(Catalog Age) After calling 155 catalogers this past spring to request catalogs, Southlake, TX-based business-to-business catalog consultant Bill Ruppert is still waiting for a response from 21 of the companies contacted. Ruppert released the findings of the anonymous survey, sponsored by Stamford, CT-based b-to-b list firm MeritDirect, during MeritDirect’s Business Mailers Co-op & E-Com Marketing Conference. More than eight weeks later, 14% of the catalogers had yet to send him the catalogs. Worse yet, that’s up from 8% of the unfulfilled catalog requests in last year’s survey. Below, highlights of the study:
*73% of the catalogs requested showed up within a week
*58% of the catalogs were mailed first class
*18% came presorted standard mail
*17% went out Priority Mail
*Most big-book catalogs used United Parcel Service ground delivery
*86% of the books were mailed in an envelope
*51% of the fulfilled requests contained a letter
*14% contained product samples
*84 mailers made a total of 379 contacts (follow-up packages, phone calls, e-mails) after sending out the catalog; among those mailers, one-quarter of them made one contact only
*Office supplies cataloger Quill Corp. made the most contacts (25, 19 of which were e-mails); Paper Direct came in second with 17 contacts
*37 lists rented Ruppert’s name a total of 397 times; the biggest renters were Successories, Hello Direct, Nelson Marketing and Siegel Display.
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