2024 Begins On An Upward Note, U.S. Ad Market Posts Best January Ever (mediapost.com)

DISRUPT. All successful catalogs do three things well: disrupt, delight and drive. And if they’re missing that critical first step, they won’t gain the customer’s consideration, rendering all the agonized-over catalog pages inside irrelevant and the brand facing dwindling sales. From covers to the resurgence in QR codes, join us for a deep dive into the tactics and techniques that create disruptive catalogs. See more at: https://www.jschmid.com/disruptive-catalog-series/

About 10 years ago, REI made me so stinking mad that I swore I’d never grace their check-out again. A brand-advocate no more, I huffed my outraged “customer-no-service” story to everyone that cared to listen. Their offense? They made me pay for return shipping on a few items that didn’t fit. And worse, because I didn’t get my way, I decided the phone rep was rude and dismissive. Yes, I’m guilty of perpetuating the “all-about-me” attitude pervasive in the consumer world. WORD OF CAUTION: YES, one bad experience can ruin a customer relationship forever. And the reason can be as petty as feeling dismissed. But then, darn it, suddenly I couldn’t avoid them – they were everywhere. Read more at: https://www.jschmid.com/blog/rei-me/

The postal price increases in the near term have proven to be a failure. The USPS modeling predicted that revenue would increase and demand wouldn't fall. However, the data tells a different story. In 2023, revenue of “marketing mail” decreased by $920 million and volume decreased by 7.7 billion pieces. The USPS produced and relied on an economic model that proved to be wrong. Mail volume fell for “marketing mail” and the result was a loss in top-line revenue and a bottom-line loss of $1.6 billion. These losses prove that the postage increases were counterproductive and need to be rolled back. The USPS is a classic fixed cost business where incremental volume is highly profitable because the increased volume has little incremental cost. The postage increases for marketing mail clearly resulted in the huge volume declines between 2022 and 2023. The losses from volume declines were not made up by the postage increases.