The following are excerpts from a recent study by the “Harvard Business Review”.
Despite 2 decades of email and social media marketing, and the digitization of the consumer experience, catalog mailings have been steadily increasing since 2015. Consumers are surprisingly enthusiastic about receiving them—response rates from catalogs have increased by 170%, between 2004 & 2018. There’s evidence that Millennials are particularly interested in catalogs they receive in the mail.
But, has the catalog made a comeback? Retailers in some categories appear to think so. Many brands and retailers, such as Nordstrom, Patagonia, Crate & Barrel, Restoration Hardware, and leisure services such as vacations and cruise lines, are investing heavily in physical catalogs. Even pure-online retailers are now printing catalogs.
Evidence was gathered from a large-scale field experiment with a luxury e-commerce retailer to test the effectiveness of catalogs. HBR partnered with a U.S. based specialty luxury watch and jewelry e-commerce retailer with a global clientele and without physical store presence. The company generates annual revenue of $60 million and operating profit of $12 million, with a database of approximately 28,000 customers.
Departing from their normal means of gathering leads via online search & other online platforms, and acting on HBR advice, the company launched a new bi-monthly catalog campaign featuring professional and artistically rendered product photography with high-quality printing.
The field experiment selected a random 30% of its U.S. based customers. Of those customers:
Why catalogs still work:
Why Catalogs Are Making a Comeback
Despite 2 decades of email and social media marketing, and the digitization of the consumer experience, catalog mailings have been steadily increasing since 2015. Consumers are surprisingly enthusiastic about receiving them—response rates from catalogs have increased by 170%, between 2004 & 2018. There’s evidence that Millennials are particularly interested in catalogs they receive in the mail.
But, has the catalog made a comeback? Retailers in some categories appear to think so. Many brands and retailers, such as Nordstrom, Patagonia, Crate & Barrel, Restoration Hardware, and leisure services such as vacations and cruise lines, are investing heavily in physical catalogs. Even pure-online retailers are now printing catalogs.
Evidence was gathered from a large-scale field experiment with a luxury e-commerce retailer to test the effectiveness of catalogs. HBR partnered with a U.S. based specialty luxury watch and jewelry e-commerce retailer with a global clientele and without physical store presence. The company generates annual revenue of $60 million and operating profit of $12 million, with a database of approximately 28,000 customers.
Departing from their normal means of gathering leads via online search & other online platforms, and acting on HBR advice, the company launched a new bi-monthly catalog campaign featuring professional and artistically rendered product photography with high-quality printing.
The field experiment selected a random 30% of its U.S. based customers. Of those customers:
- 5% of them received neither email nor catalogs for 6-months,
- 55% of them received a weekly marketing email, and
- 40% of them received the new bi-monthly catalogs in addition to the weekly email marketing.
- Compared to the Control group, “Email + catalog” group experienced 49% lift in sales and 125% lift in inquiries.
- In comparison, “Email-only” group only had 28% increase in sales and a 77% lift in inquiries over the control group.
- The sales and inquiry lifts from catalogs almost doubled those from email marketing.
Why catalogs still work:
- Catalogs stand apart from increasingly cluttered digital inboxes & social media feeds.
- As physical products, they can linger in consumers’ houses long after emails are deleted, increasing top-of-mind awareness.
- But their real power is how—for certain products—they increase the vividness of a product by enhancing consumer’s ability to visualize and imagine product usage experiences.
- Vividness is highly influential in consumer behavior as it can increase consumer involvement and joy in the purchasing process.
- Companies need to focus on designing stunning imagery & creative presentation of products to evoke emotion.
Why Catalogs Are Making a Comeback
