every channel every angle ISSN 1362-2315 Issue 195 October 2011 Catalogue still king By James Dart and Miri Thomas


With the proliferation of new online marketing techniques—social media, retargeting and innovations in mobile marketing—it might seem that print’s relevance to today’s consumer has diminished. Not so. A recent survey by multichannel marketing services and technology firm Acxiom revealed that almost three in four people (71 percent) are happy to receive mail from organisations they are already customers of. The study, which examined consumers’ preferences for communications with companies in the travel and supermarket sectors among others, also highlighted that 57 percent felt postal contact was appropriate for prospective customers.


According to Murray Dudgeon,


Acxiom’s European client services director, “The unique targeting opportunities that mail provides are clearly backed up by the number of people who think it is an appropriate form of contact. This is a fillip for direct mail campaigns, which are often labelled as ‘bad marketing practice’ in the media.” Although the survey looked at direct mail in general, much of it could be applied to the direct commerce sector. If marketers use good data to target the right people at the right time with the right offer, says Dudgeon, consumers are very happy to receive postal campaigns, “whether or not they have an existing relationship with the sender”.


Courting your prospects Direct mail—and more specifically


News


pages 2-7 The Entertainer grows multichannel, Next targets China, buyout breathes new life into John Partridge, more


the catalogue—is not only effective in customer acquisition, it is also an integral tool in retention. In addition to mailing 500,000 full-colour catalogues to cold mailing lists during the course of this year, coins and collectibles marketer Coincraft sends its regular buyers a new, 24-page, full-colour A3 catalogue every three weeks. Each edition, says managing director Richard Lobel, “is 95 percent different from the previous issue”. Coincraft also issues 13 editions of a 12-page, A4 catalogue to its best clients, again every three weeks. That may seem excessive, but Lobel says Coincraft gets a 16 percent response rate from its list, “not bad for a company that most direct marketers have never heard of”.


At apparel catalogue Travelling2, the catalogue is still the fundamental sales driver. “However much we encourage customers to sign up to email newsletters, promising them catalogue previews, exclusive sales, or special offers, the effect is small compared to the print catalogue,” says director Freddy Markham. “Nowadays customers can see an item on the page, find it on the website, and then ring up our customer services while online to ask further questions. People like ringing up our staff and we will always retain this service as it helps bond customers to us. It is not enough to be efficient. Customers want to be loved. We want them to think of us as personalities, not a faceless company.”


Among the biggest champions of the catalogue in the direct marketing


Tactics


pages 9-24 Reinventing customer recruitment, including our guide to affiliate marketing networks and agencies


sector is Scotts & Co, the multititle group behind Scotts of Stow, The Original Gift Company, Cucina Direct, Ancestral Collections and others. It spends £10 million per annum on print and paper and in the last 12 months mailed in excess of 40 million catalogues and inserted a further 26 million catalogues into the press. “Paper still generates 80 percent of sales and even those customers choosing to visit our bricks-and-mortar store or shop online, the majority will have been driven to those channels as a result of receiving a catalogue,” says Allie Oldham, Scotts & Co’s group marketing director.


Marrying web and print The power of print comes to the


fore when it’s combined with online tactics. As Scotts & Co’s Oldham explains, “There is evidence that the customer who chooses to buy from more than one channel becomes a true advocate of the company’s service and our most loyal of customers. As a result, a customer’s retail and online purchase activity is emerging as a powerful variable in predictive modelling and circulation management and is being used to identify those customers with a high propensity to respond.”


Catalogues can appeal to customers who aren’t traditional mail order buyers too. At fashion retailer White Stuff, which calls its mailings “magalogues”, the print medium drives “significant


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