Response From American Catalog Mailers Association Executive Director Hamilton Davison

Hamilton Davison, Executive Director of the American Catalog Mailers Association, left a comment that is worth publishing as an article for all of our catalog audience to read.


Response To Looking Ahead To 2008:

Kevin: Three cheers for highlighting some of the more important trends coming at the catalog community in 2008. Thanks also for putting the ACMA in your blog so my Google alert would let me know you posted something I should respond to. I concur that we must monitor what is being said about our brands and company, responding when we can. Without this, the conversation lacks balance and meaning. We must also monitor what is being said about our industry for the same reason.

If one has been following popular print, net and broadcast media coverage concerning cataloging over the past three months, and assuming catalogs are an important part of one’s marketing overall mix, one must be deeply troubled by some popular notions that seem to be emerging: “cataloging is not eco-friendly” or “catalog companies are indifferent or do not honor the interests of customers.” Both of these assertions – wholly unopposed as far as I have been able to tell – are completely false. The catalog companies we work with at American Catalog Mailing Association are customer focused, corporately responsible and completely committed to environmental stewardship. ACMA catalogers I speak with regularly relate changes to their business processes, purchasing specifications, supplier compliance requirements, and marketing decisions made to specifically accede to customer preferences or global concerns. Unfortunately, as you point out in your December 26^th entry, no one seems to be telling this side of the story, nor extolling the environmental positives of cataloging. Unfortunately, ACMA is not currently configured to address this industry need; it is up to our members and board to determine if this is a focus area for our new association. However, you do touch on some areas the ACMA is very active in.

“The silent partners pointing [us] toward a future that we find increasingly difficult to understand and control” are external parties on whom catalogers depend and who increasingly control the economic environment underlying catalog success. A properly organized and funded trade association can make significant progress impacting some of these external influencers to a degree difficult for even the largest (>$1 billion) companies and virtually impossible for smaller companies. One of the more significant external influencers is the USPS. ACMA has been actively addressing the postal environment. Our work in this past eight months has convinced us that this industry can manage its postal affairs more effectively than in the past. With so many issues on the table that will control our future for decades, provided we continue our aggressive work, 2008 will be a much better year than the one now ending.

ACMA is also at work to understand better the issues surrounding do not mail, consumer choice and the environmental impact of catalog mailing. We expect to take a public position on these issues in 2008 and to work with the catalog community and the broader public constituency to help navigate across these complex and related issues.

As an industry we must come together to proactively manage our business environment. There is an enormous amount we can do together efficiently. ACMA is a perfect vehicle for this. While we are puny compared to the other established trade organizations covering this market space, unlike most others we are wholly focused on issues for those merchants who use catalogs as an important part of their business strategy. Yet with only 60 out of an estimated 20,000 catalogers actively supporting our work, we must continue our rapid growth. In 2008, I would challenge all such firms to take a close look at ACMA and to consider getting involved with us. We cannot continue this work without significant support from all catalog merchants.

Thank you for your work to highlight some important issues. I look forward to continuing the conversation in the year to come!

Posted by Hamilton Davison, Executive Director, American Catalog Mailers Association

Ten Ways We Will Save Multichannel Marketing

I once had a CEO tell me, "Don't tell me what is wrong, anybody can do that. Tell me how to fix what is wrong". With that in mind ...

Number 10 = Storytelling: One thing that was crystal-clear to me while attending my first NEMOA conference in March is that New England catalogers are better than anybody else at telling stories. This is a HUGE competitive advantage that catalogers possess over online pureplays, and for the most part, over retailers. When is the last time you felt romanced visiting Amazon.com? The further we progress down a technological path, the "colder" our world gets. Catalogers have always been best at being "warm", best at romancing a customer. Read the creative description of this product from Cuddledown of Maine. Use your eighty-four pages of catalog marketing to tell a story. Have what is on page nineteen relate to what is on page thirty-seven. Make the customer want to turn the page to see what is next. If the customer wants to go online and buy the product featured in a catalog, so be it. Online marketing is all about intercepting the customer at a time of need. As customers, we don't want to buy merchandise that way --- we buy the story as much as we buy the merchandise. Catalogers are great at "creating demand". We should exploit this gift we possess.

