easy, how quickly do you become a victim of either yours or a colleague's best intentions? If

Send only relevant e-mail to opt-in subscribers. Develop and give people what they wanted and what you promised. Don't send e-mail that's outside the scope of what was promised to people who opted in. Target and segment your subscriber base, and tailor your messages to specific demographic characteristics. —Dan Lok, www.websiteconversionexpert.com

Aggregate. In other words, cross-sell other products and services. It's easy since you already have a relationship with your customers. Offer one-stop shopping, consolidated billing, free shipping and other benefits for giving you more of their business. Everyone's busy, and consumers are looking for service providers who can make their lives easier. It's what they want, so why not give it to them? Case in point: Amazon.com. What started as the "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" in 1995 is now an online powerhouse, offering everything from toys to travel and Target merchandise. Amazon.com took a winning formula and added new product categories and partners. And

When engaging in search engine optimization, don't forget to use targeted keywords in links and URLs. Search engine spiders track these keywords just as well as those in content pages on your Web site. —Cam Balzer, director of search strategy, Performics

This past year has seen a small, niche food purveyor begin its slow rise out of anonymity. Mackenzie Limited, a catalog of primarily high-end imported seafood, has struck two interesting deals. It acquired the consumer mail-order business of a domestic seafood supplier, and it signed a licensing and fulfillment deal with a seafood restaurant chain. Here’s the inside story on a catalog company that’s emerging onto the industry’s radar screen. Baltimore-based Mackenzie Limited today is owned by the father-daughter team of Walter Cederholm and Laura McManus. Cederholm is a retired quality control specialist in the nuclear power industry and works at Mackenzie only

The last 20 months at L.L. Bean have confirmed one over-arching principle: Progress can be painful. Faced with stagnant sales, too much inventory and stale creative, Chris McCormick, CEO of L.L. Bean, had to make some difficult and unpopular decisions if he wanted to whip the company into fighting shape for the 21st century. He instituted numerous reorganizational initiatives that included eliminating 32 catalogs from the mail plan and 2,300 unproductive catalog pages. The staff cut 25 percent of its SKUs. Its vendor list was chopped in half after the company renegotiated nearly all major contracts, including printing, paper, e-mail fulfillment and data

This month I want to introduce two of my colleagues who help bring you Catalog Success each month. The timing couldn't be better since we recently announced a promotion for one of them. Jennifer DiPasquale has been named our publisher, from associate publisher. Many of you have met Jen at trade shows and other events. She has been with the publication since its founding in 1998. She is a smart, friendly — and funny! — professional who has worked tirelessly during the past few years to guide this publication through its various growth stages. I congratulate her on a well-deserved promotion. Be

This month I want to introduce two of my colleagues who help bring you Catalog Success each month. The timing couldn’t be better since we recently announced a promotion for one of them. Jennifer DiPasquale has been named our publisher, from associate publisher. Many of you have met Jen at trade shows and other events. She has been with the publication since its founding in 1998. She is a smart, friendly — and funny! — professional who has worked tirelessly during the past few years to guide this publication through its various growth stages. I congratulate her on a well-deserved promotion. Be assured

Like so many facets of direct marketing, improving Web-site conversions depends as much on applying an appropriate focus, some common sense and thorough planning as it does on adopting the latest technological breakthrough. Indeed, 43 percent of Web executives, marketers, developers and IT managers said conversion rates are the most important Web-site metrics they track, according to a survey from NetIQ. It’s astonishing, then, that 66 percent didn’t know their own conversion rates. What’s needed? The logical first step toward improving conversion rates — and overall Web-site performance — is to apply some of the same knowledge you use in initiatives for

Editor’s Note: The original article from which this was adapted, “Data Cards: Guilty Until Proven Innocent” by Hallie Mummert, was based largely on the views of Brian Kurtz of Boardroom Reports. It appeared in the October 1994 issue of Target Marketing magazine. Updated information has been added here by Linda Huntoon, executive vice president of Direct Media. List research typically begins with the data card. This paper (or electronic) sales vehicle is used by list owners and managers to market the vital statistics (e.g., size, price, profile, selects, minimum order, address options) on the lists they represent. For the cataloger in search of