This Month at Lenser March 2008

Newsletter Archive

PRESIDENT'S CORNER
By John Lenser, President
As we predicted, 2008, a year that holds both the summer Olympics and a national election, is proving to be a rough one for many direct marketers. However, none of us could have foreseen not only the downturn of the economy, but a tightening of credit that has sent venerable catalog companies such as Lillian Vernon and Sharper Image into bankruptcy. And, it is very likely that the road of 2008 will become even rougher as the mortgage crisis reaches its peak this summer and the drama surrounding the Presidential election continues. But this is a strange downturn that is effecting the population very unevenly.

My advice to all our clients is to stay with your original marketing plans and avoid the potholes. And potholes continue! My wife and I, along with most other Americans, will be completely absorbed on April 22nd when Pennsylvania conducts its primary. This is not a day you want your catalog going in-home—and to the extent that you can avoid certain "pothole" dates, we recommend you do. While it is tough to avoid the series of primaries in May, do avoid the following dates for your in-home targets:  Read on for details…

FEATURE ARTICLE
Convergent Channel Marketing
By Bill Nicolai, Senior Partner
At LENSER, we have been seeing an increasing fraction of sales coming through our clients' websites. A much larger number of customers are originating either from initial web sales or internet catalog requests. Many are still thinking of their internet and catalog businesses as two separate channels, but for some time now, we have been making marketing recommendations that seek to help our clients integrate their marketing efforts across channels…for Bill's recommendations, click here.

CASE STUDY
Housefile Databases are Rich with Treasures!
By Michelle Houston, Vice President
Mailers faced a challenging year last year. Unfortunately, due to the economy, sluggish housing market and political year, they are again off to a slow start in 2008. Those issues, combined with continuing list fatigue and declining list universes, are causing prospecting response rates to plummet. In light of these concerns, mailers must be more strategic about reducing expenses by mailing smarter.  Find out how...

CIRCULATION TIP
Customer Data Caught at POS—The Dirty Little Secret
By Tracy Blake, Marketing Manager
Everyone knows that capturing Point-of-Sale (POS) customer information is optimal for catalog follow-up. After all, these people are interested in your product and have left the comfort of their home to shop for it. And what’s more, they have given you their name and address to hit them up again!  Or have they?

CREATIVE TIP
Powerhouse Pagination
By Carol Worthington-Levy, Creative Partner
Pagination is one of the first essential steps in all catalog creative—but while creative must execute pagination, it is really a marketing function. The best product in the world will not sell as it should if your pagination is lackluster or ill-advised. And if you have not looked for awhile at the methodology you use when you paginate your book, it is time to consider shaking things up a bit.  Try this!

MULTICHANNEL TIP
Segmenting Your Cross-over Buyers
By Jerrell Lewis, Marketing Manager
It is common knowledge among multichannel retailers that buyers who shop in multiple channels are the strongest segments in their house files. However, if you are not segmenting your housefile based on this valuable information, you could be missing out on a powerful view into your customer’s activity and an excellent way to drill deeper into your file.  To drill deeper, click here!

CLIENT HIGHLIGHT—BUD PLANT COMIC ART
Bud Plant Comic Art’s direct-to-consumer business first began operations in 1988, but it really all started for Bud at the youthful age of 16, when he and six partners founded the Seven Sons Comic Shop. After just one summer, the group sold the fledgling business. Undeterred, Bud along with three friends, opened a competing store named Comic World. In two years, before Bud had even graduated from high school, Comic World was thriving...  Read the full story.

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT—SARAH BROWN
Behind every successful organization is a great accounting staff!  We are fortunate to have a great accounting staff that continues to support those business needs and Sarah Brown is a vital part of that team. Hired as an Accounts Payable Clerk in early 2006, Sarah brings years of experience as an accounts payable specialist, tax preparer, and bookkeeper to LENSER and our clients.  Read about Sarah.

AFFILIATE FOCUS—OCO INC. ON DEMAND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
You already know that managing your business effectively requires metrics that lend visibility to what is happening across all of your channels, marketing media and business units. However, giving all of your managers, not just power users, timely access to metrics and key performance indicators that are derived from this information is a huge challenge. LENSER has teamed up with Oco Inc. to bring you a simple and extremely effective solution...  Find out more.

