Multichannel Surfing

Imagine receiving a survey on marketing practices. Now imagine receiving a marketing practices survey consisting of 25 multi-part questions spanning several different organization areas. Now consider that at least one of the questions has five categories, four of which have seven sub-questions. Oh, and the survey sponsor wants each of these questions answered to the nearest two-decimal place.

All of a sudden, being asked one’s favorite laundry detergent doesn’t seem quite as onerous.

But the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) isn’t asking about preferred detergents. It’s asking about catalog marketing practices—and yes, the survey described above is exactly the one ACMA president and executive director Hamilton Davison is asking every cataloger in America to fill out. more

This is my last blog post for the BFMB. After much longer than I’d care to admit (okay, 22 years, cause you can probably look it up someplace), I am leaving Multichannel Merchant.

It’s been quite ride, to say the least. Does anyone even remember the catalog industry back in 1989? more

“Page 23” is an award-winning short film from the 48 Hour Film Project in The Netherlands. The three Dutch filmmakers center the satiric film on a furniture catalog. It’s very entertaining! Take a look.

“Want to be a Stand-out Marketer? Get ahead with DMA Education” is the message on the cover of the Direct Marketing Association’s DMA Education mailing. It’s too bad it didn’t give its recipients a best-practices lesson in QR code usage.

The code used on the back cover of the catalog is to the right. If you have your mobile device handy, go ahead and scan it (Or just read on and I’ll fill you in). more

If you think having your URL at the bottom of every page means your catalog crosses over channels, you’re wrong. Getting URLs in your catalog is a start, but you need to do more than that to make your catalog an ecommerce driver. Here’s a link to a video of Datamann’s Bill LaPierre, who explains why it’s important to make your catalog an ecommerce driver.

Let’s hear your thoughts on the chances of five-day delivery and how it would impact you: