Are You Terrified By A Personalized Merchandise Assortment In A Catalog?

Yup, you think to yourself, "well, that's too complicated and it's fine that we send a 128 page catalog and a remail of that catalog two weeks later and a second remail of that catalog two weeks after that ... so what that the strategy was conceived in 1989, that means we have ample history to develop an accurate forecast from. #tradition"

Why not start simple?

Start with email.

Don't you think your favorite email vendor (MailChimp is displayed above, you obviously have your favorite) would fall all over themselves to help you develop personalized merchandise campaigns, based on prior purchase history and website visitation activity?

I promise you, your favorite email vendor hired a Data Scientist, or ten Data Scientists. They're just sitting there, CPU idle, waiting for somebody to give them a meaty challenge. These geniuses probably don't even find your challenge challenging. How's that for a sentence?

Anyway, run a test.

Test design.

1. Pick a campaign ... maybe an Easter campaign.
2. Randomly split your email audience in half.
3. Half #1 receives your typical campaign ... one version, 20% off or whatever, brand appropriate message ... guaranteed to generate $0.08 per delivery. Blah blah blah blah blah!
4. Half #2 is split into ten different merchandise-centric treatments. Based on prior customer purchase history and visitation activity, the customer is assigned to one of ten different merchandise-centric treatments. Your email vendor works with your creative team to conceptualize what the ten versions are. Your in-house analyst works with the Data Scientist at your favorite email vendor to align customers to one of the ten different versions, based on prior purchase history.
5. Deliver the darn email versions!
6. Measure results.
7. Salivate over the possibilities.
8. Ask for a promotion when sales come in +20% to your typical campaign.

Use email marketing as a "proof of concept".

For crying out loud, my team at Nordstrom, in 2001 ... in 2001 mind you ... assigned customers to an online marketing strategy where 10 unique email creative/merchandising treatments were delivered in each campaign. In 2001. Bill Clinton was still President in January 2001. We easily popped a 20%+ lift in campaign performance by delivering targeted merchandising campaigns to each customer. By 2006, we were sending hundreds of unique campaigns to customers, versions tailored to customers with specific store employee preferences. In 2006. If we did this stuff 10-15 years ago, there is no excuse for not doing this stuff today.

If the tactic works, and you get a 20% lift in email marketing performance, then there are two logical conclusions.

1. You should be executing this type of strategy in every email campaign, not just one campaign near Easter.
2. If the strategy works for email marketing, it is certainly worth testing in your catalog marketing program, right?

What have you got to lose?

Contact your favorite email vendor, right now.

Get busy!

Let me know what you learn.

Naming The Paths

Ok, let's dress the thesis up a bit.

Remember when we had Judy / Jennifer / Jasmine (and now Jadyn)?

The names of the personas helped readers understand who the target customer was/is, and helped readers then relate to how customer behavior was changing.

We need to do the same thing with our catalog thesis paths. The paths need to be named, so that we can remember what the paths mean to us. Let's give this a try.


Path #1 = Golden Gate Bridge. Have you ever driven down the coast in Northern California? Crescent City & Eureka? Mendocino? Point Reyes National Seashore (click here)? Rural, beautiful, peaceful. Sort of like cataloging. But as you get closer to San Francisco, things change. You're no longer on Highway 1, you are on a freeway, US-101, and you are near cities. Petaluma and Mill Valley and Sausalito. Finally, you cross the bridge ... the Golden Gate Bridge. The marine layer blows through, obscuring your visibility. Seconds later, you are in San Francisco, a major urban environment. You keep driving south, out of the city, into Silicon Valley. Now you're in a desert, with your GPS pointing you toward Cupertino or wherever.

There's many a person who, after crossing the bridge, don't like what they see. 900 square foot apartments that cost $3,900 a month? Traffic? Nah, not interested. So they turn back, they head back to Wine Country and they sit on the Napa Valley Wine Train and they decide they're not headed into the madness south of them.