NEWS BRIEF

• John Lenser wins the 2007 CeC Direct Marketer of the Year Award!  Join CeC members and the LENSER team at his Award Luncheon on Tuesday, April 1st to honor John and hear about his outstanding contributions to our industry, including a few first-hand observations from John on the state of the industry.  This event will fill up quickly and walk-in registration will be limited, so please RSVP now to ensure a seat.  The luncheon will be held at the Argonaut Hotel in San Francisco on Tuesday, April 1st, from 11:30am – 2pm.  Please see CeC invitation for registration and directions.
  
  
• LENSER and OCO Inc. FREE WEBINAR:
  Cross-Channel Intelligence for Impacting Retail Results
  March 27, 2008 – 2:00-3:00 pm ET
  Please join us for an educational web seminar on Cross-Channel Intelligence for Impacting Retail Results. During the session, you will hear insights from peers and leaders in the retail industry that can directly improve bottom-line results.
  • Do you know which transaction channel has the highest contribution?
  • What is your most effective demand generation source?
  • Are e-commerce sales impacting comparative store sales?

Obtaining answers to these and other cross-channel questions can allow you to take action for immediate positive impact. We will explore why retailers should be looking at information across channels, which reports and metrics are most revealing, how to go about assembling them quickly, and what to do with the insight.
REGISTER NOW!
www.oco-inc.com/better-visibility/Cross-Channel-Webinar-Lenser.cfm

• LENSER welcomes Computer Gear and MAC’s Antique Auto Parts to our family of clients.
  
  
• The Annual Conference for Catalog and Multichannel Merchants (ACCM) is the only conference devoted exclusively to merchants who need to understand, segment and market to today's customers and prospects across an array of media. The ACCM will focus on the strategies you need to successfully integrate your catalog, web, store, phone, sales force, distributor, email and other marketing channels. Register Today and Save up to $100 on your full conference registration! Go to www.accm4me.com/lenser and use the LENSER savings code LEN for your discount. We hope to see you there!
  

• To ensure delivery of your monthly eNews from LENSER, please remember to add newsletter@lenser.com to your address book.  To sign up for the LENSER eNews, please contact at LENSER.
  

PRESIDENT'S CORNER
As We Predicted
By John Lenser, President

As we predicted, 2008, a year that holds both the summer Olympics and a national election, is proving to be a rough one for many direct marketers. However, none of us could have foreseen not only the downturn of the economy, but a tightening of credit that has sent venerable catalog companies such as Lillian Vernon and Sharper Image into bankruptcy. And, it is very likely that the road of 2008 will become even rougher as the mortgage crisis reaches its peak this summer and the drama surrounding the Presidential election continues.

But this is a strange downturn that is effecting the population very unevenly. Every airplane that I have been on for the past three months has been filled to capacity. When I vacationed in January, every resort was full. In February the number of jobs contracted, but unemployment rates actually dropped. As baby boomers are now retiring, a recent survey shows businesses intend to hire 16% more college graduates than a year ago and a long-term labor shortage is developing. It seems to me that things are not too bad for the middle and upper income portions of the population—i.e., most of our customers.

In fact, a review of the early spring results on our more than 70 retained clients shows a very mixed picture. In apparel, six clients were exceeding plan; four were under. In gardening, seven were at or substantially above plan with only one below plan. In specialty hobby catalogs, eight were at or above plan with three below plan. In home décor, five were substantially below plan with only four at or slightly above plan. Of other clients, nine are at or above plan with three below plan. In general, the more upscale the client, the better their business performed. The exceptions were home décor, where business is very poor, and gardening, where it is outstanding! I guess if you cannot redecorate your new home, you plant a garden at your old home.