Number 9 = Band Together: Cataloging and Retailing have always relied upon healthy competition in order to grow. If you are Gap, you want to be in a mall where your competitors are, because a critical mass of popular apparel retailers fuels traffic. Catalogers have always partnered with each other, renting/exchanging each other's lists in order to facilitate growth. A sustainable version of this doesn't exist online --- we rely upon Google to parse traffic. If I were a charter member of the ACMA, I would build a shopping portal that features all member brands. I would construct the site to be search-engine friendly, so that customers searching for a dress shirt would arrive at this portal, and would be encouraged to shop Paul Frederick MenStyle. Use the collective interests of all members to raise the presence of the organization among search engines. Catalogers can band together, and leverage each other's strengths to grow their business.

Number 8 = Be Proud: If you are a cataloger ... BE A CATALOGER! You are not a "multichannel merchant". Conferences and publications invented that term for their own benefit. Retailers tell you over and over that they want to use the web to support stores. Their focus is ... guess what ... RETAIL! Be proud, you're a CATALOGER!

Number 7 = Creativity: We should be doing the exact opposite of "same look and feel across channels". We grow and evolve through experimentation. How else do we learn what works best? We don't improve by homogenizing our marketing, we improve by experimenting, by diversifying our marketing. So be creative, experiment, learn what customers want from us.

Number 6 = Let Them Do Their Job!: One channel is going to inevitably achieve greater sales than another. Multichannel organizations that have a retail arm frequently drive the majority of their sales via stores. In these cases, let the online/catalog folks do their jobs! Homogenization of business processes sub-optimizes the benefits of each channel. You don't have to adjust catalog in-home dates to match up with floorset changes in the store, unless that is what is best for your customer. You don't have to feature every store product online, you can have online-only merchandise, you can have merchandise only available in stores. Let the folks managing each channel do their jobs. Let these folks create demand. Don't stifle employees on the road to multichannel excellence.

Number 5 = Web Analytics: Have you ever sat down and spent an hour with your web analytics guru? Try it sometime. This person knows more about how customers are responding to your business at this moment in time than almost anybody in your company. Soak in everything this person says, don't let terminology issues taint the knowledge this person possesses. Once you've soaked in the knowledge this person has, apply the knowledge to your catalog and store marketing efforts. This person knows what is happening real-time. Don't put this person in a dark room, shine a light on what this person knows.

Number 4 = Web Analytics: Nobody wants to hear that 3.07% of visitors converted to a purchase. That makes us sound like we're failing. Merchants want to hear that loyal customers visited the website eight times last month, with a quarter of them purchasing at least once. That's a story that indicates we have a compelling website. Ironically, the metrics yield almost the exact same outcome!!! Our focus on converting a customer NOW fails to convey the rich experience customers actually have with the businesses we manage. Customers visit our site (and our competitors) multiple times before deciding what they want to do. Create metrics that actually mirror customer behavior, metrics that adequately explain our successes, not ones that beat us over the head with perceived failures.

Number 3 = Invest In Your Employees: Maybe this is old-fashioned thinking. We can save multichannel marketing if we simply invest in our employees. If you sell gardening supplies via catalogs, why not send your catalog and online marketing employees on a field trip to an online pureplay, to see how they think about their business? If you sell apparel, why not send your catalog and online marketing employees to a non-competitive retailer, to see how those folks merchandise a store? Invite a non-competitive cataloger to visit your campus, and create a workshop where they get to design a marketing campaign for you --- how do they approach your craft, what can you learn from them? Give your employees the tools to succeed. Even more important is the investment in line staff, the folks who are paid eleven dollars an hour to actually fuel our business. Give these employees incentives to do good. Pay a call-center employee ten dollars every time he solves a customer problem by using multiple channels. Pay a store employee ten dollars every time she solves a customer problem by using the website. Invest marketing dollars in your own employees, and see what happens.

Number 2 = Technology: There's a reason the term is called "Multichannel Marketing" or "Multichannel Merchandising". It's because marketing and merchandising create demand. Technology doesn't create demand, technology facilitates the interaction between customers and marketers/merchandisers. We need to let marketers determine the vision for our websites, we need to let the technology folks do what they do best.

Number 1 = Gut Instinct: Gut instinct plus timing equals innovation, innovation fuels future profits. Too much of online marketing is formula-based, Darwinian-style evolution, a reaction to "what is selling real-time". Catalogers have always been great at using gut instinct (the vision of the merchandiser or marketer) to fuel customer demand. Catalogers and Retailers create demand. Online Marketers adapt to response. Ultimately, creation and adaptation employed in harmony yields great outcomes. Too often, we focus on the cold science of measuring response. We need to save multichannel marketing by focusing more on the application of gut instinct to merchandising and marketing. We need to create. We need to lead. We need to innovate. We need to be "warm", not "cold".