But for others, especially those with a younger customer base, it isn't hard to cross the bridge, is it? It's fun. It's where the action is. It's where you see Beach Blanket Babylon.

You have to make a choice ... do you cross the bridge ... or do you not cross the bridge? For nearly twenty years, most catalogers stood at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. We can see San Francisco, in the distance. But we like the view to the north. It calls us. Consequently, most of us do not cross the Golden Gate Bridge.


Path #2 = Catalog Cul-de-sac. Have you ever taken a ride on an idle Saturday afternoon? No, not in one of those driverless cars Google is promoting when you cross the bridge in path #1, but a real car. You turn off the highway, and into a planned community ... be it Wayward Pines or something you'd see when watching The Joneses. None of the roads participate in a classic grid system ... they curve and wind left and right, up and down. Eventually, you turn left, and you end up in a Dead End, though there is no sign telling you it is a Dead End (if you are lucky, there is a No Outlet sign, which doesn't sound all that threatening). You have been marooned in a Cul-de-sac.

But people love living in a Cul-de-sac, or they wouldn't build all of these suburban and exurban communities with them.

Now, people love to drive up a Cul-de-sac, don't they? And they love to live in a Cul-de-sac, as long as the homes in the Cul-de-sac are beautiful. The lawns have to be perfect (no moles or voles digging up the lawns), cut exactly to the height of fairway grass. An SUV and a Mini-Van need to be in the driveway. 4,189 square feet and six bathrooms don't hurt, either.

If you are going to cut yourself off from civilization, in a Cul-de-sac, then your Cul-de-sac has to be perfect. Kept up. Modern. Not everybody wants to drive up a Cul-de-sac and see burnt-out homes or homes from the sixties with cedar siding and roofs that need to be replaced.

The Catalog Cul-de-sac is a perfectly acceptable place to be, as long as the catalog brand continually drives merchandise productivity. When merchandise productivity fails, it's comparable to not maintaining the homes in the Cul-de-sac ... suddenly, nobody wants to be there. There's no need to cross the Golden Gate Bridge as long as the Catalog Cul-de-sac is beautiful, and as long as people know how to get to the Catalog Cul-de-sac (see my Customer Acquisition presentation).


Path #3 = Ranch-Style Remodel. When you drive through portions of Redmond, WA, portions that were built before Microsoft was conceived, you see sprawling neighborhoods of ranch-style homes (sometimes called "Ramblers"). These are not the modern Cul-de-sac homes described above. Nope. These are the homes that Mike Brady would have designed. These homes are old and tired. When somebody purchases an old and tired home, what do they do? Well, they remodel! They invest in their home, they don't just sit in it and hope it appreciates. They use elbow grease. They rip the roofing off themselves, they rip the siding off on their own. They pull wallpaper off the walls. They throw out disgusting shag carpeting from the late 1970s. They tear a wall out and make a 1,400 square foot kitchen / living room combo. They turn a bedroom into a home theater.

Catalog Vendors are going to love the Ranch-Style Remodel, much in the same way Home Depot and Lowes and Empire Flooring love the Ranch-Style Remodel. Catalog Vendors will help catalogers remodel the catalog business by constantly optimizing page counts and merchandising assortments, continually remodeling the business until the merchandise assortment is fully personalized for individual customers. Homeowners are thrilled when the Ranch-Style Remodel is complete, aren't they? Well, catalogers who take this path will be thrilled with improved marketing productivity, improvements that allow the catalog to continue to do what the cataloger loves to do ... mail catalogs! Page counts will drop, with the catalogs featuring only the most productive merchandise. As page counts drop, circulation will increase and productivity will increase, allowing the catalog to partner even more with co-ops and paper reps and printers and database providers and big data solutions experts. Then, targeting will improve, allowing for smaller catalogs with personalized merchandise assortments. Everybody in the catalog ecosystem benefits from a Ranch-Style Remodel!


Path #4 = Abandoned Warehouse. This is the analogy for a catalog holding company (CHC - think Potpourri Group without a soul). We all know where all the abandoned warehouses are. Nobody spends time at an abandoned warehouse.

