Print Catalogs Boost Internet Sales: Direct Mail Drives More Buyers to Your Website

I live on the Internet. Between the time I spend doing research, submitting work products, updating websites, and even finding time to play in a really cool role-playing game called Last Chaos there doesn't seem like much time left for anything away from the computer.

And yet, I find time to raise a child, adopt an abandoned iguana, breed fish, crochet, play the violin, collect all the most unusual plants I can find (an arabica coffee plant is my current favorite) and any number of other things to fulfill my drive to discover something new and challenging.

You might think that having so many interests would make the Internet a fount of valuable information and products for me. It's not. I spend so much time on it that I have developed the ability to see nothing outside the content I'm looking for (ads? what ads?), and am so tired of seeing the same script-based website catalogs that I crave for something new.

Enter the paper catalog. Yes, that tried-and-true, old-as-print form of advertisement that so many people find stuffing their mailboxes. Have you noticed that there are fewer and fewer of those many-colored glossy creations in your mail lately? There's a reason for it, and that reason has a name: Information Superhighway. The cost of producing advertisements - catalogs included - is so much less when done digitally that many companies have completely done away with the costlier, time-tested alternative.

From one customer's perspective (me), these businesses have cleanly sliced out a huge source of income. A degreed member of the design world, fully versed in advertising tricks, I recently fell prey to the oldest form of advertisement available. I happily turned out my pockets for a ton of crochet-related "things" that I'd never known existed and never would have looked for had it not been for that beautiful catalog with all the bright shiny photographs fitting neatly in my hands as I reclined on my couch ... so many feet from my computer and its high-powered Internet connection that it may as well have been miles.

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