April 1, 2008
Maintain your good name
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ken Magill
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts may not care about having a bad reputation, but for e-mail marketers, reputation has a specific meaning crucial to the deliverability of their messages. And many merchants are not even aware of this....
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Keeping DC costs at bay
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Curt Barry
Need to cut costs? Who doesn't these days. While there's not much you can do about postage or paper prices, your DC is a prime area for reducing costs....
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BlueSky's bad deal
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Melissa Dowling, Editor-in-Chief
The news that multititle catalog mailer/fulfillment house BlueSky Brands had abruptly shut down last month no doubt came as a shock to many people. Even...
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Hallmark Flowers ditching direct
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Jim Tierney
Hallmark Flowers, a subsidiary of Kansas City, MO-based Hallmark Cards, plans to shut down its direct-to-consumer flowers and gifts business by the end of April....
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Good-bye, BlueSky
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By the Multichannel Merchant staff
BlueSky Brands is history. The North Kingstown, RI-based parent company of the Paragon Gifts, Bits and Pieces, Bits and Pieces U.K., National Wildlife Direct, and Winterthur catalogs, which also owns McLean, VA-based third-party fulfillment provider AB&C Group, shut down on March 14....
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Postal reform: a rate hike every May
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Jim Tierney
The postal reform bill passed in late 2006 does mean that rate hikes should be much more manageable, since they are tied to the CPI (Consumer Price Index)....
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Bill would let merchants negotiate credit card fees
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jim Emerson and Ray Schultz
Catalogers have long wanted relief from the fees charged by credit card issuers. But a bill introduced in Congress in March may not be the best way to...
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Lillian Vernon close to a sale
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Jim Tierney
Lillian Vernon Corp., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 20, has reached a tentative agreement to sell the company, according to documents filed in March in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, DE....
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Movers & shakers
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
Healthcare products and services provider Henry Schein has promoted Mark Mastroianni to director of marketing communications and programs in the company's...
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Taking to the great outdoors
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Tim Parry
It appears more consumers are embracing outdoor activity. Or at least they're dressing the part. In the fourth quarter of 2007, there were 10.6 million...
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Do consumers get Catalog Choice et al?
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Tim Parry
What began as a session at the spring NEMOA conference on how kitchen/home products merchant Williams-Sonoma uses customer data in its contact strategies...
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Eastwood gets social
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Tim Parry
Since automotive enthusiasts are so passionate about their hobby, Eastwood had good reason to embrace social networking online back in 2004. The move has helped it engage customers, acquire and retain prospects, and build its brand identity....
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A mixed quarter for b-to-b
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jim Tierney
Among the publicly traded business-to-business merchants tracked by Multichannel Merchant, 2007 ended with some winners and some losers. Year-over-year...
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A surprising lift in January
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Tim Parry
Consumers may be buying less in the tight economy, but you can't say catalogers weren't trying. Catalog Tracker received 353 catalogs in January, up 11% from the 317 delivered to its mailbox in the same month of 2007....
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2008 MCM Awards finalists
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
The judging panel has narrowed the field of nearly 200 entries in the Multichannel Merchant Awards to 110 total finalists. This year's judges selected...
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PAPER THIN
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
On the pricing front, mills announced yet another $3 per hundredweight (cwt), or $60 per ton, price increase across the whole grade spectrum, effective...
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THE AGE OF EXPERIENTIAL
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
When merchants talk about experiential marketing, they're usually referring to stores and how to get customers engaged in the products and the brand once...
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Cannibals in bedlam
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS
A given: Typically, a consumer prospect looks for the best price rather than relying on loyalty to a distant source. A given: A business prospect looks...
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Digging in to Michigan Bulb
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
Ah springtime, when a young man's thoughts turn to gardening or something like that. And when you think gardening, venerable seed and plant catalogers...
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Best bets for site tests
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, LARRY BECKER
Nearly every Website team tracks site conversion. But few really do anything about it. That is, few use scientific testing to discover real improvements....
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The Search is on
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, BY STEPHAN SPENCER
The SEO landscape is constantly shifting. What used to be considered a best practice two years ago may very well be irrelevant today, simply because Web-based...
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Brand Transformation
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, by Andrea Syverson
In some ways, brands are just like people. They get stuck. They have habits that are hard to break. They don't always see their blind spots, and they...
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SAYINGS FOR SELLERS
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, BY STUART ROSE
As an investment banker for middle market companies, my job is to do three things: sell businesses for owners who wish to exit or have a liquidity event...
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Mail or Mulch
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, BY TIM PARRY
Postmaster General John Potter has challenged customers to reduce undeliverable-as-addressed mail by 50% by 2010. Are you up to the test?...
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LISTINGS
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
New lists Celebrate Express Files The party retailer has released a corporate master file of 843,031 12-month buyers who bought party supplies and costumes....
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THE BOX STEP
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Lois Boyle-Brayfield
Have you mastered the box step? Not the pattern dancers practice when learning to waltz, the catalog box dance. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the box dance is what your customers do — or at least, what you hope they do — every time your package arrives at their doorstep and they are getting ready to open the box....
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Is SaaS for you?
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, BY ERNIE SCHELL
“Software on demand.” “Software as a service.” “Hosted solutions.”
They're all different names for the same thing — using business applications that are maintained off-site, either by the software vendor or at a secure third-party location, and using the system on some type of pay-as-you-go basis....
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Increasing AOV on the phone
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, BY LIZ KISLIK
What's the AOV this week? How's the AOV trending? When marketers start talking about average order value, I can't help thinking of Garrison Keillor's...
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back word
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
turns 30 At the ripe old age of 30, Movies Unlimited considers itself the oldest specialty video retailer in the U.S. And the Philadelphia-based company...
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