Using Online Circular Metrics To Increase Print Response Rates Rimm-Kaufman Group Suggests

The Rimm-Kaufman Group suggests that insights from online circulars and catalogs generalize to effective print circular and catalog presentations in a white paper from 2008.  The team here at ShopLocal has been preaching this exact message for years to retailers, so its great to see other great minds agree.  This article puts forth five possible benefits, of which I want to focus in on just a few:

By taking the learnings that the online catalog and circulars produce, one can optimize their offline print to generate higher readership and response rates.

• Discover which specific products and offers are generating the most interest and/or response
• Discover which specific pages of one’s circular/catalog are receiving the most interest

So what would that look like in reality?  Here is an actual example taken from a Jo-Ann Stores online sales flyer of how these two insights came to life.

This is an image of the front cover of the circular page, as it would have appeared both online and in print.

Here is the same circular front cover, with an heat map overlay being applied to it. With a score of 100 being the index midpoint, one can easily see that some offers are basically ignored while others see tons of interest and action.

This type of analysis is so visual and easy to read, which is how this type of ad design and product assortment data is quickly becoming one of the most requested types of custom analysis the ShopLocal team has been producing lately.  With such wild swings in how shoppers ignored some offers (like the one with an index score of 19) and how others shoppers couldn’t get enough of (such as the one with an index score of 408), this information really needs to make it back into the print circular creation teams and processes, so that future print ads can benefit from these real world learnings.