In the Mail: our favourite Christmas covers

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Direct Commerce office. Our Christmas tree is up, we’ve decorated the windows with lights and we’re all looking forward to exchanging gifts in the office secret Santa.

We’ve also been admiring festive catalogues and website homepages, and here are my three favourites of Christmas 2012.

JoJo Mamam Bebe
Edition: Christmas 2012 Collection
Website: www.jojomamanbebe.co.uk
Format: 250mm x 212mm, 196pp, no order form
Special offer on the cover: yes, free delivery in the UK and Ireland
Addressing: polywrapped, address on back cover, mailing managed by OnePost
Range: maternity and baby wear, nursery products and toys
Delivery: Free
Why I picked it: While the saying goes, never work with children or animals, nursery specialist JoJo Maman Bebe has proved that putting an adorable child on your Christmas front cover is a winning tactic. It’s simple but effective. I love the colours, the lighting, the stars in the background, and of course, the star in the foreground.

Joules
Edition: Your Christmas Gift Guide
Website: www.joules.com
Format: 198mm x 146mm, 36pp, no order form
Special offer on the cover: yes, 3 for 2 on everything
Addressing: address on back cover, mailing managed by OnePost, delivered by Royal Mail
Range: clothing and accessories
Delivery: £1 for super saver, £3.95 standard delivery
Why I picked it: Everything about this catalogue is “on-brand”, from the colours of the wrapping paper, to the pink Joules wellies, to the strapline “Complete with all the trimmings”. This is the “good life” that Joules aspires to create and market. This is traditional Christmas, a Winter Wonderland. And did you notice it was “Your Christmas Gift Guide”? Those clever people at Joules certainly know how to “sell” Christmas.

Seasalt
Edition: Christmas Lights of Cornwall
Website: www.seasaltcornwall.co.uk
Format: 212mm x 147mm, 68pp, no order form
Special offer on the cover: no
Addressing: address on back cover, delivered by Royal Mail
Range: clothing and accessories
Delivery: £3.95 standard delivery, £8.50 for next-day delivery
Why I picked it: A relative newcomer to mail order, this is Seasalt’s first Christmas catalogue and we hail it a creative success. Seasalt trades on its Cornish heritage, so this catalogue has a suitably nautical feel to it: lobster pots, sailor socks, paper boats and anchor motifs. With no pushy sales messages, such as free delivery or 3 for 2 deals, Seasalt has taken the soft-sell approach. Apart from the company name and catalogue title, the only other text reads: Very pleasing gifts.--MT

December Catalogue Log

Despite the snow, which disrupted mail services across the UK in the run-up to Christmas, we still received more catalogues in December 2010 than we did in December 2009. But before you get excited and herald this as a triumph over the elements, we only received four more catalogues—66 compared with 62.

The figure also represents a considerable drop from the volume of catalogues we logged in November 2010, when we received 167 catalogues. Another significant contrast is that December’s crop of catalogues was much more promotional than the previous month, with 62.1 percent of front covers making a mention of a special offer, compared with less than half of the November covers doing so.

No prizes for guessing what the most popular offer was in December. Once again, sales and discounts featured most prominently, on the cover of 29 out of 66 catalogues. Many cataloguers, it seemed, did not want to wait until January to start their sales: step forward Charles Tyrwhitt, Craghoppers, and JoJo Maman Bebe.

The percentage of catalogues offering free delivery in December was up marginally on November--21.2 percent, compared with 18 percent. The percentage of catalogues promoting a free gift on the cover fell from 8.4 percent to 6.1 percent, or just four catalogues out of 66.

And finally for December’s haul of catalogues, you may wonder what discount apparel retailer M and M Direct, audio/visual cabling supplier Russ Andrews, and plants catalogue Thompson & Morgan have in common. These three catalogues were the only ones we received that made a promotional opportunity of the VAT rise. Thompson & Morgan pledged to hold 2010’s prices, while Russ Andrews promised to keep VAT at 17.5 during the sale period. M and M promised no increase until 12th January. Whether we’ll see more of these promotions in January is debatable--already our tracker has logged some catalogues doing so. Though with two of the examples holding prices for just a couple weeks and leading retailer Next openly admitting it is increasing its prices by approximately 8 percent this year, it won’t be a popular promotion for long.--MT

The Catalogue Log by the numbers

To be in mail order, you’ve got to love data, so here’s a roundup of Catalogue Log stats from 2010 just for you:

• In total Catalogue e-business logged in 1332 catalogues in 2010. That’s 144 fewer than we received in 2009, representing a 10 percent drop.
• Once again September was the month with the greatest volume, when a total of 185 catalogues were tallied. In April we received just 61 catalogues.
• In August, just 34.4 percent of the catalogues we received made no mention of a special offer on the cover. The least promotional month was November, when more than half of covers featured no special offers.
• July saw the highest percentage of catalogues promoting a sale or discount on their covers, 49.5 percent. In contrast, November touted the fewest price-related offers, just 27.5 percent.
• Free delivery was most popular in September, promoted on 24.3 percent of all covers. It was least popular in July, with only 12.1 percent of catalogues offering some sort of free p&p offer.
• We also tracked how many catalogues offered a free gift. The promotion was particularly popular in May, when 1 in 5 of the catalogues we logged in promised a freebie on the front cover. Free gifts were least popular during the festive season—only 6.1 percent of the catalogues we received in December gave away a gift with purchase.