After 27 years of selling its high-end office supplies through a showroom in Utah and 11 years on the Web, ABC Office has finally entered the world of catalogs. On June 29 the marketer mailed 50,000 copies of its inaugural book to customers. The merchant previously mailed a CD catalog to those who requested a catalog.
“We have a lot of customers that ask us for [a catalog],” says Morgan Cloward, director of marketing and sales, which is why, in addition to driving traffic to its Website, ABC Office launched the book.
Cloward says it’s too early to tell how the catalog will perform, but he anticipates a 30% increase in sales compared to what ABC Office currently does online. If the venture is a success it will drop twice a year, and the company will prospect for customers, says Cloward, The merchant’s target customers are small businesses, government offices, and churches.
ABC Office’s past marketing efforts have focused on search engine optimization, pay-per-click ads on Overture, Google, and MSN, an e-mail newsletter, and its “Ask Dave” blog, which answers questions about office supplies. The majority of its sales come in through its contact center, which performs both in-bound customer queries and outbound follow-up calls.