Kissimmee, Fla.

Having attended many of the sessions and keynotes at the 2008 National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM) conference in Kissimmee, Fla., last week, I came away with three key points that proved to be the overriding themes of the three-day event.

Catalogers develop three-year plans for at least three reasons: to map out growth and customer acquisition plans; to develop financial goals; and because their bosses, investors or company-owning banks want to see such data. The theme of a session during the recent ACCM conference, held May19-22 in Kissimmee, Fla., on three-year planning centered primarily around speaker Charis Gaines, director, marketing planning and analysis for car parts cataloger Eckler Industries, who led the session along with consultant Gina Valentino of Hemisphere Marketing. Gaines shared her three-year planning process at Eckler, which focuses on putting customer data to work when putting such plans together. Specifically, it

During a session at the Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants held May 19-22 in Kissimmee, Fla., David Solomon, co-CEO of Goldsmith Agio, pointed to several reasons — both general and directly related to the catalog/multichannel business — why mergers and acquisitions have continued to increase over the past few years. 1. Value creation for strategic buyers. He cited multititle cataloger Redcats USA’s $198.9 million acquisition of United Retail Group last year. The deal not only catapulted Redcats into retail with 500 Avenue stores, but it also gave Redcats’ Woman Within plus-size woman’s apparel catalog and some of its other women’s catalogs

Bill Bruno, principal at the Web analytics and marketing consulting firm Stratigent, offered myriad tips on how to promote and grow e-commerce operations through analytics in a presentation at last week’s Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants in Kissimmee, Fla. Chief among those tips: Establish the purpose of your data first — what do you want to know? “Establish the purpose of the Web site and its pages first,” Bruno said. Then once you have that purpose, requirements for your metrics can take shape. Here are some more takeaway tips from the session: * Investigate whether the technology you currently have is

This week’s edition of Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips contains additional ideas and pointers picked up by Editor-in-Chief Paul Miller and Senior Associate Editor Joe Keenan during the recent Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants in Kissimmee, Fla.