This is the place where unloved catalog brands will go to die. Owners who don't want to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, who don't want to be in a Catalog Cul-de-sac where the merchandise must be perfect, and who don't want to perform a Ranch-Style Remodel where advanced targeting lives, those folks will give up. They will sell to a CHC (catalog holding company), a lifeless borg that looks to squeeze every single penny of profit out of what is left of the catalog brand they recently acquired. Each catalog brand loses identity, becoming simply a product category that must encourage customers to cross-shop within another former catalog / current product category. The goal, of course, is for each former catalog / current product category to help the CHC to get to the "Magic 8,000,000" ... the 8,000,000 catalog shoppers that allow the CHC to bypass the co-ops and achieve cost savings.

Another reason I call this path the "Abandoned Warehouse" path ... you're going to see consolidation of functions. There's no reason to have 37 email marketing teams across 37 companies when you can have one centralized team that executes for everybody ... a half-dozen professionals who achieve cost savings by consolidating vendors and minimizing human costs where possible. Same thing with Human Resources, your Information Technology department, your Merchandising Team, your Creative Team ... there's no need for 37 Circulation Directors when you can have 1 Circulation VP and a half-dozen analysts executing catalog campaigns across 37 former catalogers that are now 37 product categories that encourage population of the Magic 8,000,000. All the office space that used to house 37 teams of professionals across the country? Abandoned. Distribution Centers? Abandoned Warehouses closed (or sold to Amazon) so that the CHC can leverage fixed costs with just one, two, or three geographically desirable locations. 

In fact, it isn't inconceivable to imagine the CHC outsourcing everything, leaving management of the business to a handful of professionals sitting behind a keyboard, keeping the wheels on the bus. No strategy. No need for strategy. Just a constant re-population of the Magic 8,000,000, cross-shopping algorithms, and optimization of the contact strategy. Clario heaven. But a true Abandoned Warehouse.


The thesis is complete ... there are four paths for catalogers to take:

• Golden Gate Bridge ... crossing over into pure, true e-commerce.
• Catalog Cul-de-sac ... a catalog dead end that can yield a perfectly acceptable outcome if merchandise productivity is maintained and, more importantly, increased.
• Ranch-Style Remodel ... where the catalog business is represented as a ranch-style house that is remodeled for modern times, complete with smaller page counts and personalized merchandise assortments that drive marketing productivity increases.
• Abandoned Warehouse ... this is the place where catalog brands go to die. The CHC (catalog holding company) strips all expenses in a lust for the Magic 8,000,000 who will buy from former brands that simply become a portfolio of product categories.

Where is your business headed? Be honest. And where do you want your business to head? If different from where your business is headed, start making changes!

That's my thesis.

It is time for your thoughts. You followed along for nearly two weeks. Undoubtedly, you agree with elements of my thesis, and you disagree with elements of my thesis. Send me an email (kevinh@minethatdata.com), contact me on Twitter (@minethatdata), or leave a comment ... share your thoughts. What needs to be modified and/or changed here, to suit your needs or understanding of modern catalog marketing?

The Four Paths Catalogers Will Take

Here's my Catalog Thesis for 2016, as it stands:

• Housefile names are somewhat protected by increasing organic percentages, but regardless, catalog life issues mean catalog productivity issues.
• Acquisition name performance is not great, and is being impacted by a shortened "life of a catalog".
• Math dictates that we will have to mail smaller catalogs in response.
• Smaller catalogs generate less demand.
• We will have to mail smaller catalogs more frequently.
• Should the life of a catalog continue to erode, smaller catalogs will struggle to perform well, requiring us to personalize the merchandise assortment to each individual customer, based on customer history (both our history and recent co-op history).
• In response to these trends, catalogers are going to take one of four paths.

Let's talk about the four paths.