My advice to all our clients is to stay with your original marketing plans and avoid the potholes. And potholes continue! My wife and I, along with most other Americans, will be completely absorbed on April 22nd when Pennsylvania conducts its primary. This is not a day you want your catalog going in-home—and to the extent that you can avoid certain "pothole" dates, we recommend you do. While it is tough to avoid the series of primaries in May, do avoid the following dates for your in-home targets:

August 8-24 - 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing, China

August 25-28 (Denver, CO) – Democratic National Convention
September 1-4 (Minneapolis, MN) – Republican National Convention

October 27 – November 3 – Week before the National Election

November 4 – National Election Day

I have one other observation regarding response results—those that are doing well have focused on presenting great product, staying in-stock, improving their creative, keeping their prospecting at needed levels to replenish their house files, improving their web marketing, and controlling expenses. Well-managed companies with strong fundamentals tend to weather the storm. LENSER partners and staff continue to be available to help our clients implement best practices in every area of their business. Just give us a call.

FEATURE ARTICLE
Convergent Channel Marketing
By Bill Nicolai, Senior Partner

At LENSER, we have been seeing an increasing fraction of sales coming through our clients' websites. At the same time, we have noted a much larger number of customers originating either from initial web sales or internet catalog requests.

Many of our clients are still thinking of their internet and catalog businesses as two separate channels. For some time now, we have been making marketing recommendations that seek to help our clients integrate their marketing efforts across channels.

But as the marketplace evolves, it has become time to acknowledge that multichannel marketing is a transitional phase in the development of the Direct-to-Consumer business model.
Since effectively almost all catalogs now are devoting significant resources to internet marketing and since many internet sellers are using direct mail to contact their buyers, it is time to acknowledge that these two channels are coming together and will soon be seen as one.

The persistence of Silo Marketing

In many companies we find the catalog and internet efforts are being driven by managers who are not necessarily working together. There may even be separate budgets and P&L reports for the two areas. This silo method often leads to a failure to optimize some of the largest marketing opportunities—those that involve the use of catalog marketing to drive internet sales and vice versa. It is time to recognize that in the convergent marketplace, success is coming from exploiting the marketing strengths of each of the marketing “channels.” The underlying facts driving convergence are seen in two overarching observations:

1. Internet is the cheapest and best method of finding new customers
   • They often come to you through natural search
   • Paid Search is becoming a prevalent way that customers find products
   • Catalog requests now mostly come from the website
   • Media such as comparative shopping engines, affiliates and Portals are driving new customer generation
2. Catalog is the most cost-effective way of obtaining subsequent sales
   • Catalog buyers have twice the long-term value of internet buyers
   • Catalogs have ten times the response rate of emails
     

Differences in the value of customers generated

It has been a common experience among LENSER clients that internet-generated customers have a lower value than those that come from direct mail. In general, the near-term value of these customers is between 40% and 60% of those that are generated via prospecting catalogs. For many direct sellers, over half of the new customers are now attributed as coming from internet marketing. The most effective way to upgrade these buyers to a higher value status is when they buy from a catalog.

This is convergent channel marketing in action—where the catalog functions to upgrade the value of the customers generated by the internet. So the best way to develop high value, long-term customers from internet purchasers is to send a sequence of catalogs that result in upgrading them to multichannel status:

Customer Value Index

Proactive marketing means

Email is a very inexpensive way to contact new customers. It is often effective early in the customer life as a promotional means. But email has aggregate response rates far lower than catalogs. Many web-centric companies are finding that catalogs are effective in extracting subsequent sales from new customers who come in via keyword and affiliate marketing:

Response index of Email versus Catalog

The likely progression of the industry as channels converge

The rate of internet sales growth is far outpacing that of catalog sales. So like it or not, companies that have traditionally been catalog centric are going to be getting the vast majority of their orders via their website. Most are already taking over half their orders through the web at present, but this will likely become two-thirds or higher in a very few years as customers simply expect to place their own orders in much the same way that most travelers now order airline tickets and hotel rooms themselves rather than call a travel agent (does anyone even remember what a travel agent was?).

