LENSER :: Newsletter

This Month at Lenser
June 2006

PRESIDENT'S CORNER
By John Lenser, President
The dog days of summer are upon us. For LENSER this means we begin to plan for the critical fourth quarter mailings—Fall and Holiday! So instead of relaxing by the pool with a cool drink, the staff at LENSER are diligently strategizing and planning for this vital mailing season.

While merchandise and creative are certainly vital components of your success, proper circulation plans are needed to achieve maximum return on investment (ROI). Unfortunately, this final component is often times the last to be considered.

How many times will you be contacting your housefile? What in-home dates are you targeting? Are these in-home dates in line with competitive seasonality indexes? What RFM characteristics are you utilizing to maximize response? Are you creatively using the merge to reactivate and identify the gold in your housefile? Are your prospecting strategies incorporating the correct co-op databases with effective modeling? Are you identifying the best prospecting names in the merge to leverage the most responsive prospecting names and are you mailing them more than once?

At LENSER, we understand the trigger mechanisms that obtain maximum return on investment and we work with our clients to develop appropriate contact strategies to both customers and prospects, using all the available marketing channels. We have developed sophisticated techniques to successfully reactivate older housefile names, score various files, and optimize outside lists. We understand the complexities of customer acquisition and the importance of applying the proper promotional plan to go with mailing strategies.

As you can see, there’s a great deal to be considered. If you want to be better prepared for your own fourth quarter sales, give us a call to learn more about how LENSER can assist you with your specific circulation needs.

FEATURE ARTICLE
Marketing Breakeven Analysis…and Why You Should Care!
By Al Bessin, Partner
One of the most important tools a direct marketer can learn to use is a Marketing Breakeven Analysis. This metric is key for both evaluating past marketing campaigns and planning for new campaigns. Use it to determine where past campaigns were successful and not so successful. Use it in the planning stage of a new campaign—for example, to determine whether anticipated response will cover costs. Learn how...

CASE STUDY
Do New Products Really Drive Sales?
By Michelle Farabaugh, Partner
Sourcing new products is a never-ending battle, but does all that effort really drive sales? The average cataloger will mail their best customer 12 to 14 times a year. Without new products, customers and prospects don’t have a reason to open the catalog. Read more...

CREATIVE TIP
“Tis better to give…”
By Carol Worthington-Levy, Creative Partner
One of the “absolutes” in direct marketing is an offer, yet most catalogers see offers as too expensive or fear they’ll “train” their customer to expect a discount every time they shop. Most mailers believe they’ll lose control if they have an offer in place. In fact, your offer exists in order for you to control your customer! This is why it’s so essential. Learn how...

multichannel TIP
By Michelle Houston, Vice President of Circulation & Client Services
Are you routinely emailing product offers to your entire email file? If so, you may be diminishing brand loyalty with your core customer. Read more...

AFFILIATE FOCUS—DIRECT RECOVERY SOLUTIONS
Do you know what a Guaranteed Service refund is? As multichannel merchants, you make a guarantee everyday to your customers. If they are not satisfied with the goods or services that you provided, you refund their money. Don’t you deserve the same level of service satisfaction? Read more...

NEWS BRIEF

U.S. to Repeal Long Distance Phone Tax! Steve Reisman, our affiliate at BCN Telecom, kindly informed us that the U.S. Treasury Department conceded a legal dispute over long-distance telephone taxes and will begin to refund taxes paid on services from the past three years. According to the Wall Street Journal, this decision will lead to billions of dollars in refunds for both businesses and consumers who have paid the tax. “A 3% tax refund on three years of long-distance service is like getting a whole month free!” says Steve. This is significant for many of you who have long-distance telephone bills. Now, go collect!
Going to the New England Mail Order Association (NEMOA) Conference? We are. If you would like an opportunity to meet with us to discuss your own catalog needs, please contact Michele Salmon (michele.salmon@lenser.com ) to set up an appointment.
This month we welcome GaelSong, The Guild, Highlights for Children, and Peet’s Coffee & Tea to our family of clients.

FEATURE ARTICLE
Marketing Breakeven Analysis…and Why You Should Care!
By Al Bessin, Partner

One of the most important tools a direct marketer can learn to use is a Marketing Breakeven Analysis. This metric is key for both evaluating past marketing campaigns and planning for new campaigns. Use it to determine where past campaigns were successful and not so successful. Use it in the planning stage of a new campaign—for example, to determine whether anticipated response will cover costs. Calculating Marketing Breakeven may seem like a job for an accountant and you may require the help of your accounting staff to get started if some of the numbers on your P&L don’t have the needed elements broken out. But it’s not that difficult once you get the basics down, and remember, it’s an estimate, so the numbers need to be close, but not absolutely precise. Marketing Breakeven Analyses generate such useful numbers, that you won’t be able to function without them once you learn how.

Definition
Marketing Breakeven, in the context we are using for this article, is the point at which the profit contribution from a sale equals the cost of the marketing that triggered that sale.

In accounting lingo, we are calculating the point at which the contribution margin—defined as revenue less variable direct operating expenses—equals the variable direct marketing expense. Admittedly, our computation is an oversimplification from an accounting perspective, but it’s practical and useful to a marketer.

Caveat: this metric considers only the variable costs that impact the sale, and makes no attempt to consider costs that would increase if your business had to invest to manage substantial growth. That is an exercise for an accountant and isn’t relevant to marketing analysis in the short term.

Elements that Make up the Marketing Breakeven
Marketing Breakeven can be calculated by estimating the expected average order value (AOV) and gross margin; the shipping and handling charge collected from the customer; the costs to take, process and ship the order; and the cost of a catalog in the mail. Figure 1, below, shows these elements.

