Staples is testing the incremental lift of additional mailings and contacts to boost the success of its multichannel business-to-business marketing programs.
“You need to look at what lift you can get by adding an additional mailing piece to your current contact flow,” said Carrie Bourke, director of circulation and customer analytics for Staples Business Delivery. “Do we need to send an offer to incent repeat purchasing from an existing customer? How do we know if offering deep discounts on the Web site drives buyers enough to justify the hit on margins?”
Speaking at the recent New England Mail Order Association conference in Newport, RI, Bourke noted that an investment in print catalogs is still necessary for Staples, even though more and more sales are coming in via the Web.
The office superstore chain isn’t the only marketer that still sees a need for paper. The recent Abacus Multichannel Trend Report showed that while online ordering continues to grow, the traditional call center is still the primary order channel for B-to-B catalogers. And, catalog driven sales are still traditionally higher than online only driven activity.
Jeannie Green, vice president of the B-to-B group at Abacus, noted at the NEMOA conference that the report showed an increasing frequency of purchases in B-to-B cataloging
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