• Internet growth rate was 18% in 2007
• Catalog growth rate is 7% but it is boosted by internet growth
• Most companies’ catalogs are converging with their internet business
• With proper exploitation of the opportunity, double-digit growth is possible

Looking at the last five years of combined internet and catalog growth, a promising picture of opportunity for each company in the convergent marketplace emerges:

Historical and Projected U.S. Direct-to-Consumer sales (U.S. sales in $Billions)

Keys to Thriving in a Convergent World

1. Know the difference between the channel of order and the channel of origin. Your guide will be the matchback report, and the keys to making it work are the “business rules” – i.e., the decisions of how to attribute results between channels
2. Maximize the ability of customers to access your company in whatever means suits them at the time they wish to make a purchase. This means that you must acknowledge and enable cross-channel behavior at every opportunity.
3. Keep the internet and catalog management under a single overarching marketing department. Do not encourage silo fiefdoms by shortsighted departmental P&L management that artificially divides internet and catalog.
4. Unify branding across the two direct-to-consumer channels to exploit your underlying brand equity that emerges when a customer buys.
5. Shift marketing resources to new marketing methods, particularly to the internet, as they become available and are seen to be profitable.

CASE STUDY
Housefile Databases are Rich with Treasure!
By Michelle Houston, Vice President

Mailers faced a challenging year last year. Unfortunately, due to the economy, sluggish housing market and political year, they are again off to a slow start in 2008. Those issues, combined with continuing list fatigue and declining list universes, are causing prospecting response rates to plummet. In light of these concerns, mailers must be more strategic about reducing expenses by mailing smarter.

Even with these challenges, however, some of the best names to mail are right in your own backyard—older buyers, requestors and retail shoppers. One would be surprised how often mailers overlook these important housefile segments.

Recently, LENSER was hired to perform a best practices study for a $50mm, multichannel marketing company. In analyzing this mailer’s housefile contacts and optimization, we uncovered major opportunities. To our surprise, we discovered that only 30% of their available buyer file universe was being mailed!

Needless to say, there was ample opportunity to reactivate these records using a variety of methods—marketing promotions, scoring, and co-operative database optimization. In the case of this mailer, we elected to change their recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) scoring system to a micro-level view while also scoring the housefile with multi hits. After the merge, we incorporated Abacus’ Dynamic Batch Optimization (DBO) product to enhance selectability by scoring records based on product affinity. It should be noted that each of the co-operative databases uses similar first-class reactivation tools—each mailer has to determine which works best for their offer.

This DBO process allows a mailer to control batches or types of names that have the greatest affinity for a mailer’s category offer. In the case of this mailer, we created 3 batch files—buyers, requestors and retail records—and each batch was scored with the following four rounds of product affinity:

• Round 1 - Targeted Product Affinity: This is the core product control model. This product category is the most specific and highly targeted, relative to the mailer’s customers’ purchasing habits.
• Round 2 - Giftware: This category is a noteworthy, but less targeted category, relative to the mailer’s customers’ purchasing habits.
• Round 3 - Lifestyle: For this mailer, a lifestyle product select is an important variable.
• Round 4 - Balance: These records make up the balance of names not scored or selected in the first three rounds; consequently, their scoring takes no specific product category affinity into account—only pure recency, frequency and monetary habits are considered.

Creating specific product affinity rounds allows a mailer to select deeper into specific product affinity behavior scores. In more cases then not, particularly among niche mailers, product affinity behavior is more important than general RFM behavior. Therefore we can mail more names with greater affinity, but with lower RFM characteristics, and still receive very strong results.

You might be asking: Why are buyers, requestors and retail shoppers separated into unique batches? We do this for two main reasons. First, these segments will have different aggregate response variables which, in turn, allow us to make different selection decisions. Second, because inactive buyers will naturally have more mail order activity at higher RFM scores then non-buyers, they would, if we optimized ALL records in one batch, force requestor and retail segments into lower optimization segments. This means that those requestors and retail shoppers will likely not be selected. By separating these types of names into unique batches, we can strategically select types of names based on various product affinity and RFM.

The results of this strategy are illustrated in the following charts:

• Inactive Buyers: Over 700,000 buyer records, each with low RFM traits, were sent for optimization. In the optimization selections process, we selected 100% of the records that scored in our highly targeted product affinity (Round 1). Over 40,000 records were mailed that indexed 88% above other prospecting lists. In the next round, we selected fewer segments (U through G). While this segment did not perform as well as Rounds 3 and 4, it allowed us to mail deeper into that round—and overall, it still performed better than other prospecting lists. As we moved deeper into the rounds, we tended to be more conservative, selecting only the strongest segments. In the Balance segment (Round 4), we selected only the top 2 segments. Based on these results, this mailer has more opportunity to mail deeper into their inactive buyer file.
  

