Lift your catalog response rates with Email

If you market with catalogs, then you must integrate email marketing into your marketing mix. Using email can significantly improve catalog response rates when timed appropriately. Although the right timing of your email varies by industry, product type, and segment, the email send before or after your catalog has proven to lift response rates.

There are a number of real-world examples showing how companies used this combo to drive double-digit increases in sales and leads.

Try using email to soften up prospects or alert them to your offer. For the biggest impact, its best to coordinate email and direct mail so they arrive within a day or two of one another. This strategy improved sales 76% for Tower Records, which used email to announce the imminent arrival of its catalog.

Other marketers swear by e-mail’s ability to lift results after a direct mail piece has gone out. They send e-mail to remind customers to look at the offer and give them another chance to respond. Does the strategy work? You bet. Lillian Vernon used it regularly to produce a 40% lift in sales. The same tactic worked for the Milwaukee Ballet.

Its integrated campaign beat earlier single-channel efforts by 20%. By slipping a "forward to a friend" link into the follow up email, the ballet company generated sales from new customers not on its list.

Create sandwhich effect.
For a bigger impact, use email to announce and follow up a direct mail piece, creating a sandwich effect that drives up response rates.