Path #1 = Crossing The Bridge:  It takes courage to go down this path, and it usually (but not always) takes a customer base < 50 years old to cross the bridge. What bridge, you ask? The bridge to being a full-fledged e-commerce brand. Analyze any cataloger with a customer base < age 50, and you see that the brand is in the process of crossing the bridge. When online marketing demand makes up 50% of total volume, the cataloger has "crossed the bridge". For these businesses, online marketing is the primary demand generation vehicle, and catalogs are simply support vehicles. 

Companies that have "crossed the bridge" have a fully developed customer acquisition program that is independent of the co-ops. Think Duluth Trading Company and their customer acquisition strategy ... they are in the process of crossing the bridge. Oh, and their sales have doubled in recent years. My customer acquisition "work in progress presentation" (click here) largely deals with companies headed down Path #1, companies that are crossing the bridge.

Most retailers with a catalog division have crossed the bridge.

Most catalogers will not like Path #1, and will avoid Path #1. We know this to be true, because we have more than fifteen years of evidence demonstrating this to be true.

Path #2 = Status Quo:  Imagine a catalog brand with a customer base age 50-70. This catalog brand can see the future, but does not agree with my thesis. At all. They do not want to mail a veritable plethora of 36 page catalogs tailored to specific customers. They do not want to personalize the home page, landing pages, email campaigns, or their in-app experience. They don't want an in-app experience, period!! These catalogers do not want to diversify their customer acquisition programs (those ideas 'don't work'). These catalogers love working with the co-ops, they love practicing their craft.

There will be winners in Path #2. Some will experience merchandising epiphanies. Merchandise Productivity gains will be essential for those who follow Path #2.  You can win by going down Path #2. As time progresses, the odds bend against winning in Path #2.

Path #3 = Catalog Optimization:  A subset of catalogers love cataloging, and will do anything to keep mailing catalogs. These companies are catalog leaders. No, they aren't leaders in a Silicon Valley sense. But make no mistake, they are leaders. These catalogers are inventive within their craft. They will engineer catalogs for ruthless efficiency ... lowering page counts ... increasing contact frequency ... and personalizing the merchandise assortment to each individual customer. 

Vendors will love brands who go down this path, and that's a good thing. The entire catalog ecosystem ... catalogers and vendors ... will generate a ton of profit by optimizing the living daylights out what is left of catalog marketing. Websites will be optimized and personalized. Email marketing will be optimized and personalized. Catalogs will offer a fully personalized print-centric merchandise assortment, in an effort to boost productivity. For these brands, another 10-15 years of profit will easily be harvested before the bridge must be crossed.

Path #4 = Catalog Holding Companies:  Oh, this is a very interesting path. Very interesting. At some point, the battle becomes tedious. "Can't somebody else do it?" There will be many, many catalogers who do not want to cross the bridge. They will not tolerate the status quo. They will not pursue the catalog optimization route. They will simply say "enough".

These catalogers will sell to what I call "Catalog Holding Companies".

Potpourri Group is an example of a Catalog Holding Company.

There will probably be +/- a dozen Catalog Holding Companies (CHCs, for short). Their goal is simple. They will strive to achieve what I call the "Magic 8,000,000 Level". What is the "Magic 8,000,000 Level?" Simply put, CHCs will work hard to possess the names and addresses of every one of the 8,000,000 customers who are tried-and-true loyal catalog shoppers. By having the name/address of every single tried-and-true loyal catalog shopper, the CHC bypasses the toll collection booth of the co-ops. The CHC simply cross-shops the 8,000,000 customers across the portfolio of catalog brands owned by the Catalog Holding Company, thereby avoiding the customer acquisition challenge we're all facing.

The CHC can employ bits and pieces of Path #1 and Path #3, as appropriate. But most important, the CHC will look to squeeze as much profit out of each catalog brand as possible. When a catalog brand is no longer profitable, the CHC throws it away ... choosing instead to search for the next catalog brand that meaningfully contributes to the "Magic 8,000,000 Level" while generating profit.

