Does your business sell a range of products that you want to make sure your customers know about? Is the list extensive enough that the thought of direct mail outreach makes you — and your wallet — cringe?
There’s no doubt about it: Direct mailing product catalogs can get expensive. First, you have to manage the process on your end — organizing your goods, accumulating updated features and pricing information on each item, deciding on your layout and gathering high-quality photos that really show off your best offers.
Then comes the print work — finding a reliable professional printer who can turn your files into high-quality hard copies of your business’s catalog.
By the time you’re ready to hand the catalog to your buyers, you may be wondering whether cutting direct mail out altogether would be your best fiscal option. Afterall, postage rates are scheduled to increase twice in 2024 alone, and the cost to mail to a large audience, especially with a bulky printed catalog, can quickly get out of hand.
Don’t give up on your strategy just yet. While direct mail isn’t the right fit for every business, it still holds the potential to provide significant returns for many companies in terms of both customer engagement and overall revenue. So as you’re deciding, let’s take a look at three of the top cost-saving strategies that we’ve helped other customers implement in catalog mailing.
There may still be hope for your catalog mailing!
1. Print a Condensed Version of Your Catalog With Your Top Sellers
You may offer way too many products to put in a full physical catalog, at least if you’re seeking any kind of return on investment. But that doesn’t take catalogs off the table for you. One popular solution you should consider is a shorter version of the full catalog. Since weight is a major factor in the cost of direct mail, and page count is a major factor in the cost of printing, doing so can save you money on both fronts.
If you choose to go this route, you’ll have a few options for presenting the rest of your products, including:
- Adding a link in an obvious spot on the mailed catalog, guiding readers to a digital catalog on your website that shows the rest of your product offers
- Incorporating a QR code with the same functionality and just a touch more convenience for the end user
- Encouraging customers to visit your brick-and-mortar location(s) to receive a full catalog, which you would print a limited number of before sending out the shorter piece
Finally, if you don’t like the expansion opportunities listed here, you could leave it at that. No rulebook says you have to place every single one of your products in a catalog or listing, so if you want to leave some of your marketing to your site’s store page or your physical location, more power to you! The condensed catalog should do a lot of the marketing legwork for you.
Want to go even simpler? Let’s take a look at catalog postcards next.
2. Direct Mail a Postcard Guiding Customers to Your Full Product Catalog
Now, this one won’t stand on its own like the previous option could. If you want to present a catalog, you’ll need to build one digitally as a bare minimum.
But let’s say you’re happy with that bare minimum. Maybe the bulk of your customers tend to shop online exclusively, and you feel that your website would be enough to guide them through the buying process. You can still utilize a high-performance direct mail strategy to get more eyes on your company, site and products. Enter: The postcard.
Some ways you can direct customers using a postcard sent via direct mail include:
- A scannable QR code leading to your company’s full digital catalog
- A URL leading to your company’s full digital catalog
- Guidance for customers to visit your store to shop and receive a product catalog they can take home with them
With a postcard alone, your direct mail costs have the potential to drop significantly. It’s a smaller, lighter, simpler piece, which will simultaneously lower printing costs.
And just because it’s a one-sheet mail piece doesn’t mean it has to be boring. The ways you can make your direct mail postcard stand out from the rest of your audience’s mail are nearly limitless.
Next, let’s explore the option of printing the full catalog, but limiting your audience.
3. Send a Full Catalog to a Partial List of Customers
If you’d still like to get all of your products in a sleek, customized catalog without blowing your budget on a huge direct mail campaign, you can get selective about who gets the full catalog and who doesn’t. Try to narrow your focus to your most highly valued prospects and customers — the people who are most likely to purchase or respond in some positive way.
You can use a range of strategies for choosing this limited audience, from targeted mailing to Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) to leaning on a pre-established house list. As long as you avoid common problems people face with their direct mail lists, and remember to budget for the list purchase itself if you don't already have one, you'll be well on your way.
Talk to your print and mail partner about your goals, budget and existing lists to find the best focus group for this mailing. Then, consider one of the prior strategies for a secondary list of lower priority recipients.
Which Strategy Will You Choose for Your Direct Catalog Mailing?
You may have felt overwhelmed about the idea of mailing your full business catalog to a long list of potential customers, and who could blame you? Doing so can get expensive, complicated and disheartening.
Now that you have some strategies in mind to take some stress — and, of course, dollars — off the top, which do you think you might go with?
Hopefully you feel a little more relaxed knowing you're not backed into a corner with your direct mail options. That said, you may still want to learn about top ways to lower the cost of your direct mail campaigns for more general advice that isn't specific to catalogs.
And while you're considering your options, if you'd like to know more about what you could expect if you sent your print and mail job to Integra, click below to learn what it's like to work on a project with us.
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