Business-to-business catalogers are mailing more to their existing customers – and making more money as a result, according to a survey conducted by Acxiom/Direct Media.
Growth has declined for gross mail order sales – from 7% in the first half of 1998 to 5.9% for the same period this year. But respondents reported that their pretax profits were up 7.4% for the first six months of this year, compared with 6.1% in 1998.
Also up – by 5.9% – were mailings to house files. Last year, they rose by only 4%. But prospect mailings increased by just 4.3%, after having gone up 6.2% in 1998.
Mail Volume Edges Up.
Overall volume has more or less leveled off as a result. On average, marketers predicted their mail volume would climb by 2.3% in the second half of this year. In 1998, they projected a jump of 5.4%.
At the same time, respondents said they planned an average of 10 mailings to their customers over the course of this year, up from nine in 1998. And their best customers should receive 15 mailings, compared with 14 last year.
The survey also revealed that mailers are lagging in the e-mail arena.
One-third of respondents said they market via e-mail; two-thirds said they did not. Thirty-five percent of them said they’d collected e-mail addresses on less than 2% of their file. Another 30% said that between 2% and 10% of their file included them, with 4% indicating that between 10% and 25% of the file appended the addresses. Seven percent of respondents said that between 26% and 50% of their lists had e-mail addresses.
Respondents fared better in their use of the Web. Eighty-two percent said they have active Web sites. Of those, 71% said they use them to field inquiries, 68% said their sites disseminated information and 61% said they use their sites to take orders. But 75% noted that the Web accounted for less than 2% of their total business, while the remainder indicated that it made up between 2% and 10% of their revenue.
“But I don’t think we have Dell or Gateway responding,” said Acxiom/Direct Media B-to-B broker Lutz Schremmer, who presented the results during the company’s 24th annual Business-to-Business Co-op in July.
Network
