With Workers Largely at Home, B-to-B Marketers Devise New Ways to Find Customers

The pandemic shift to working from home means there’s always someone around to collect the mail. But it also means decision makers aren’t at the office when the business-to-business catalogs arrive, especially at the height of lockdown. And even though many employees are returning to their desks at least some of the time, the shift from office to home is forcing b-to-b marketers to rethink their mailing strategies. Many marketers are periodically mailing smaller catalogs—fewer pages and smaller paper size—to test response rates. They’re also supplementing with email marketing messages to “plug holes.” Some are even sending their b-to-b catalogs to home addresses when they’re available. Direct mail took a hit during the pandemic, as many marketers accelerated plans to implement digital strategies. The U.S. Postal Service reported a 9.4% decline in total mail volume from 2019 to 2020. If not for last year’s election, marketing mail volume would have decreased for the nine months ended June 30, 2021. Business to business catalogs comprise 25% of all catalog mail, according to the American Catalog Mailers Association. There’s no one-size-fits-all playbook since the impact on b-to-b marketers varied according to industry. Mobile Ad Dollars Will Top Direct Mail Spending in Local Media for the First Time “This did not hit everybody in the same way like a normal recession would,” Scott Tinkoff, svp of customer acquisition at marketing consultancy Merit B2B, told Adweek. “If you were in health care and had certain products, you had a great year. It was really organization by organization and industry by industry. Education, government and construction were strong throughout and very direct mail-responsive.” An omnichannel approach Take Cree Lighting, an ecommerce LED lighting company based in Wisconsin, whose customers are mostly electrical engineers. Cree saw a small dip in performance during the initial weeks of the pandemic, but once contractors were allowed to return to work, it was business as usual. The company had been reducing its direct mail spend since 2017 to create an omnichannel strategy that includes social media, SEO, programmatic and prospecting emails. When Lauren Taber, Cree’s marketing director, started there in 2017, the bulk of the spend was on direct mail. Today it’s 65% digital, 35% direct mail. “It's still a good portion of our budget,” Taber told Adweek. “Electrical contractors love the tactile, so they like having a catalog.” But even the small change in strategy came in handy during the last 19 months, particularly since Cree saw an increase in DIY home improvement. (About 30% of the business is what she calls “weekend warriors.”) The March 2020 catalog was already distributed and the April edition was being finalized when Covid-19 shut much of the world down. Taber was able to incorporate messaging into that catalog reminding customers that they’re always open online. As Taber has slowly increased digital spend, the monthly catalog size has decreased, going from a range of 60 to 70 pages a few years ago to 36 to 40 today. And each product listed on the page must prove its worth. “We look at each page every month and ask whether the product that’s on the page is paying for itself,” Taber said. Minimizing expenses Before Covid, Sue Landay, CEO of Massachusetts-based Trainers Warehouse that sells items for corporate trainers and teachers, mailed a monthly catalog to existing customers and prospects. But with so much of the workforce at home, in-person training and seminars have been largely cut. Landay and her team were able to parlay some of the items Trainers Warehouse sells into useful elements of virtual training. But the bulk of them—whiteboards, conversation starters, fidgets and completion certificates—aren’t in demand. They’ve tried mailing pared-down catalogs every few months to test response rates, but the results were dismal. In June 2020, the team mailed a catalog that was one-tenth of the normal size to test response rates. “We don’t want the expense of printing the catalog and postage,” Landay told Adweek. “Our approach has been to really trim down and minimize our expenses in order to weather the storm.” It’s a fine line to manage. “The catalog is obviously a more significant cost than digital,” Hamilton Davison, president and executive director of the American Catalog Mailers Association. “Digital ads are less expensive and immediate, so it's tempting for a chief financial officer and others to say, 'Let's just eliminate the catalog and we'll be a lot more profitable.' "But the catalog plays a very unique role in the purchase process, both in inspiring, getting attention and accurately displaying the product.” How Panda Express Reversed a Sales Slump With Direct Mail