East Texas, PA-based Day-Timers is boarding the gift-selling bandwagon just in time for the holidays. The marketer of diaries and day planners on Nov. 21 will mail 500,000 copies of Flavia, a catalog selling photo albums, scrapbooks, and matted prints. All the products feature designs licensed from Flavia, an artist known for her colorful and whimsical illustrations.
The 20-page gifts book was mailed to an even mix of customers and prospects, says Day-Timers’ director of direct sales and marketing Tom Tweedie. “By mailing the same number of customers as prospects, the customers will respond better and pull a better average order and offset the slight loss we get from prospecting.”
Day-Timers had actually backed off traditional cold catalog prospecting during the past two years because of its low return on investment. The company instead focused on mailing catalogs only to customers, wholesaling products to office products superstore chains, and affiliate marketing via its own Website. Tweedie says he got the green light from management to rent outside lists for the new catalog because he’s planning for the book to break even in one mailing.
If the gifts book is indeed deemed a success, Day-Timers is looking at mailing a second edition in April, Tweedie says. “That would be the earliest I could get another book together in time to focus on spring season.”