Best of the blog 2009

Catalogue e-business launched its blog, Catablogue e-business, in March. Originally a separate site (http://catalog-biz.blogspot.com), it was rolled into the www.catalog-biz.com site when we relaunched the latter in November (although the archive remains on the standalone site). Some of the posts were highly subjective and, on occasion, a bit frivolous; others were firmly rooted in facts and figures. Which were the 10 most popular posts? These:

• “What we learned from 150 marketing emails” In a nutshell: For one seemingly never-ending week we kept a log of all 150 marketing emails we received. We analysed how many used best practice such as personalisation (not many!) as well as displayed examples worthy of emulation and others that served as cautionary tales.

• “Royal silliness” In a nutshell: News of the World took Prince William’s main squeeze, Kate Middleton, to task for allegedly using her royal connection to promote her parents’ catalogue business, Party Pieces. We took News of the World to task for creating a story out of the ether.

• “Another email we love” In a nutshell: Heaping praise upon gardening supplier Bakker’s monthly enewsletter.

• “Which is the tail and which is the dog?” In a nutshell: In a session at this year’s ECMOD Conference and Exhibition, marketing consultant Bill LaPierre put forth that nowadays the web, not print, should be a direct marketer’s primary channel and that catalogues should evolve to become in large part drivers of traffic to the web.

• “Quick ecommerce takeaways from Amy Africa” In a nutshell: The choicest cuts from the ecommerce expert’s ECMOD 2009 session “Ten Simple Things You Can Do to Improve Website Performance”.

• “Bonprix’s US reentry” In a nutshell: We speculate about the motives behind the acquisition of US manufacturer/marketer Venus Swimwear by Bonprix, Otto Group’s value-brand catalogue.

• “Royal Mail v the CWU: misconceptions and misdemeanours” In a nutshell: The Communication Workers Union’s announcement in early October that it had voted to conduct nationwide strikes against Royal Mail had everyone in the industry talking. But was all the talk correct? We didn’t think so.

• “Email we love: Lakeland” In a nutshell: How do we love the marketing emails from housewares cataloguer/retailer Lakeland? Let us count the ways.

• “Back to school for Bert’s Nurseries” In a nutshell: Unfortunately we didn’t have much love left over for the Bert’s Nurseries catalogue.

• “The best of both channels” In a nutshell: In which we expound on our love for Lakeland some more, while at the same time gently offering a few suggestions as to how it could improve its bricks-and-mortar stores by adapting a few of the tactics it uses so well in its catalogues and online.