ACCM 2008: Catalog Choice

As best I can tell, Catalog Choice was not in the exhibit hall.

Attendees overwhelmingly shared with me that they were willing to speak with or work with Catalog Choice --- only a few individuals expressed frustration with constant calls from Catalog Choice to accept opt-outs.

There may be folks from Catalog Choice who are in attendance, and I simply haven't run across them. I'd have loved to have seen the DMA have the courage to invite Chuck Teller of Catalog Choice to speak at this conference, allowing their message to be heard along with the message of self-regulation offered prior to the keynote address.

Overwhelmingly, attendees told me they wanted to do "what is right" for their customers.

Direct Marketing Association, Dues, And ROI

An open-ended question for you.

During my time at Nordstrom, I paid the Direct Marketing Association more than $200,000 in annual membership dues from my operating budget. That's money that I could have spent doing things that benefited Nordstrom, or more importantly, benefited my staff. Think about this ... we had to generate between $600,000 and $1,200,000 in sales to cover the profit lost by paying these dues. We had to sell an additional 6,000 to 12,000 pairs of shoes to cover the profit lost by this expense!

If you belong to an association, what do you believe is a valid return on investment for your annual dues? Whether you belong to a stamp club that charges $10 annual dues, or you are an $8 billion dollar business paying a huge organization $200,000+ over five years, what is an acceptable ROI? How would you measure ROI?

Google, Online Vendors, and Accountability

For all of the e-commerce and multichannel executives who follow my commentary, I am curious what you think of Google.

For those of you who spent your formative years in the catalog industry, you know the vital importance of a partnership with the USPS, with your merge/purge house, and with your printer. Without these partners, your catalogs didn't get delivered to the homes of your loyal customers. If the catalogs didn't arrive, you didn't generate sales.

Today, the e-commerce ecosystem has replaced the USPS, Experian and Quad Graphics with your ISP, a myriad of e-mail vendors, and Google.

Do you view your ISP, e-mail vendors and Google as strategic partners? Do you apply the same level of pressure on them that you applied to Quad Graphics about image quality, Experian about duplicate names, or the USPS about delivering your catalog two days late?

Can you prove that 194,381 valid customers clicked on your sponsored link on Google? How do you hold Google accountable? How could you ever hold Google accountable?

Does the Direct Marketing Association lobby as hard for your online issues as they lobbied for postal reform?

What are your thoughts? Are you letting Google and others off the hook, compared with the other vendors you work with?