Speaking of "Best" Practices

This would be categorized as a "practice" I suppose.

The problem, of course, assuming anybody is truly interested in receiving this paper-based marketing piece in the mail, is that by sending an email campaign announcing it followed by "shop now", some customers will "shop now" (probably not a lot), and those orders are pulled out of next week's grand catalog debut and are instead attributed to email marketing - thereby decreasing the measured effectiveness of the catalog, causing it to perform slightly worse, causing a reduction in circulation next year which means next year's catalog is sub-optimized and your paper rep is one step further away from a $50,000 bonus.

Happens every day when marketers try to get clever, or the COO is tired of overseeing a robot-infused warehouse, or the paper rep gets in the building and conceives an "integration plan" to use digital to boost awareness of paper and the email marketing manager says "It's only one out of 400 campaigns this year, so what?"

Every compromise is like pulling one tile out of the Jenga tower.