The CHC won't care about the individual catalog brand, much in the same way that you don't care much about the individual stocks in your 401k. Do you know what stocks are in your 401k? Similarly, the CHC will use catalog brands to generate centralized efficiencies, skimming profit off the top until the catalog brand can no longer generate profit anymore.

I see the four paths in all of my work. Every cataloger can be easily placed into Path #1, Path #2, Path #3, and Path #4. I bet you can determine which path the catalog brand you work for is on.

The thesis is complete.

• Customers (especially younger customers) are throwing out catalogs faster than ever before, reducing the "life of a catalog", and thereby reducing catalog productivity.
• Housefile names are somewhat protected by increasing organic percentages, but are being impacted nonetheless by a shortened "life of a catalog".
• Acquisition name performance is not great, and is being significantly impacted by a shortened "life of a catalog".
• Math dictates that we will have to mail smaller catalogs in response.
• Smaller catalogs generate less demand.
• We will have to mail smaller catalogs more frequently.
• Should the life of a catalog continue to erode, smaller catalogs will struggle to perform well, requiring us to personalize the merchandise assortment to each individual customer, based on customer history (both our history and recent co-op history).
• Given these trends, catalogers will pursue one of four paths.
• Path #1 = Crossing The Bridge to E-Commerce (requiring a comprehensive and low-cost customer acquisition program).
• Path #2 = Status Quo (requiring co-op productivity and high merchandise productivity).
• Path #3 = Catalog Optimization (requiring merchandise personalization and low page counts).
• Path #4 = Catalog Holding Companies.

Personalized Merchandise Assortment - An Extension of the Thesis

Here's my catalog thesis, once again:

• Housefile names are somewhat protected by increasing organic percentages.
• Acquisition name performance is not great, and is being impacted by a shortened "life of a catalog".
• Math dictates that we will have to mail smaller catalogs in response.
• Smaller catalogs generate less demand.
• We will have to mail smaller catalogs more frequently.
• Should the life of a catalog continue to erode, smaller catalogs will struggle to perform well, requiring us to personalize the merchandise assortment to each individual customer, based on customer history (both our history and recent co-op history).
• In response to these trends, catalogers are going to take one of four paths (more on this to follow).

What does it mean to "personalize the merchandise assortment"?

Let's go back to our example. We moved to a 64 page piece that became, once again, profitable. Then, the life of a catalog became shorter (again), reducing productivity by 10%.

• Demand per Book = $1.22.
• Profit Factor = 35%.
• Cost of Mailing = $0.45.
• Profit = ($0.02).

To combat this challenge, catalogers will move to a "personalized merchandise assortment". The catalog will get even smaller, and the merchandise in the catalog will focus only on the merchandise the customer wants to see.

This is common in e-commerce. There, home pages and landing pages are customized based on prior purchase data, prior visitation behavior, prior overlay data, and prior referring URLs. Companies employing these strategies enjoy conversion rates that are 20% to 50% greater than a "one size fits all" strategy.

Ok, let's move from a 64 page piece to a 36 page piece, a piece that features merchandise that a specific customer likes or will like. The 36 page piece could, in theory, be different for every customer ... a plug-and-play strategy. We lose some demand going from 64 pages down to 36 ... but we enjoy a 20% productivity gain because the merchandise assortment is relevant to the recipient. Our profit and loss statement now looks like this:

• Demand per Book = $1.16.
• Profit Factor = 35%.
• Cost of Mailing = $0.35.
• Profit = $0.06.

And once again, we've kept the wheels on the bus.

This is coming, friends. And it is a positive outcome. You get to keep doing what you love doing!!

Math is sending us down this path. Simple math. Not me, not you. Math.

We will greatly reduce pages. We have no choice.

We will increase frequency. Your CFO will give you no choice.

Eventually, to prop up productivity, we will personalize the catalogs. Many catalogers won't. 

By the way, your catalog vendors are going to LOVE THIS STRATEGY. They'll LOVE IT! They will make a ton of profit when you execute a personalized merchandise assortment.