• Requestors: Many catalogers mail only their most recent requesters, giving up on this segment after only a few months of aging. In our test, nearly 100,000 records were scored, and while we mailed only a small portion (20%), each of these category rounds performed well above the average prospecting index of 100. In each of these rounds, there is ample opportunity to mail deeper, just as we would in the buyer segments noted above.

• Retail Buyers: Most multichannel retailers who have retail store operations know that buyers who use the retail channel exclusively are not as responsive to direct mail offers as direct channel buyers. This does not mean, however, that all retail shoppers should be excluded from catalog mailings—if some have a propensity to use the direct channel, too, consider mailing them. Using a co-operative database to score retail store buyers for recent mail order activity, we were able to identify a small portion that performed above index or near our breakeven threshold.

Regadless of which co-operative database does the processing, zero in and mine your database with these cost effective alternatives, rather than simply mailing more marginal prospecting names with higher marketing costs. In the end, it is not only easier to convert someone already familiar with your brand, it is easier to reactivate an existing buyer than convert a new one, and there is a greater chance of your converting low yield buyers to long-term customers.

CIRCULATION TIP
Customer Data Caught at POS—The Dirty Little Secret
By Tracy Blake, Marketing Consultant

Everyone knows that capturing Point-of-Sale (POS) customer information is optimal for catalog follow-up. After all, these people are interested in your product and have left the comfort of their home to shop for it. And what’s more, they have given you their name and address to hit them up again!

Or have they?

When customer information is caught at POS, many data hygiene issues arise: miss-keys by the sales associate, sloppy handwriting on a bingo card, even false information given by the customer. So although a retail-captured list can be highly profitable, multichannel companies stand to lose if they do not cleanse this segment appropriately.

Here are some tips for making the most of POS data:

• Have your service bureau run advanced hygiene on this segment. Sometimes the typical address standardization is not enough. Advanced address hygiene can match your data to larger compiled databases, finding apartment numbers and other address components not captured at the POS.
• If you don’t plan on omitting records with non ZIP+4, then segment them separately. This helps you gauge how many non ZIP+4 records are on your file and allows you to separately track response, should you decide to omit them in later mailings. Remember that they are more expensive to mail and generally have a lower response.
• Run the uniques from this segment through optimization. As mentioned in this month’s case study, this allows you to retain sincere customers identified as active direct mail shoppers who want to hear from you again via the print channel. It also enables you to omit those jokesters who give names like Big Bird on their bingo card.

Remember, recency is important here. Try to mail retail store customers as soon after their shopping experience as possible. By following these simple tips, you stand a better chance of profiting in the multichannel world.

CREATIVE TIP
Powerhouse Pagination
By Carol Worthington-Levy, Creative Partner

Pagination is one of the first essential steps in all catalog creative—but while creative must execute pagination, it is really a marketing function. Where you put your products can make or break the success of your catalog, since it utilizes the way people read a catalog, and confronts the challenge of encouraging continued readership once you have that book in their hot little hands.

The best product in the world will not sell as it should if your pagination is lackluster or ill-advised. And if you have not looked for awhile at the methodology you use when you paginate your book, it is time to consider shaking things up a bit.

Of course, you start with the numbers. Look at your sales numbers and balance that out with your square inch or ad space analysis. But while square inch will be an influencer, give up the notion that it is the end all to beat all. Use your knowledge of the products, the trends, and the potential to give items that show great promise a little more space.

For example, if you have a new product that shows the kind of potential as many of your best products in the past, take a chance and give it a back cover spot, along with a tried-and-true great seller. If you have a category that is a great performer but you have always had that category deep inside the catalog, consider paginating so that the category has a better chance to be seen—inside the back or in the front half of the book.

Then look at the hot spots in your catalog—front cover, back cover, inside front spread (“the red carpet”), inside back cover, and center spread—as a whole. Are they being utilized to sell the best performing products in your book?