Your turn, how would you save multichannel marketing? What are your ideas?

Tell Me About Your Vision For "CRM"

I recall reporting to an Executive who called CRM a "four letter word". This person felt burned by the failed promises of a movement that may have been ahead of its time (or maybe way behind the times) in the late 1990s.

Maybe things would have been different if CRM were shepherded by marketing folks. Often, CRM was driven by the Information Technology folks, in partnership with vendors selling solutions. All too often, the focus was on "Management", not on the "Customer Relationship".

These days, it gets harder and harder to define "CRM". I believe that's a good thing. Here are examples of "CRM" in the year 2007.

• The President of Whole Foods talks directly to his customers via a blog, allowing customers to respond to him.
• Nielsen and Experian enter an alliance to provide "CRM for CPG Companies", promoting use of a series of traditional direct-marketing techniques to traditional brand-marketing organizations.
• Tamara Gielen writes a great blog about using E-Mail to build relationships with customers.
• The American Catalog Mailers Association is formed to protect the craft known as cataloging.
• Google might say they own relationships with customers, by matching customer needs with vendors willing to pay Google the most to meet the needs of a customer.
  
• Salesforce.com might argue that they provide software that allows folks to manage relationships with clients.

My questions for you, the loyal reader, are these:

• Do you believe that a "brand" can manage customer relationships? In other words, is the term "CRM" antiquated, given today's marketing environment?
• If you were building a "brand" from scratch, which elements of "CRM" would you use to build your business? E-Mail? Catalogs? RSS? Blogs? Paid Search? What else?

Business 141 And The ACMA

I grew up in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. This picturesque town of 33,000 folks rests on the west side of Lake Michigan, about forty minutes southeast of Green Bay.

In the first half of the 1900s, Manitowoc was served by US-141, a two-lane highway that ran from Milwaukee, through Green Bay, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (a place that we called the "U.P."). US-141 cut right through Manitowoc, down Calumet Avenue, eastbound on Washington St., across the Manitowoc River on 8th Street, then westbound on Waldo Boulevard, exiting on the northwest side of town. At least that is how it is pictured on my 1953 map of the State of Wisconsin.

Somewhere between 1953 and the 1970s, a bypass was built around Manitowoc. US-141 was re-routed to the west side of town. An interchange diverted traffic from the old route. New signs were posted --- the old route was re-named "Business 141".

Of course, businesses didn't benefit from "Business 141". Traffic flew around the west side of Manitowoc. Time-pressured travelers saved ten minutes on their trip to Green Bay by taking the new US-141, avoiding "Business 141". Like in so many towns across America, downtown businesses began to fail. The core of the city began to die.

America is all about progress. In 1980, a new highway was built, maybe a football field west of US-141. This was called "Interstate 43", or "I-43". This new freeway had a handful of on-ramps and off-ramps. US-141 was eliminated, renamed as a county highway. "Business 141" was renamed "Business 42", in honor of the state highway that also bypassed the city.

Naturally, businesses didn't benefit from "Business 42". Well, that's not entirely true. Any business built close to the interchange between I-43 and "Business 42" did well. Wal-Mart, Applebees, Holiday Inn, and a veritable plethora of "brands" were very successful. Mom & Pop stores struggled, as the core of the city transitioned from a commerce hub to a tourist destination.

Today, Manitowoc is the city you stop at for a potty break at on the way from Milwaukee to Green Bay, or the city you bypass on your way to Door County for a much-needed vacation. Fifty years from now, when we replace the automobile with bio-fuel air transportation, will we lament the death of the "brands" along I-43?


You might wonder what Manitowoc and "Business 141" have to do with this blog? Today, I read this post on F. Curtis Berry's Blog, about the ACMA, the "American Catalog Mailers Association".

Of course, I know almost nothing about this organization, but I find the concept refreshing. To me, this isn't about "rebranding" US-141 as "Business 141", when we all know that I-43 is coming. Instead, I perceive it as a group of industry leaders and catalogers, taking a stand against everything that is conspiring against it. These folks are not "rebranding" themselves as "multichannel merchants". These folks are "catalogers", fighting for the very survival of the craft they love.

These folks may succeed, they may fail. They should be applauded for defending themselves during a time of palpable industry crisis.

I'm not part of this club. I spent the past twelve years honing catalog, online and database marketing skills on the West Coast, where things are done very differently than they are in the Midwest and New-England based catalog world. But I am rooting for them. Where was this group when the State of Wisconsin rebranded US-141 as "Business 141"?