Catalogue Mailings in 2022

Mailed catalogues are a hugely important channel for many brands, acting as a physical touchpoint in a digital-heavy space. Across the board we’re seeing advertising cost increases, and the world of print and catalogues is no different – in fact, we haven’t seen such volatility in the paper and web offset print world in our 25+ years in business. So, it’s increasingly important that advertisers rethink their strategy when planning their catalogue mailing activity in 2022 and beyond. 

Changing Specification

To mitigate against complications arising from cost increases and paper delays, brands might find that amending their specifications will help. Being open to changes across the format, including potentially changing the paper type and weight, pagination and size, will help brands and their print partners find opportunities to reduce costs.  

Trialling other formats to mail your catalogue in, for example paperwrapping it, can also uncover significant savings across your postage spend and help mitigate any increases you’ve seen on the print side of production. 

Data 

Maintaining a clean and healthy data file, firstly, is super important. By doing a data healthcheck before any catalogue mailing campaign, you can see how your data is looking and decide if it’s necessary to carry out a data cleanse beforehand. In getting into the practise of this, you ensure you’ll never waste time or money sending your catalogues to any customers who won’t receive it. 

Just as you would normally, look at your data for opportunities to segment your customers and target them better with maintaining ROI in mind. Some of your customers might be receiving your catalogue but respond just as well to a more cost-effective format. Spotting these opportunities will ensure your catalogues and mail campaign spend is working harder.  

Use all your channels  

More and more, we’re seeing brands effectively supporting their offline campaigns with online activity, but many brands still are missing out on the opportunity. Getting your online and offline working in tandem to approach your customers sees significant uplifts in response rates, and the two complement each other well. In fact, according to MarketReach, people spend on average 30% longer looking at social media ads after being primed with mail, so it’s well worth getting the two working together. 

Other advice 

There are heaps of other things you can do to try mitigate creeping costs. Here are a few suggestions (and reminders of best practise): 

• Book in your paper at the earliest opportunity. 

Paper is one of the biggest costs in the project, so if you can secure your paper in advance, you lock it in at that price and avoid being subject to any paper price increases between then and your catalogue going to press. It’s also good to get into the process of, as paper leadtimes are exceptionally long at the moment. 

• Consider how you are tracking and measuring its effectiveness 

Its super important to ensure you are properly measuring the effectiveness of your catalogue mailings. There are two main ways of doing this: including a unique code or landing page to track customers from your catalogue mailings, and performing a matchback analysis. Ideally, you’d do both to ensure you’re capturing everyone. 

With your matchback analysis, also consider the length of the period following the campaign you’ll perform matchbacks on. If the period is too short, you’ll miss out on spotting customers who were primed by the catalogue to make a purchase. 

•  Make sure your printer or marketing partner is ISO 27001 certified 

The ISO 27001 certification ensures that there are effective and measured data management policies in place. Really, you would be remiss in trusting anyone without the certification to handle your customer data. 

• See if you are eligible for any postage incentives 

Royal Mail regularly run postage incentives for advertisers, which sees significant savings in postage spend. Why not get in touch with one of our experts and see if you might be eligible? 

• Work with a marketing partner  

If you aren’t already, working with a marketing partner who knows the ins and outs of catalogue production will be able to help you identify opportunities to boost responses and reduce costs without detriment to the effectiveness of your catalogue mailer. 

If you’d like help and advice on your catalogue mailings, get in touch!