By Jim Daniels, of BizWeb2000
[October 20th, 1999]

See Also   Email Marketing Primer   How to Increase Your Online Sales   Take Advantage of Google's AdWords   Using Foreign Search Engines to Boost Your Sales   Getting Sure Profits Through Google, Goto.com and DirectHit   Ten Places You Must Submit Your Site   Clever Profit Growth Software   The Power Of Personalized Email   How To Go Long With Your Web Marketing   How NOT to Promote Your E-business   Winning the Search Engine Wars   Latest Tips on Search Engine Marketing   Are You Wasting Your Money Online?   Should I Hire Another Salesperson or Invest in an Affiliate Program?   The Death of Positioning?   Links: Why You Need Them and How to Get Them   Your #1 Overlooked Business Asset

[This is the second part of a two part article. The first part can be read here].

As many of you know, I'm not big on design. Although I managed to design my www.bizweb2000.com site all by my lonesome, it is far from perfect. (While many have praised the site's content, others have dogged the somewhat awkward, non-flowing style.)

This is why I now have a designer in-house. And while my designer has not gotten to fixing up my handy work at bizweb2000.com, she tackled this catalog and completed it in a matter of days using a program called Quark Express.

Quark is a full featured design program made especially for print jobs like catalogs. If you've done any design work on the web, forget what you know. Design for print is a totally different beast. If you're planning on designing your own print catalog and don't have Quark, consider buying it. The program costs about $700 but is well worth it. If you don't want to learn Quark, consider hiring a designer who owns it.

After calling many print houses we quickly found out that most accept files in Quark format only. (At least the ones we called!) Therefore, getting Quark was a no-brainer.

Once we had the catalog laid out in Quark, we shopped around for the right print house to give the job to. When you get to this step, be careful. The price range for the very same job can vary by thousands of dollars from printer to printer. After much searching we located a company that was reasonable. As expected, they preferred Quark file format, but we were prepared.

Okay, moving right along...

Above I mentioned that you'd need a strategy for getting your catalogs into prospects hands. This is important to consider before finalizing the layout your catalog.

I decided that my own strategy would be to include a catalog with every product I ship from my office. Nothing special needed for this strategy, just a lot of catalogs.

However, I also decided to mail a catalog to every customer who had purchased something from my site over the past two years. If you plan on doing this, the time to consider it is BEFORE you have your catalogs printed. Why?..

Well, for a mere $115 you can get a bulk mail permit from the US Post Office. This enables you to mail at the cheapest rates possible. Rates for mailing my small catalog were as low as $.16 per piece. That's cheap.

All you have to do is visit your local post office and ask for a bulk mail permit application. Once you secure your permit number, add it onto your catalog layout so your print house can print it on all your catalogs. This will save you that step when mailing. And this is a big time saver.

Note: Before giving the final go ahead for printing, bring a sample to the post office who will be doing the mailing. They will check it to be sure it adheres to all bulk mail regulations.

Once you have your catalogs printed, it's time to distribute them. Slip one into every package that leaves your office. That's simple. Just be sure the extra weight doesn't change your postage rates on typical order shipments.

Next, mail a catalog to every customer who has ever bought from you! Hey, that's what you've been growing a database for! I recommend you use Bulk Rate Postage if your database contains over a few hundred addresses. Bulk mail can be a little tricky, but it's a good thing to learn if you are a U.S. based business...

The bulk mailing process itself can be a bit intimidating. In addition to the bulk mail permit I mentioned , you'll need a bulk mail program that can process your mail in the format the post office requires. After researching a few of these programs I went with software from MySoftware.

Their combination of MyDeluxeMailList and MyPostageRateSaver CD cost $149 but was well worth it. With these tools I was able to import all my addresses from Microsoft Access and automate most of my bulk mail campaign.

In addition to filtering out the non U.S. addresses (which can't be mailed to using bulk rates) their program purged my duplicate addresses, setup and barcoded my labels, and sorted my bulk mail by zip code for processing. It also printed my address labels, tray labels (that's how bulk mail is organized) CASS certificate and other necessary paperwork that the post office requires.

Although it was a bit of a learning experience the first time around, the lesson was invaluable as a small business who plans to use direct mail more in the future.

I now have 500 catalogs going out to past customers every week for the next few months. Now that's a big boost for business!

Well, that about sums it up. Did I completely scare you away from this offline tie-in strategy? Although it sounds like a lot, it can be taken one step at a time and implemented by anyone.

Save this tip and refer to it when you're ready! And if you're considering implementing this strategy but don't want to go through the learning curve, stop by the BizWeb2000 site and check out my mini-catalog. If you like it there's a planner you can fill out to get you started.

And remember the whole reason for using this offline tie-in strategy...

"There's no customer like an old customer."

Don't ever let your best customers get away. Make the effort to get your newest products and services in their hands and they'll reward you by purchasing again and again.

Article by Jim Daniels, author of "Insider Internet Marketing", a book that cuts through all the hype and lets you discover how to REALLY make money online. You'll find the 1999 edition at Jim's just updated catalog of books, software and web services.

You can also sign up for Jim's FREE, revealing e-newsletter, the BizWeb E-Gazette.