Bill Singleton

Everyone’s Eureka; Reinvented Wheels; Outlook Went Overboard & The Authors Respond

You’ve probably had this experience before: You start with a simple mailing of several segments of a customer file with a few key codes. Before you know it, you have dozens of different codes for customer segments, and you’re producing different messages and catalog covers for each. What started as a menial task has turned into a complex process. And this inevitably leads to frustration. Sometimes you can only see how your once-easy system has spiraled out of control when you return from vacation and begin to reimmerse yourself in all the segments and production work flows. Or, sometimes you experience this after

Have you had a productive year? Do you want another one? Look back over the production cycles you’ve performed this year in merchandising, creating, printing and mailing your catalogs. Each part of the process has one or more important points of production. The point of production is the part of the process where the real work gets done — specific items are selected, images are placed beside copy, ink is put on paper, and your catalogs are delivered to bulk-mail centers. As a circulation director several years ago, I found it very important to see firsthand the points of production. So I made it