Catalog Analysis: Following the Response Curve
This month we look at another analytical technique or process that direct sellers need to know, understand, and apply to their daily operations: tracking...
Customer Retention: Simple yet Sophisticated
It's my contention that retailers are more likely to have better customer retention programs than catalogers. Direct marketers have all of their customers'...
Micro Warehouse Finds Model System in Datasource
The detailed specs and variables of computer products have long made shopping for hardware and components a challenge. Customers typically have to wade...
Lists and Prospecting: New Look at Old Names Aids Abbey Press
Religious gifts cataloger Abbey Press used to rely on recency/frequency/monetary value (RFM) analysis to determine which house file names to mail to....
Data Tech: Closeup Look at a PC-based Merchandising System
Merchandise management is both art and science. The art is in product sourcing and selection. The science is in forecasting, analyzing, and managing demand...
Lists and Prospecting: Making Retail Buyers Mail Order Prospects
As more catalogers expand into the retail channel, they're adding the names of store buyers to their house files. But converting those retail customers...
Live from NCDM: Hughes on Data and the Web
(Direct Newsline) Long Beach, CA--Forget neural networks. The best thing that has ever happened to direct marketers is the Web. Insane? Not to Arthur...
Live from NCDM: Privacy Predictions
(Direct Newsline) Long Beach, CA--Telemarketing may be in for some rough times during the next five years, which is how long the first rush of names on...
Benchmark 2003: Databases
Retailers and other marketers generally view catalogers as being in the forefront of database marketing. In fact, when venture capital firms and other...
West Marine's Shipshape New System
Cataloger/retailer West Marine sells more than 50,000 SKUs of boating and aquatic supplies. But finding and updating the information about the products...
Abacus Launches in Japan
Co-op database compiler Abacus on June 30 launched Abacus KK, a wholly owned subsidiary that has launched operations in Japan. The new unit begins with...
Catalog Tech: Campaign Management Software--aCase Study
Catalogers looking to implement a customer-centric database marketing program (and who isn't?) face two big hurdles: consolidating transactional data...
Lists and Prospecting: Betty Crocker Cooks with Database Model
Betty Crocker is, of course, a model homemaker. And now database models play a large role in the circulation strategy of the Minneapolis-based catalog...
Venus, Ultama Settle Dispute
A pair of Jacksonville, FL-based swimwear catalogers have settled their dispute, though the terms of the out-of-court settlement are unknown. In March,...
Data Tech: Spinning Straw into Gold
What does Rumpelstiltskin have to do with database marketing? An early chapter in Spinning Straw into Gold: The Magic of Turning Data into Money, a new...
Operations and Management: Systems Then and Now
The catalog management software (CMS) systems on the market in the early 1980s were outgrowths of systems that catalogers had written inhouse or contracted...
Live from Gartner CRM Summit: Building 'TRUST'
(Direct Newsline) Harriet P. Pearson thinks a lot about trust – so much so that she’s created an acronym addressing customer data use around it. For Pearson,...
Live from Gartner CRM Summit: Helping Customers Serve Themselves
(Direct Newsline) Self service: The very term suggests downsized call-center staffs and vast savings as customers move their inquiries to the Web. But...
Lists Roundtable: Place Your Bets
Who would have thought that mailing to a list of dentists would work well for a cataloger of brownies and other sugar-laden goodies? But it did for Fairytale...
Lists and Prospecting: Coming Clean with Hygiene Tools
By some estimates, up to 30% of the records in house files and prospect files are undeliverable. Even among cooperative databases, up to 8% of the records...
Data Tech: The Case for Database Marketing
One would think that the catalog industry would be awash with database marketing success stories. But co-ops notwithstanding, few of the major database...
Multiple Views of Multichannel Promos
Like many other mailers, San Jose, CA-based Hello Direct finds that processing orders online costs less than taking orders over the phone. So the cataloger...
Eye on b-to-B: Prospecting, Not Spamming
Say e-mail prospecting, and many marketers squirm. The term often brings to mind the unsolicited e-mails that crowd electronic mailboxes, touting everything...
J&L Industrial Cuts, Smooths, and Refines
J&L Industrial Supply, a division of $1.8 billion Latrobe, PA-based business-to-business manufacturer/marketer Kennametal, spent the better part of the...
Concepts Direct Now a Smaller Shop
Multititle gifts and stationery cataloger Concepts Direct is hoping that less is more. To rid itself of red ink, the Longmont, CO-based company, whose...
