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12 Creative Tips to Pump Up Catalog Sales and Cut Costs

January 2008 By Dawn Flook
1. Place more emphasis on your exclusive merchandise.

2. Exploit the “collectible” mentality that may be inherent in your product.

3. Emphasize guarantees, security policies and anything that makes your customers feel safer shopping with you.

4. Promote special offers, freebies and premiums that make your customers feel special.

5. Mail an exclusive, smaller-sized catalog to special customers introducing them to a new or special niche product.

6. Include Web sales drivers to encourage browsers to look at your entire assortment.

7. Incorporate a slim-jim format for sale or clearance items rather than changing the size of your main catalog. This can serve as a temporary, but still viable option for early 2008.

8. Mail postcards with a clear offer and actionable message to prospect for new customers. Postcards cost 15 cents to 25 cents to mail — a far cry from the cost of a full-blown catalog.

9. Use variable data printing to speak and sell directly to each customer.

10. Save weight by eliminating the bind-in order form. Incorporate it into a catalog page or drive shoppers to your Web site to order.

11. “Wrap” your catalog with a heavier stock and reduce the basis weight on the interior pages.

12. Outsource cost-heavy production necessities like clipping paths, silhouettes and shadows offshore to save time and money.
 

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<b>Quotations, Rules, Aphorisms, Pithy Tips, Quips, Sage Advice, Secrets, Dictums and Truisms in 99 Categories of Marketing, Business and Life</b> <a href="http://bookstore.napco.com/images/TakeawaysPreview.pdf" target="_blank" class="moreInfo"> <font color = "red">Click Here to Look Inside</font> </a> <i>"Denny Hatch’s latest, Career Changing Takeaways, is an extraordinary reflection of one of the direct marketing industry’s most enduring polymaths. With quotes and “takeaways” on every conceivable aspect of business and marketing life and beyond, it’s the sort of book you’d give your children and children of friends on graduation day as a guide for life, especially in business. Worth having on your desk to look to for inspiration." </i> —Charles A. Prescott. Editor, The Prescott Report <i>"Often the most profound advice can be distilled into two or three sentences. CAREER-CHANGING TAKEAWAYS is filled with bullet points of advice that really could change the direction of your career. Save the book as a reference and turn to a particular section as you need it, or read it from cover to cover as I did."</i> —Arnold Howard, Marketing Director Paragon Industries <b>About “CAREER-CHANGING TAKEAWAYS”</b> Since 2005, Denny Hatch has been writing <b>BusinessCommonSense.com</b> —a free e-newsletter that looks at current news and connects the dots back to the reader's life and career. Every issue contains Takeaway Points—a short collection of bulleted one- and two-liners or short paragraphs at the end of each piece-that summarize why a particular issue might be worth reading. The very best of Denny's Takeaways have been assembled into this collection that readers can use not only to make career decisions, but also add power, emotion and erudition to their correspondence, memos, reports, PowerPoint presentations, white papers, articles and books. Here’s a sampling: <b>17 Career-Changing Takeaways— Fascinating, Memorable and Fun </b> <i>"When you innovate you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts."</i> —Larry Ellison Oracle founder, owner of Rising Sun, second largest yacht in the world <i>"You'll never have to apologize for giving people some fun."</i> —Bill Veeck (1914-1986) Major league baseball owner, author of "Veeck . . . As in Wreck," (who sent 3-foot-7-inch stunt man Eddie Gaedel to pinch hit for the Cleveland Browns, August 19, 1951) <i>"The customer or prospect doesn't give a damn about you, your company or your product. All that matters is, 'What's in it for me?"</i> —Bob HackerDirect marketing guru Founder of the Hacker Group, Seattle <i>"It's easy to remember Hacker's dictum (above): Always listen to W-I-I-F-M."</i> —Denny Hatch Here are thousands of takeaways in 99 Categories! Find the quotable gems that will stick with you and provide the roadmap no matter if you are writing a business letter, hiring or firing an employee, looking for a job, making a speech, or simply maneuvering life! <b>CONTENTS</b> Note From Denny Hatch — 1) Advertising — 2) Advertising, Rescinding — 3) Agencies — 4) Art & Antiques — 5) Awards — 6) Book Publishing — 7) Brands and Branding — 8) Brand Trashing — 9) Business, Acquiring a — 10) Business, Expanding a — 11) Business Models — 12) Business, Starting a — 13) Charities — 14) Checklists — 15) Communications, Corporate — 16) Competition — 17) Consultant, Being One — 18) Consultants, Hiring — 19) Controls — 20) Copywriting — 21) Creativity — 22) Corporate Culture — 23) Customer Relationship Magic — 24) Customers, How to Know — 25) Data-Data Management — 26) Data Protection — 27) Decision Making Process — 28) Design — 29) Direct Mail — 30) Direct Mail Copy & Design — 31, Direct Mail Letters — 32) Distribution — 33) Due Diligence — 34) eBay — 35) E—Books — 