Do e-catalogs help sell more products? A 2019 study
When was the last time you flipped through an IKEA catalog? For most people, it was probably pretty recently. Whether it’s their printed catalog or their mobile app, IKEA surely knows how to market its furniture. Yet when it comes to catalogs, their strategy should be taught in marketing classes.
As of recent IKEA Denmark decided to make a shift towards digital catalogs. And not because of environmental reasons as you may assume, but rather because of the “evolving consumer behaviors in Denmark and an increasing preference for digital media.”
So that leaves us with the ultimate question: Do e-catalogs help sell more products?
E-Catalog’s impact on sale conversion and online engagement
Flipsnack takes catalogs very seriously. Especially e-catalogs. So we conducted an in-depth study oh how some of our premium users invest time, effort and money into publishing e-catalogs.
We asked 1000 of our premium users why they chose to create e-catalogs over printed ones. And if they’ve noticed a difference since swapping to digital.
The results were actually very surprising for us, and so we decided to share what we found.
Curious? Keep on reading.
For the first part of our research, we wanted to find out more about why people were choosing to create catalogs online and whether they were seeing anything different.
The main reason for publishing a catalog, printed or online has a lot to do with increasing sales. But, not only. Creating and publishing a catalog needs to firmly put your brand out there. To put it in other words, catalogs need to have the ability to bring customers in your store, physical or virtual and be aware of your brand. So, we can say that the main reasons for publishing a catalog are to present products, increase brand awareness and eventually sell more. So, it’s all pretty straightforward at this point.
When we asked Flipsnack users about the main reasons for publishing an online catalog, we got some interesting answers. Some of them predictable and some of them… not so much.
When it comes to accessibility, online catalogs are a must!
It comes as no surprise that our users prefer to upload their catalogs online on Flipsnack mainly because of this feature.
It’s much easier to send beautiful looking catalogs to potential clients than to send newsletters with a boring looking PDF file. Boring? Because one of the main benefits of publishing an online catalog is exactly this: you can easily make it interactive and fun to flip through. But more on interactivity, later.
As you can see in the chart below, one of the main reasons why our premium users choose to publish e-catalogs is because of online exposure. The possibility of reaching potential new markets.
To print or not to print catalogs?
With print catalogs, one of the main downfalls is that in order to reach new audiences, you’d have to think about a pretty solid catalog circulation strategy. And probably depend on a catalog distribution agency. Therefore, the printing and distribution costs of doing this can get quite high.
But with e-catalogs, reaching new audiences and improving customer reach is easier than ever.
When asked if they also have a printed version of their catalog, 48,6% of the premium users involved in this research replied affirmatively. While the other 51,4% replied that they don’t.
Now, just like IKEA, it seems like the majority of our premium users took a shift to digital. But, for some markets, it still makes sense to print out catalogs and distribute them classically.
Even if print advertising has dramatically decreased over the past few years, sending out your catalogs via post mail might actually be a good exposure strategy. Yes, you read that correctly. Let’s just put it this way. There is so much noise in the digital space in these competitive days of 2019 that it might be easier for your brand to stand out via print. Think about getting your weekly ads circular in the mail and actually paying attention to it. Because there is something special about the smell and feel of printed pages that make us pay closer attention.
In 2015, a study conducted by The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) worked with Temple University’s Center for Neural Decision Making showed that if short on time, digital advertising can capture the attention quicker. However, for a long-lasting impact, tactile marketing could make more of an impact when it comes to purchasing intent.
Find this surprising? You should see what else we uncovered in the original post here.