If you have a weak product on the inside back cover, swap it out for something stronger. And if you have an order form or index there, well, you are really missing out on a powerful selling opportunity. The clients who I convince to move strong product to the inside back cover and move the order form and index to the center spread, see fine increases in their bottom line.

Another tip: find the products that are performing best in the weakest areas of your book, and consider giving them better space.

What? You traditionally or always put that there and you hate to move it? Consider that you are probably losing sales by leaving a strong seller in a weaker part of the book, or in “the dead zone,” as we call it. The area between the center spread and the back cover becomes weaker as you dig in further, and does not get better until you are a couple of spreads from the back.

Do you have a weak product that you want to do better? Do not sacrifice your best space for it, as tempting as that may be. A weak product in a hot spot only sinks a catalog, since it is something apparently most people do not care for that much. Make it earn its space, and let your strongest products pump your book up.

Do you have a lot to say in your on ‘the red carpet’ spread? This is prime selling space, too, so do not just talk there—sell something! People are far more impatient than they were ten years ago, and you really need to start selling right away. So if you have more to say, break it up into other parts of the book, and include them in your table of contents as ‘articles’ or other value-adds.

It is a challenge to reconsider and repaginate a catalog. It is possible that with the initial work and the back-and-forth that will ensue, however, you may take two weeks to get it to the point before you are ready to take it out for a spin. And do not try to do it without feedback—seek counsel and expert opinion. Plan for pagination and allow for the necessary time before you release that brand new book to your creative department.

Is it worth it? The only way you will know is to try it yourself. But many do find that utilizing the intelligence of numbers, and sidestepping old habits, can breathe new life into catalogs through improved pagination. The payoff for all that hard work will be better performance and stronger sales.

MULTICHANNEL TIP
Segmenting Your Cross-over Buyers
By Jerrell Lewis, Marketing Manager

It is common knowledge among multichannel retailers that buyers who shop in multiple channels are the strongest segments in their house files. However, if you are not segmenting your housefile based on this valuable information, you could be missing out on a powerful view into your customer’s activity and an excellent way to drill deeper into your file.

Depending on the file’s size, you may be hard pressed when it comes to mail or no mail decisions, especially in the older segments of your file that perform marginally. A holistic and integrated view of customer activity across all channels allows you to refine your selections process and pinpoint the more responsive buyers. One LENSER client in the home furnishings arena is seeing two to three times the response in the cross-over segment, as compared to phone only or internet only channel buyers.

CLIENT HIGHLIGHT—BUD PLANT COMIC ART

Bud Plant Comic Art’s direct-to-consumer division first began operations in 1988 with just five employees and a 1,250 sq ft warehouse located in Grass Valley, CA, a small town nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  The parent company and publishing arm was well-established beforehand as Bud Plant had already been an industry leader for almost 20 years.
 
It all started for Bud at the youthful age of 16, when he and six other partners founded the Seven Sons Comic Shop in downtown San Jose, CA.  After just one summer, the group sold the fledgling business.  Undeterred, Bud along with three new partners, all friends, immediately opened a competing store named Comic World.  In two years, before Bud had even graduated from high school, Comic World was thriving and opened another successful retail location some 60 miles away in Berkeley, CA. 
 
The retail chain quickly grew to seven locations.  Meanwhile, Bud was running a parallel mail order and convention company, which would eventually grow into the business we know today.  From 1970 to 1988, Bud involved himself in the operations of the store locations and he established both a publishing company and a national distribution company.  Bud’s passion, however, was not in managing the empire he built—which by then had grown to include seven warehouses and 80 employees.  In 1988, he sold off the peripheral businesses and focused his attention on his real passion:  the mail order business.
 
The company continued to expand over the years, offering a variety of products: art books, graphic novels, comic strip collections, books on past and contemporary illustrators, and general literature concerning popular culture and photography.  In 2001, the Incorrigible Catalog was spun off from the core Bud Plant’s Incredible Catalog.  This title, as its name suggests, focused on erotic-themed merchandise.
 
