Practical Ecommerce tells about Fairytale Brownies’ online sales being primarily powered by printed catalogs mailed to approximately 1.8 million households annually. Fairytale Brownies expects to gross roughly $8 million in 2009, with around 60 percent of its revenue from online sales.
“The brownie gift catalog really drives a large portion of our business. Although we do most of our revenue through online sales, a lot of those customers find us through receiving our catalog, so I think there is still a big role for the printed catalog and direct mail pieces in the ecommerce business.”
“We did a total of six mail drops in 2009, and we printed multiple versions of the catalog that are mostly cover change-outs, like the September drop had the first few pages in a Fall theme and Halloween gifts; and the next drop featured Thanksgiving; and the next drop featured Christmas. But the core of the product pages remains the same because it’s less expensive to change out just a few of the outer pages.”
“A lot of the traditional mailing strategies still work very well for us, such as renting mailing lists and prospecting names. The more catalogs you mail, the more revenue you get, you have to be very careful to mail to targeted lists that are producing positive results, or you can over-mail and end up losing money.”
The financial results of Fairytale Brownies are excellent implementations of our suggestions of ways to save on printing.
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