Next week, I will share with you how all of this shakes out. There are four paths that catalogers will take, in response to the math outlined this week.

The 2016 Catalog Thesis Becomes Clear

Here's an outline of what I described yesterday.

• Housefile names are somewhat protected by increasing organic percentages.
• Acquisition name performance is not great, and is being impacted by a shortened "life of a catalog".
• Math dictates that we will have to mail smaller catalogs in response.
• Smaller catalogs generate less demand.
• We will have to mail smaller catalogs more frequently.
• Should the life of a catalog continue to erode, smaller catalogs will struggle to perform well, requiring us to personalize the merchandise assortment to each individual customer, based on customer history (both our history and recent co-op history).
• In response to these trends, catalogers are going to take one of four paths (more on this to follow).

Let's focus on the math.

Say you mailed a 124 page catalog once every four weeks. For a below-average housefile buyer, your productivity in 2011 looked like this:

• Demand per Book = $2.20.
• Profit Factor = 35%.
• Cost of Mailing = $0.72.
• Profit = $0.05.

But in 2016, the life of the catalog is shrinking ... the catalog is only 80% as productive as it was back in 2011. Here's what your profit and loss statement looks like:

• Demand per Book = $1.76.
• Profit Factor = 35%.
• Cost of Mailing = $0.72.
• Profit = ($0.10).

You have two choices.

• Do not mail this customer in 2016.
• Find a vehicle that will cause this customer to become profitable.

So, you develop a 64 page concept. The numbers change.

• Demand per Book = $1.35.
• Profit Factor = 35%.
• Cost of Mailing = $0.45.
• Profit = $0.02.

In our example, we generate 77% of the demand on 52% of the pages. Often, the percentage is between 80% and 90%, but we'll go with the lower number.

Simple math drives the decision for us. We have no choice but to head to a smaller page count.

But wait, there's a problem. You, over there, the one who looks like the CFO. What is your question/comment?

• "The smaller catalog generates less demand. I don't like that. Mail more often, so that I do not lose sales." 

You will respond by mailing two sixty-four page catalogs instead of one larger catalog.

This is how you will protect your profit and loss statement while protecting demand, in response to a shrinking life of a catalog.

Now, let's move ahead a couple of years. If the life of a catalog shrinks again, and you lose another 10% of your productivity, then the numbers change.

• Demand per Book = $1.22.
• Profit Factor = 35%.
• Cost of Mailing = $0.45.
• Profit = ($0.02).

Once again, we have a problem. And we cannot keep shrinking the size of the catalog down to zero (or could we) ... a cataloger loves to mail catalogs, so the cataloger is going to find ways to ... wait for it ... wait for it ... to keep mailing catalogs!!!!!

More on that topic, tomorrow.

Math Dictates The Response To A Shorter Catalog Life

Larger companies run page count and circulation depth simulations. The simulations allow them to understand what an optimal page count and circulation depth might look like, given different productivity levels.

Here's what your choices might have looked like a few years ago.

The red number in the profit table represents what your strategy looked like ... 1,500,000 circ depth and 128 pages. The green numbers represent optimal profit. You weren't far from optimal profit ... so things were great.

Then, the life of a catalog became shorter. Customers threw out our catalogs, quickly, shortening the effective life of any given catalog. Based on the data I'm evaluating, this results in a +/- 10% productivity hit in the past 1-2 years (mind you, the business isn't taking a 10% productivity hit ... just the catalogs are).

 Now look at what happens to our grid.

Look at the green numbers - the optimal profit numbers. Notice that optimal profit "stretches" in multiple directions. Either circ depth is shallow at high page counts, or circ depth is deep at small page counts. That's it. Those are the two choices. And you cannot prospect with a large piece, as productivity declines - you cannot circulate the larger piece to prospects - the math doesn't work.

Market forces are pushing us toward smaller, more frequent catalog mailings.

Guess what? Here's what the story looks like ... with a 50% productivity hit (hint - 2023).

