Long-time cataloger Blair looking to web to help inform catalog strategy
Long-time cataloger Blair Corp. is using the power of the web to help refine its catalog strategy. While vice president of marketing Jeff Parnell reinforces the idea that the company wants customers to shop the channel of their choice, he also tells Internet Retailer that Blair’s catalogs have been taking on an additional job: educating Blair’s customers on the benefits of shopping Blair.com.
For example, Parnell says, a recent home catalog had language pointing shoppers to “great decorating tips in our guide to window fashions on Blair.com.” Enhanced zoom recently added to the site is played up in the catalogs, with the tip on catalog pages that Blair.com’s new online zoom provides visuals of even the tiniest details of stitching or fabric. Catalogs also promote customer product reviews, recently added to the web site from technology vendor Bazaarvoice Inc., with an invitation to customers to visit the site to share their own recommendations.
With a marketing database that provides a cross-channel view of customers, Blair also is incorporating Internet behavioral data into how often and to whom it sends catalogs.
“How customers purchase online certainly can have an impact on how many catalogs they receive,” Parnell says. When web analytics captures an online shopper who appears to be a solid catalog prospect, Blair sends the shopper a catalog, just as it uses catalogs to promote its web site.
Parnell adds that Blair is looking for synergies between its web and catalog channels. “Like a lot of catalogers, we are continually testing how the two channels relate, Parnell says. “We haven’t taken a full plunge into dramatically cutting catalog circulation because the customer is a web shopper. But we’re experimenting.”
Blair Corp. is No. 95 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites. Parnell will be a co-presenter at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, June 4-7 in San Jose, in a session entitled Making E-Retailing Music: When IT and Marketing Harmonize.
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