Marketers Evaluate Mailings After Terrorist Attacks

With the nation’s attention diverted from commerce to television coverage of the unfolding events following several terrorist actions, direct marketers are evaluating whether and when to go forward with scheduled mailings.

In some cases, the events came right on top of campaigns in progress. For Design Toscano, the attacks stopped a 1.9 million piece Labor Day catalog mailing "that was kicking butt until 9:18 Eastern time on Sept. 11," Michael Stopka, the Elk Grove Village, IL-based European furnishing marketer’s president, said.

The mailing was on track to pull in $1.40 per catalog mailed, roughly 10% above what it had predicted. But a precipitous drop in responses, combined with an immediate 70% falloff in call center activity the day of the attacks, kicked the knees out from under the mailing.

By week’s end the responses had rebounded somewhat, and were between 20%-30% off what the company had expected.

Tuesday also marked the date Design Toscano had to sign off on a 1.5-million-catalog mailing scheduled for October 1. Stopka elected to postpone the mailing until October 8, and to cut 250,000 copies. The mailing will rely more heavily on former customer reactivation and names with Abacus cooperative database information overlaid.

"Even though I have the catalog printed we will only mail what will be profitable," Stopka says. He has elected to cut back on prospecting portions, and possibly do a prospect mailing in January.

"It’s a fall book, not a gift book," Stopka says. The company has held off on how it will handle its holiday catalog until it has a chance to analyze the response curve from the October mailing.

Even with the possibility that America could be at war, Stopka still feels mailing is necessary. "You have to mail to be in business," he says.

International Coins & Currency, Inc. had what was supposed to be an early-September effort caught in an untenable position. The time right around Labor Day is usually a slow period for the Montpelier, VT-based coin dealer, which sends out a catalog every year in July.

"We usually have a bit of a slowdown, but this is slower than usual," John Devitt, vice president, marketing, says.

International Coins had timed another 30,000-catalog drop for the first week in September, but there was a problem at the plant and the mailing was delayed. At deadline it was scheduled to go into the mail in mid-month.

The company decided to keep the rescheduled mail date. "We wanted to get into the mail sequence in case there was a backlog at the post office," Devitt says. "It seemed to us that the sooner we got in the better."

The company’s next significant mailing is its holiday catalog, which is scheduled for early October. Devitt has already sent that catalog, with an order for 40,000 copies, to his printer.

"We probably won’t change [the holiday catalog mail date,]" says Devitt. "We will try to hold the drop date. But if mail is extremely slow, if things are getting stuck out there, we might try to move it up."