Catalogers: Look, Listen and Learn

This is the second of two columns on improving catalog performance. Catalogers should be checking the following areas regularly to ensure their books are running as well as they can.

OPERATIONS

What was acceptable service yesterday probably is passé today. Customers know what they want and you’d better too. Be a step ahead of your competition. Have a written competitive stance on how you’ll meet and surpass their offerings. Don’t just know what your competition is doing. Decide how you’re going to surpass them.

Do you have a method for measuring performance improvements, both direct and indirect? For example, not just first fill ratios, but also back-order effects on single-buyer conversion to multibuyer. Think beyond the immediate impact to the long-term effect.

Are you getting feedback from customers? What access do you have to customers’ feelings about your catalog? Tougher times can mean that research, even the relatively inexpensive e-mail type, will be cut from the budget. Don’t let this happen, as contact with your customer during changing times means you won’t have to second-guess your moves. Do as many other catalogs do: Spend some time monitoring phone calls, both orders and customer service, for firsthand knowledge of customer attitudes.

• Contact strategy

  Are you viewing your mail plan through the eyes of those you are mailing? How many times and with what messages are you hitting your customers, requesters, inactives?

  All contact elements should be integrated for maximum sales impact, cost-effectiveness and customer understanding. In this way, one promotion or sales approach builds on another, enhancing each effort and optimizing the message. With a well-structured customer contact strategy, you can reduce the sales cycle while increasing brand equity and consumer mind-share.

  Continually test time frames, frequency and offers to not only increase the propensity to buy, but also reduce the impact of competitors and help instill customer loyalty. Make certain every contact has a clear “Why should I read this” message that fits into your overall strategy now and in the foreseeable future.

• Expansion planning

  Even in tough times you have to be plotting growth. Probably the most-asked question is if the catalog should have separate versions for retail, prospects and customers. Can you afford to just keep sending the same message to everyone, regardless of their stature in the buying cycle?

  Almost all find that the more tailored the message, the better the results. Even though tailoring a message can be prohibitively expensive in small quantities, never assume that it’s beyond your budget. Work with your printer and agency to find solutions to inexpensive customization. One smart move: Using ink-jetting, alert customers named on your database about new items in your catalog that match their past buying performance.

  Other key areas to look at when planning for expansion: reporting structure, analysis, mail plan, merchandise, creative, service, alternative sales avenues and creative methods of customer acquisition.

• Database

  In a May 2001 Catalog Age survey, 92% of the respondents maintained databases yet only 46% used their database for modeling. The most popular form of modeling, RFM, was utilized by only 49% of those polled. However, 89% of the largest companies do modeling. With service bureaus going with virtually commodity pricing for RFM, any cataloger that’s not modeling these days is missing a seriously important opportunity.

  Keep your database up to date. Keep abreast of developments that will help you ensure the information on it is fresh and accurate.

  Renegotiate rental charges. For instance, some find that fees for selects can be reduced or waived.

• Analysis

  Remember to always challenge what you’re doing. Got square-inch analysis under control? Move on to determining the value of a product’s position on the page. Add more offer tests to your analysis batch. Keep pushing for more. As an example: Cross-analyze categories and price points for house file vs. rental lists. If there is a significant disparity, you may need to revise your list rental strategy.

  Keep your customers’ lifetime value accurate. What it was in 1995 is not what it is now.

  Don’t accept that what you’re doing now is the only way you can handle a particular phase of analysis. For instance, Experian upgraded its database product to increase the number of variables and reports marketers can develop while accessing their company’s database from a personal computer; and Inceptor brought out a revised interface that lets marketers review all their sales channels and observe in real time the percentage of online visitors that convert to customers.

• Organization

  The mantra of our age — running “lean and mean” — means more than cutting jobs. It can mean opportunity. Don’t just pay attention to who’s doing what; try to understand the reasons behind reorganization and streamlining. Educate yourself to prepare for doing more than your job entails. Very little impressed me more than when I taught at New York University. Here adults with direct marketing backgrounds enrolled in evening classes that augmented or rounded out their experience. If corporate changes appeared likely, they had a great chance to step up and make their broader knowledge known.

Watch not only what your employees are doing now, but where there aptitudes lie. If a need for reorganization arises, have an idea of who can do more than what the current job description calls for. Then give that person an opportunity to take on additional responsibilities.

KATIE MULDOON is president of DM/catalog consulting firm Muldoon & Baer Inc., Tequesta, FL.