Strategy : Cost-Cutting, Revenue-Building Checklists ’09

Don’t cut recklessly; it’ll cost you

4. Reduce the number of version changes. Don’t repaginate every time you mail — versioning is expensive. Try a simple front cover change. Print to mail three times, changing just the front cover. You can produce two extra covers for less than $1,000 per cover change.

5. Save postage using add-a-name. This age-old process of adding one or two records to a carrier route to qualify for a discount where you were previously short of the 10-per-carrier-route requirement works. The records added bring your postal costs down.

Most mailers need a national circulation of 700,000 or more before add-a-name makes economic sense. At this level, about 5,000 to 10,000 catalogs will be added.

3 Affordable Ways to Increase Revenue
1. Increase page count if you can. Don’t reduce pages to save money. Adding pages and selling more products to existing customers are good ways to increase sales, especially when business is hard to come by.

Pages are a good value. The cost to increase pages is approximately one-half the percent increase in the page count. Sales should increase by approximately one-half the percent increase in page count, i.e., an 8 percent increase in page count will equal a 4 percent sales gain.

2. Add a housefile drop. Reducing the number of drops means eliminating a mailing to the housefile — and that’s never good — so try adding an extra drop. The housefile is what generates income. It’s the lifeblood, and it’s difficult to overmail certain segments.

Obviously, not all segments should be mailed. Your RFM results will let you know how deep to mail. Leveraging your own database can have positive results.

3. E-mail append program. Append e-mail addresses to your customer file when the e-mail address is unknown. This costs about 20 cents per e-mail address delivered to you. It’s a cost-effective way to increase the number of e-mail addresses you market to regularly.

Stephen R. Lett is president of Lett Direct, a catalog consultancy specializing in circ planning, forecasting and analysis. Reach him at (302) 539-7257 or steve@lettdirect.com.