General Manager, David Cowie, was one of the five original Bud Plant Comic Art employees.  During his tenure, he recalls, there has been significant growth, “We’d grown to $4.5 million and 22 employees.  Our warehouse space grew from 1,250 to 15,000 sq ft. and our customer base had grown from 5,000 to near 40,000.”   Dave and Bud decided in 2006 to retain LENSER to manage their day-to-day marketing programs and to assist them in taking the company to the next level.
 
Most recently, the company changed its name to Bud’s Art Books with the hopes of broadening its appeal to a larger, more diverse audience.  Over the next year, Dave and Bud plan to broaden the merchandise mix as well, with the hopes of reaching customers who are not necessarily interested in collectibles.  In conjunction with this shift, they are also re-positioning the Incorrigible Catalog, making it, as Dave puts it, “…Less XXX and more pin-up erotica.”
 
Friday afternoon long-term planning and strategy meetings involving Bud’s Art Books’ top executives are certainly not what could be termed 'business as usual.'  “There’s no board room,” Dave says, “And there’s certainly no large round table!”  Dave, who is a self-taught home brew expert and has been creating masterful beers for over 15 years, often supplies the beverages for these strategy meetings.  Luckily, his colleagues enjoy partaking in the consumption of fermented hops and barley!  Friday Barley Meetings that take place in his rustic office are now an institution.
 
“It’s a great ritual,” says Director Travis Seaton, Bud’s Art Books’ day-to-day LENSER contact.  “Fortunately, I enjoy a good beer now and again, so our correspondence usually starts with the talk of micro-brews and what fantastic—or not so fantastic—beers we’ve recently discovered.  In fact, Dave and I were e-mailing late one Friday night, and he told me that while it was unfortunate that he was still at work, he was enhancing his programming skills with a Kolsch from Santa Barbara, my hometown.  So cheers!”
 
Bud Plant is truly a small business success story.  The company does not have the advantages of those located in or near a big city—Grass Valley’s population is a mere 11,000 and the town can be shut down in winter by only a couple inches of snow.  Yet, they have flourished over the years, in part by valuing the balance between work and life.  It has created a dynamic workplace, encouraging ingenuity and longevity, as evidenced by the Friday Barley Meeting traditions.  Hopefully, other companies can take a page out of Bud Plant’s playbook!
 
Be sure and visit www.budsartbooks.com to check out their collection comics, magazines, picture books, adult comics/books and cards, all in a variety of styles.

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT—SARAH BROWN

Behind every successful organization is a great accounting staff! As LENSER grows, the complexity and velocity of receivables and billing are growing with it. We are fortunate to have a great accounting staff that continues to support those business needs and Sarah Brown is a vital part of that team.

Hired as an Accounts Payable Clerk in early 2006, Sarah brings years of experience as an accounts payable specialist, tax preparer, and bookkeeper to LENSER. This diverse knowledge base allows Sarah to comfortably wear the multitude of different hats she dons for LENSER. “Sarah is in the somewhat unenviable position of dealing with client billing and collection, along with complicated staff billing,” Michelle Houston, Vice President at LENSER, explains, “So, her days are spent handling unique, challenging—and, frankly, difficult—accounting situations. Yet, she handles it all with a smile, and easy-going, positive attitude.”

As she enters her third year at LENSER, Sarah continues to take pleasure in the company’s team-oriented atmosphere. “I enjoy working at LENSER not just because of all the great people who I work with,” she notes, “But because LENSER truly values its employees and their opinion.  It’s rare that a company sincerely cares about each one of its employees—LENSER does, which I think is invaluable.”

Apart from the joy of raising two children, Sarah carves out ample time for reading and playing second base for her softball team. Sarah is also an accomplished gardener, and she regularly brings the fruits of her labor to the LENSER office for all staff to enjoy.

To learn more about Sarah Brown, please visit her bio.

AFFILIATE FOCUS—OCO INC. ON DEMAND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

You already know that managing your business effectively requires metrics that lend visibility to what is happening across all of your channels, marketing media and business units. Most often, the challenge is not the collection of data because the various systems you have capture and store loads of information in order to simply run business processes. However, giving all of your managers, not just power users, timely access to metrics and key performance indicators that are derived from this information is a huge challenge. LENSER has teamed up with Oco Inc. to bring you a simple and extremely effective solution that can have your management team focused on the right metrics in a matter of weeks without the need for an analytical support staff.