36) E—mail — 37) E—marketing — 38) Employee, Being One — 39) Employees, Dealing with — 40) Energy — 41) Fulfillment — 42) Guarantees & Pledges — 43) Headlines — 44) Help—Wanted Ads — 45) Hiring & Firing — 46) Humor in Advertising — 47) Information, How to Absorb — 48) Internet — 49) Internet & Your Career — 50) Interviews, How to Handle — 51) Investing — 52) Job Search — 53) Job Search: Cover Letters — 54) Job Search: Résumés — 55) Leadership à la Gen) George S) Patton, Jr.) — 56) Legal Matters — 57) Letters — 57) Letters in Newspapers — 59) Life Rules — 60) Mailing Lists — 61) Management — 62) Marketing — 63) Marketing, Direct — 64) Marketing, Guerrilla — 65) Marketing, Internet — 66) Marketing, Lead Generation — 67) Marketing Rules — 68) Markets, Surrounding Your — 69) Media — 70) Media Selection — 71) Meetings — 72) Moonlighting — 73) Murphy’s Law — 74) News — 75) Offers — 76) Outsourcing — 77) Overwork — 78) Politics — 79) Pre-emptive Advertising — 80) Pro Bono Work — 81) Products, Launching New — 82) Public Relations (P)R)) — 83) Public Relations, Blitzkrieg — 84) Public Relations Crises — 85) Public Speaking — 86) Researching Competitors — 87) Spokespersons — 88) Surveys — 89) Sweepstakes — 90) Telemarketing — 91) Testimonials — 92) Testing — 93) Traveling — 94) Vision, Corporate — 94) Web Abuse — 96) Web Content: Free v) Paid — 97) Website Design — 98) Women — 99) Writing <b>Here are fourteen more Takeaways:</b> <i>"A great cover letter is the golden key to any job search. Yet despite a glut of advice books and websites, an estimated 85% of cover letters are so flawed that senders never land an interview, career coaches say."</i> —Joann S. Lublin, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal <i>"Always hire A’s. In the first place, they are more fun to work with. Secondly, they push you into excellence."</i> —Denny Hatch <i>"You can observe a lot by just watching."</i> —Yogi Berra <i>"If you want to dramatically increase your response, dramatically improve your offer."</i> —Axel Andersson Founder, Axel AnderssonAkademy, Hamburg <i>"Executives talk a blue streak about the importance of developing talent. But many quickly form rigid opinions of staffers, and then resist changing those views despite evidence that employees have matured, become more seasoned or possess talents that weren't apparent when they were first hired. Conversely, some bosses continue to insist that an employee is a star even though he or she was just never that talented."</i> —Carol Hymowitz Reporter, writer, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal <i>"I look for a business I can understand."</i> —Warren Buffett Founder Berkshire Hathaway <i>"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half."</i> —John Wanamaker (1838-1922) Legendary retailer <i>"If I had one takeaway point to suggest to horseplayers, private equity firms and venture capitalists, it would be the classic advice of successful horseplayers: Winning is knowing when NOT to bet."</i> —Denny Hatch <i>"If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you’re nuts to stay there."</i> —Tom Peters Business guru, co-author of “In Search of Excellence” <i>"A neat stall is the sign of a dead horse.”</i> —Sign on an Ogilvy & Mather office wall. <i>"I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular."</i> —David Ogilvy (1911-1999) Founder and Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather, <i>"My advice: Don’t write anything in an email that you wouldn’t want to see on your office bulletin board or hear announced over your company’s loudspeaker."</i> —Carol Kleiman Reporter, The Chicago Tribune <i>"Legendary direct marketer Bob Hemmings once worked for a jeweler on New York’s West 47th Street diamond district where the merchants rent counters and window space in a kind of giant co-op. Every evening all the jewelers would dutifully take their diamonds out of the showcases and lock them in the safe until the next morning. All the jewelers, that is, except for Hemmings’ boss, who would leave his diamonds out all night and put his customer list in the safe. 'If I lose the diamonds, the insurance company will pay,' he told Hemmings. 'If I lose my customer list, I am out of business.'"</i> —Denny Hatch <b>“CAREER-CHANGING TAKEAWAYS,”</b> published February 24, 2011 by The Target Marketing Group, ISBN: 978-1-931068, 260 pp, 6” x 9” trade paperback, perfect bound. <b>About Denny Hatch</b> Since 1976, Denny Hatch has been a consultant, copywriter and designer in the field of direct marketing. In 1984, with his wife Peggy, he launched the newsletter, Who’s Mailing What!, which was based on a library of over 200,000 direct mail samples. In 1992, his company was acquired by North American Publishing Co., in Philadelphia, where he is a regular columnist for Target Marketing magazine and editor of the e-newsletter, Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense, published by the Target Marketing Group. He is the author of: <u>Business Books</u> Million Dollar Mailings * Method Marketing * 2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success * priceline.com – A Layman’s Guide to Manipulating the Media <u>Novels</u> Cedarhurst Alley * The Fingered City * The Stork <u>Memoir</u> Jack Corbett, Mariner CAREER-CHANGING TAKEAWAYS

