Paginating with Punch Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM
, By Glenda Shasho Jones
OPEN WITH NEW PRODUCT
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Your opening spread should showcase new product. Don't count on best sellers alone for your first spread. This is especially important for your core customer base — they need to see new product immediately to keep them interested. Seasoned merchandise consultant Lisa Wanderman points out that “as readers go deeper in the catalog, they expect the percent of new merchandise to fall off, but customers want to see the new stuff up front.”
SHOWCASE “TRIAL” PRODUCT ON YOUR BACK COV
Your back cover should highlight “trial” product or merchandise that almost anyone would be interested in. Since a critical goal for most catalogers is to convert prospects to buyers, back-cover products should be well priced and appeal to the largest audience possible. Steer clear of showing niche-oriented or expensive items on the back cover.
CONSIDER REPAGINATING FOR REMAILS
Repaginating a catalog for remail can increase performance. But keep in mind that your best customers may recognize a pure “remail” (with only a cover change) and discard the book if they see a lot the same product. Here are a few considerations with remails:
The more seasonal the catalog, the more reason to move pages around and get the current season up in front.
Gift-giving and holiday times may justify moving around products and pages in order to bring those items to the front.
Moving around pages can help give a catalog a newer, fresher look, especially books with a lower ratio of new merchandise from book to book.
TRY INSERTS TO CREATE BREAKS IN THE CATALOG
In the old days, stand-alone order blank inserts created a strong “hot spot” in the catalog, which most often increased performance. Many catalogs no longer bookmark the center spread with the order form. If you don't, you might consider an insert to promote a sale or clearance section, or a holiday product such as Christmas ornaments or cards. Inserts can also be a good way to manage product presentation and inventory.
Glenda Shasho Jones is a New York-based catalog consultant.
Does double exposure make sales twice as nice?
A common question that comes up during pagination planning is if and when a product should be double exposed — promoted more than once in a catalog. This strategy can work well, particularly with cross-selling.
You can often use products you sell elsewhere in the catalog as “props,” such as accessories or furniture. A simple call-out in or near the photo with the item, indicating the page with the full copy block and photo for the product, will help the reader find it and can improve performance on the product.
Naturally, double exposure works best with top sellers and is marginal for average items, and there's little point in wasting space on below-average products. You could try to improve an item's performance with double exposure, but the only way to really know if it works is to do an A/B test.
Double exposure can be a good strategy with remails. Creating more than one version of a catalog may require removing product to make room for new merchandise or to create a new back cover. If you want to keep an item in front of customers all season, you could double-expose it within the catalog for some drops; then in future remail editions the item would appear just once in the book. — GSJ
