After mailing its second catalog recently, online corporate gifts firm Creative Expressions of Tampa Bay Inc. is looking more and more like a multichannel marketer.
The 10-year-old business-to-business marketer made its first foray into catalogs last April when it mailed A Corporate Gift, which targeted mainly prospects and showcased the company's selection of high-end leather goods, crystal, watches and other items that can be personalized.
In contrast, the new book, Rewards and Incentives, mailed the week of Feb. 13 exclusively to about 2,500 of Creative Expressions' existing customers with the goal of announcing the company's new loyalty program.
“We're new to catalogs so we have to figure out how much mailing we do compared to Web marketing,” Creative Expressions vice president Duayne Furgason said. “Both of these working together seem to be helping us go forward.”
Both books direct recipients to the company's four Web sites: acorporategift.com, corporategiftshowcase.com, corporategiftsandflowers.com and corporategiftpromotions.com.
The 56-page catalog that mailed this month features many of the company's most popular corporate gift items such as backpacks, watches, executive awards, crystal and a pen with a USB drive. It was created by another firm and then branded in-house by Creative Expressions, which added an insert describing the new incentive program.
The program lets customers earn points for the dollars they spend. Points can be spent immediately or saved for future use. Each point category has items that include Guess watches, Brother fax machines, Coach bags and golf clubs. Prices range from $40 up to several thousand dollars.
The rewards program also is being promoted on the A Corporate Gift Web site with an offer of an automatic 1,000 points on a customer's first order of the year.
The company plans to mail another A Corporate Gift catalog later this year.
“We think people are looking for us and don't know where to find us,” Furgason said, noting that the book's target audience is anyone from corporate America to Hollywood executives. For example, the company was contacted recently by the producers of “The Gilmore Girls” TV show because they wanted to feature one of its products — a box of chocolate for which the box is also made out of chocolate — in a recent episode.
Chantal Todé covers catalog and retail news and BTB marketing for DM News and DM News.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