Quotations, Rules, Aphorisms, Pithy Tips, Quips, Sage Advice, Secrets, Dictums and Truisms in 99 Categories of Marketing, Business and Life Click Here to Look Inside "Denny Hatch’s latest, Career Changing Takeaways, is an extraordinary reflection of one of the direct marketing industry’s most enduring polymaths. With quotes and...

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(PDF Download) Direct mail, email, mobile, social media, video, search ... the marketing landscape can either be a minefield where mistakes can kill campaigns, or a perfectly integrated mix of channels that maximizes the reach of the message and gives a nonprofit the best chance to capture more donor dollars. <b>In <i>"The Art & Science of Multichannel Fundraising" </i> from DirectMarketingIQ, the roadmap to that "perfectly integrated mix" is thoroughly laid out in over 130 pages -- <u>it's specifically created (and priced) for nonprofits</u>. </b> First, 9 chapters from leading fundraisers give you the latest best practices in multichannel fundraising, including how to: • Choose the right channels for your campaign • Develop creative that works across multiple channels • Revitalize the direct mail component of your multichannel mix • Make sure email plays its increasingly important role perfectly • Seamlessly integrate mobile marketing into the fundraising campaign • Boost your online strategy with social media • Create a multichannel donor renewal campaign • Figure out that you're doing right — via testing and results measurement • Use all the pieces of the multichannel puzzle Second, in 8 robust case studies, find out the secrets behind multichannel fundraising campaigns that worked. About DirectMarketingIQ The Research Division of the Target Marketing Group, DirectMarketingIQ (www.directmarketingiq.com) is the marketers’ go-to resource. Publishing books, special reports, case studies and how-to-guides, it opens up a new world to those who seek more information, more ideas and more success stories in order to boost their own marketing efforts. DirectMarketingIQ has unparalleled access to direct marketing data – including the world’s most complete library of direct mail as well as a massive library of promotional emails across hundreds of categories – and producly produces content from the most experienced editors and practitioners in the industry. <b>Note: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to read , The Art & Science of Multichannel Fundraising which is in PDF format.</b> The Art & Science of Multichannel Fundraising

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Your everything-you-need-to-know guide to personalized URLs, including: <b>Best Practices </b> on why they work, campaign strategy, multichannel creative, analytics, and <b>10 Case Studies</b> PURLs for Profit

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