Well into the future, it's low page counts with modest circ levels ... or almost no circ and large page counts ... should -50% happen to catalog productivity.

If the life of a catalog shrinks more in 2016/2017, we will be left with no choice but to mail small catalogs ... and we will have to greatly bump the productivity of the small catalogs by personalizing the merchandise assortment to each individual customer. I know, that's something that's hard for catalogers to manage ... but we'll have no choice. That's what the math tells us.

The 2016 Catalog Thesis is becoming clear.

• Housefile names are somewhat protected by increasing organic percentages.
• Acquisition name performance is not great, and is being impacted by a shortened "life of a catalog".
• Math dictates that we will have to mail smaller catalogs in response.
• Smaller catalogs generate less demand.
• We will have to mail smaller catalogs more frequently.
• Should the life of a catalog continue to erode, smaller catalogs will struggle to perform well, requiring us to personalize the merchandise assortment to each individual customer, based on customer history (both our history and recent co-op history).
• In response to these trends, catalogers are going to take one of four paths (more on this to follow).

Major Catalog Trend - The Life of a Catalog is Shrinking

FYI - we're going to talk about catalogs for the next six posts - if this is not your cup of tea, no worries. If your career depends upon profitable management of a catalog marketing program at a traditional catalog brand, well, buckle up!!


This slide is from a presentation I gave, way back in 1999 at Eddie Bauer. I was trying to convince everybody/anybody that every catalog needed two versions ... one that was 180 pages sent to 1.5 million customers ... one that was 64 pages sent to an additional 2.0 million customers.

I was passionate about the topic because something interesting was happening.

1. Business was below plan.
2. The internet was chopping the "life" of a catalog off.

In other words, we'd measure how long a catalog generated sales. In 1996, a catalog would generate sales for 12-16 weeks. In 1999, the dynamic changed. The catalog generated sales for 10-12 weeks. The internet cut off the tail of the catalog.

Worse, the sales we'd obtain from the catalog in weeks 2-9 were less than we'd historically measured. Weeks 0-1 seemed ok, then the catalog would sort of die off.

When this happened, the dynamics of a catalog business changed.

1. The online channel captured the sales that were cut off from the tail of the catalog, but the catalog did not cause the online sales to happen. This is the "organic percentage" I've talked about for nearly a decade.
2. The 180 page catalog was much, much less profitable.
3. For 70% of the file receiving a catalog, a smaller catalog ... 64 pages ... became more profitable than a larger catalog (180 pages).

When the life of a catalog shrinks, the catalog becomes less productive.

When a catalog becomes less productive, you have to make one of two choices.

1. Reduce circulation.
2. Reduce pages.

Now - read what Bill LaPierre had to say a while back (click here). Go down to the "changing patterns" paragraph. Read that paragraph.

I get to analyze a lot of mail/holdout tests. I measure the incremental demand generated by a mailing, by week. Over the past two years, there is a clear dynamic at play:

• The life of a catalog is shrinking.

This is one of the reasons why your co-op names are not performing well. You used to generate $1.30 per catalog ... but now the tail is being cut off catalogs, shortening the realistic life of the catalog down to 2-4 weeks, in so many cases. This lowers the dollar-per-book down to $1.10 or $1.00 (or $0.50 for many of you) on co-op catalogs. 

Again. Go look at the incremental difference between your mailed group and your holdout group. This tells you what the realistic life of a catalog is. In many cases, the life of a catalog is down to 2-4 weeks. Look at your matchback results for co-op names, and you'll observe similar trends.

Now, if your customer is 70+ years old, this doesn't really apply to you - the rules of modern marketing do not apply to you.

If your customer is between 50 and 65 years old, this is about to become the story of 2016.

When the life of a catalog shrinks, page counts shrink - they have to shrink in order to maintain circulation depth.

When page counts shrink, demand shrinks. To make up lost demand, smaller page count mailings are mailed more often.

In the next five posts, I'll describe which of four paths a cataloger is likely to take, in response to a shrinking life of a catalog.