Mail Order

[NurseryEssentials]

Hi Guys,

Was wondering if anyone had any information regarding Mail Order Catalogues.

We have been thinking for some time about going down this road, just wondered if anyone had any hints and tips.


Thanks a lot in advance guys.

Claire

[Indizine]

Can you be more specific about what you want?

[NurseryEssentials]

Hi,

Sorry, was just reading my post back, i realised had not given that much info.

We are a company selling baby products, we are mainly using the internet as our main form off advertising. Most of our orders do come from the web too.

We are just looking to explore every avenue of marketing.

Thanks

[Indizine]

ok wellk i wil move this to marketing forums and that might help get some replies. I take it you are considering selling your baby products by mail order and want to know if this is a viable route.

[Dotwhack]

Hi Claire,

Here's some food for thought regarding mail order:
1) Cost effectiveness depends on quantity being produced & distributed. You need to find a printer, a mailing house and make contact with royal mail to work out where the cost effective quantities are.
2) There are quite long lead times on the above processes so you need to make sure you hold stock for the period of the catalogue and all prices etc can be held. Nothing worse then trying to order from an out of date catalogue.
3) For experience, mailing work well in tandem with online marketing i.e. emailing people a couple days after sending out the catalogue. Mail order can also drive traffic to your website.

I left the mail order industry in 2006 so might be a little rusty on finer details but the principles remain the same. However if you need any help on the website/interent marketing side, let me know

Danielle

[NurseryEssentials]

Dotwhack - Thank you for your feedback. It is all very daunting. Was wondering if you had a rough idea about conversion rates? I have been trawling the net to try to identify an industry standard conversion rate to no avail.

Indizine - Thank you for moving this for me. Yeah, our original business model was mainly web based, but we are always looking to change things and expand.

I was thinking about going to a business consultant to see if they would be able to help.


Thank you so much guys!

Claire