Since 1999, Oco's technology has been used by retail, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, private equity firms and many other businesses worldwide to improve business visibility. Oco’s On Demand Business Intelligence system helps marketers identify trends and productivity, merchandisers make better buying decisions, and CFO's improve their organization's performance metrics. “Oco does the seemingly impossible—taking the complexity of data that multichannel merchants have and presenting it in a form where it is summarized, yet can be drilled right down to the details,” says Al Bessin, LENSER partner. “The key is that it is accessible and usable by managers and business process owners, whether they are power users or not.

"Oco provides essential visibility to help you grow your business by giving you the information about your product, marketing, sales, and customer behavior that you have only dreamed of having. They take any amount of data from any system in any location and then integrate and organize it in powerful, easy-to-use reporting and analytics. In weeks, Oco will have you looking at your business in a different way—and understanding the core issues so that you can take action to improve performance," says Bessin.

On Demand Business Intelligence provides a single reporting solution that can take data from one or many disparate systems and presents it in a format that is usable by a broad range of users. The system is easy to use so managers do not need to have extensive systems skills. This allows the user to spend time and effort using the information to run the business and support decisions rather than spending it trying to assemble the information.

For some merchants, Oco is the solution to assembling data from multiple systems such as order management, website, and point of sale systems. For other merchants, Oco’s tool is used to connect various business units’ systems together to provide a single, seamless reporting interface. And for many, Oco is the answer to having a simple, yet elegant reporting solution for data that resides in their order management production database.

As we continue to widen our breadth of services, LENSER has identified and carefully screened key services to support its clients, representing the best in their particular area of expertise.  As part of the LENSER promise, each of these companies will keep its fees competitive and “always go the extra mile” for our clients.

We have successfully partnered with Oco Inc. to help deliver this solution for our clients’ direct benefit.  To get in touch with Joe Schramm at Oco Inc. or any of our other affiliates, please contact Michele Salmon at 415-446-2511 or e-mail at LENSER.

NEWS BRIEF

• John Lenser wins the 2007 CeC Direct Marketer of the Year Award!  Join CeC members and the LENSER team at his Award Luncheon on Tuesday, April 1st to honor John and hear about his outstanding contributions to our industry, including a few first-hand observations from John on the state of the industry.  This event will fill up quickly and walk-in registration will be limited, so please RSVP now to ensure a seat.  The luncheon will be held at the Argonaut Hotel in San Francisco on Tuesday, April 1st, from 11:30am – 2pm. Please see CeC invitation for registration and directions.
  
  
• LENSER and OCO Inc. FREE WEBINAR:
  Cross-Channel Intelligence for Impacting Retail Results
  March 27, 2008 – 2:00-3:00 pm ET
  Please join us for an educational web seminar on Cross-Channel Intelligence for Impacting Retail Results. During the session, you will hear insights from peers and leaders in the retail industry that can directly improve bottom-line results.
  • Do you know which transaction channel has the highest contribution?
  • What is your most effective demand generation source?
  • Are e-commerce sales impacting comparative store sales?

Obtaining answers to these and other cross-channel questions can allow you to take action for immediate positive impact. We will explore why retailers should be looking at information across channels, which reports and metrics are most revealing, how to go about assembling them quickly, and what to do with the insight.
REGISTER NOW!
www.oco-inc.com/better-visibility/Cross-Channel-Webinar-Lenser.cfm

• LENSER welcomes Computer Gear and MAC’s Antique Auto Parts to our family of clients.
  
  
• The Annual Conference for Catalog and Multichannel Merchants (ACCM) is the only conference devoted exclusively to merchants who need to understand, segment and market to today's customers and prospects across an array of media. The ACCM will focus on the strategies you need to successfully integrate your catalog, web, store, phone, sales force, distributor, email and other marketing channels. Register Today and Save up to $100 on your full conference registration! Go to www.accm4me.com/lenser and use the LENSER savings code LEN for your discount. We hope to see you there!
  

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