Kevin over at MineThatData blog has an insightful post for catalog merchants. Here are Kevin’s recommendations to an extreme makeover for the catalog industry. I hope all the merchants are reading his blog.
Here are nine ways for us to begin to repair our reputation, and be good stewards.
- It is time for the DMA to do something with the $10,000 to $50,000 each of our organizations pay them each year. And that something is not telling us to “just say no” to Catalog Choice. If one of our customers or one of our prospects doesn’t want to receive a catalog, we have to honor that request. Honor the customer, and challenge the DMA for modern solutions and real action.
- Have you considered joining the American Catalog Mailers Association? It won’t cost you the $10,000 to $50,000 it costs to join the DMA. While this organization believes that the response of the press to the folks at Catalog Choice “give them the willies“, I perceive this organization wants to “do what is right”. Best of all, you could play an active role in doing “what is right”.
- Make it easy for your own customers to opt-out of catalogs. You make it easy for customers to opt-out of e-mail campaigns, don’t you? The reality of the marketplace is that you have to do this for catalog mailings as well. Times have changed.
- Strongly consider the mailing strategy you employ for online-only customers. These customers may consider you as an online brand, not as a cataloger, hence their dissatisfaction of your online mailing strategy.
- Give customers a say … give them an option to receive half of your mailings, and brand this choice as being “eco-friendly”. Test the living daylights out of this ahead of time, so you know the ramifications this will have on your business.
- Oversight … do a “deep dive” with the co-ops. If you allow co-ops to mail a quarter of all your catalogs, you have given a quarter of your brand authority to co-ops. Wow. Do you oversee the vendors you work with in China to ensure that the working conditions are acceptable? If you do, don’t you think you should provide the same oversight with co-ops? And if co-ops won’t provide transparency, well, then, you need to think about your relationship with them, don’t you? The folks who work at co-ops are good people, they will respond to a catalog industry that demands oversight.
- Would a little “PR” hurt? Catalog Choice gets picked up by major publications all over America, quoting the billions of trees catalogers harvest each year. As a result of our inactivity, Catalog Choice muscled in, and now has a seat at our Executive Table, managing our brands for us. Why can’t catalogers go on the offensive? How much would it cost for a catalog to plant “x” trees each year? And how much good will would be done by having the press, bloggers, and TV stations all reporting the fact that two hundred employees spent a random Wednesday in July planting trees? Why aren’t we good stewards? Why don’t we “toot our own horn” when we do good? Why don’t we tell our customers that we’re planting four trees for every tree we cut down? And if we don’t plant four trees for every tree we cut down, why don’t we start doing this?
- Speaking of PR, why not tell the world that over the past five years, we spent “x” dollars less on catalog mailings, moving that money into online marketing that theoretically reduces our carbon footprint?
- Launch new initiatives online. Test various new products and brands online, and via e-mail. Use online marketing to test the initiatives before rolling out new products and brands via paper. And then tell the world how many trees you saved by doing this.
