Yeah, This Is Happening

This one is for our catalog readers.

Two vendors communicated to me today that print is "surging".

Midland Paper communicated today that paper for catalog marketing is ... not ... surging. Click on the image, look at the graph on the upper left portion of the slide.

Catalog circulation (that's you) is down more than 40% since 2018 ... and catalog circulation in 2018 was down by more than half since 2007. Which means that about 20% of what existed in 2007 (when I started consulting) still exists today.

Here's a preview of coming attractions.

• If you haven't already shifted all customer acquisition efforts to digital and other tactics, it is immediately time to make a change. Go.
• As paper/printing/postage costs continue to increase, it will become very difficult to use paper to reactivate customers.
• Should costs continue to increase, you will only mail your very best customers in 3-5 years. It will be "over".

Have you watched the movie "Don't Look Up"? There's an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, there are scientists who try to warn Earth to do something ... anything. Nobody listens. The ruling political party encourages people to "Don't Look Up". As the crash of the asteroid is imminent, a feeble attempt to detonate the asteroid is hatched. It doesn't work. The ruling political class escape on a cryogenic space ship while the inhabitants of Earth are left to deal with their fate.

I've been writing here since early 2006. I feel like the scientists in the movie.