2. Take a hard look at your costs. Printers are openly acknowledging that paper and printing costs are ratchetting down hard as printers scramble to fill open press time. Capture paper savings by going back to your printer for fresh paper quotes on catalogs that haven't yet passed the last date to change for ordering paper.
Also, get competitive printing quotes. Although printing prices have softened, your printer won’t give up its margin unless you have a competitive quote from another printer.
Overall, the feeling among attendees at a recent industry conference I attended was that circ plans should be geared more toward house lists and less to prospecting. Marketers who rely heavily on print catalogs are looking to survive the second half of 2009 with conservative circ plans so they'll be around when consumers start buying again.
Jim Coogan is president of Catalog Marketing Economics, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based consulting firm focused on catalog circulation planning. Reach him at (505) 986-9902 or jcoogan@earthlink.net.