Figure 1. Basic Marketing Breakeven

	Housefile
Average Order	$75.80
less: Returns	(2.65)	3.5%
Net Demand	73.15
Gross Margin	35.55	48.6%

Variable Operating Costs
S&H Charges	(10.50)	-13.9%
Call Center	3.20
Pick/Pack	2.80
Freight Out	5.80
Credit Card Fees	1.84	2.2%
Total Variable Cost	3.14

Contribution Margin	$32.41

Variable Catalog Expense
Paper, Printing & Postage	0.48
Lists	-
Total Variable Catalog Expense	$0.48

Breakeven Points
Response Rate%	1.48%
$/Book	$1.12

From your revenue and variable operating costs, you can easily calculate the contribution margin before marketing expense: revenue less returns, times gross margin, less all of the costs above. The result is the amount of money the average order produces that can be used to pay for marketing and other expenses.

In the example shown, a $75.80 order yields $32.41 in contribution margin. The next step is to calculate the percentage response necessary for that average order value to have the resulting contribution margin offset the catalog expense. To do so, divide the catalog cost ($.48 in the example above) by the contribution margin ($32.35) to get the percent response (1.48%). The $/book is the average order times the response rate, or $1.12.

Examples
Now, for the application. Let’s take a look at how changes in the different elements affect the response rate necessary to break even.

List Cost. List cost has a significant impact on breakeven. If the cost per catalog is $.48, adding $.05 to $.15 to that cost increases marketing expense by roughly 10% to 31%! Figure 2, below, compares the effect those costs have on the breakeven response rate.

Figure 2. List Cost Impact

	Housefile	Optimized	Co-op	O/S List
Average Order	$75.80	$75.80	$75.80	$75.80
Contribution Margin	$32.41	$32.41	$32.41	$32.41

Variable Catalog Expense
Paper, Printing & Postage	0.48	0.48	0.48	0.48
Lists	-	0.04	0.07	0.15
Total Variable Catalog Expense	$0.48	$0.52	$0.55	$0.63

Breakeven Values
Response Rate%	1.48%	1.60%	1.70%	1.94%
$/Book	$1.12	$1.22	$1.29	$1.47

Adding the cost of lists dramatically increases the breakeven response rate, in this case from 1.48% to 1.94% in the case of outside lists costing $.15 per name!

Other Changes. Figure 3, below, shows the impact of reducing shipping and handling charges by $2 (you collected $2 less from your customer), increasing order taking cost by $1 (your call center was less efficient), and lowering gross margin by 1% (you had to rush merchandise in to cover demand).

These changes would have a very significant impact on the response needed to cover the reduction in contribution margin. For example, a reduction in gross margin from 48.6% to 47.6% increases the needed response by 5.6%.

Figure 3. Impact of Other Changes

	Housefile	Loss on S&H	Higher Call Center Cost	Lower GM
Average Order	$75.80	$75.80	$75.80	$75.80
Gross Margin	35.55	35.55	35.55	34.82
Variable Costs
S&H Charges	(10.50)	(8.50)	(10.50)	(10.50)
Call Center	3.20	3.20	4.20	4.20
Pick/Pack	2.80	2.80	2.80	2.80
Freight Out	5.80	5.80	5.80	5.80
Credit Card Fees	1.84	1.80	1.84	1.84
Total Variable Cost	3.14	5.10	4.14	4.14
Contribution Margin	$32.41	$30.45	$31.41	$30.68
Total Variable Catalog Expense	$0.48	$0.48	$0.48	$0.48
Breakeven Values
Response Rate%	1.48%	1.58%	1.53%	1.56%
$/Book	$1.12	$1.19	$1.16	$1.19
*Change in $/Book Needed*		*6.4%*	*3.2%*	*5.6%*

Using Breakeven to Estimate Buyer Acquisition Cost
The basic equation for breakeven can also be used to estimate the cost of acquiring new buyers from a prospecting effort when the observed response rate is less than what is needed for breakeven. Figure 4, below, illustrates a few examples.

Figure 4. Acquisition Cost

	Housefile	Optimized	Co-op	O/S List
*Observed Average Order*	*$75.80*	*$76.58*	*$72.16*	*$68.04*
Contribution Margin	$32.41	$32.77	$30.72	$28.81
Total Variable Catalog Expense	$0.48	$0.52	$0.55	$0.63
Breakeven Values
Response Rate%	1.48%	1.59%	1.79%	2.19%
$/Book	$1.12	$1.22	$1.29	$1.49

*Observed Response Rate*	*3.60%*	*2.28%*	*1.37%*	*1.01%*
*Observed $/Book*	*$2.73*	*$1.75*	*$0.99*	*$0.69*
*Contribution (Acq. Cost)*	*$19.08*	*$9.96*	*$(9.43)*	*$(33.57)*

The observed response rate and average order value (or $/book) are divided into the variable catalog expense, and this product is subtracted from the contribution margin to calculate the actual contribution (note that the AOV observed in this case is not the same for all list sources). When this value is greater than zero, in the case of the housefile example at $19.08, it means that this order generated profit (which can be used to cover fixed costs and overhead). That is good. Co-op prospecting, however, did not occur above breakeven. Calculating the contribution shows that it cost $9.43 to acquire each new buyer through co-op prospecting. The example for outside list mailing is even more extreme, with a lower response rate coupled with a higher cost, yielding an acquisition cost of $33.57.

How can you interpret these acquisition costs? On an intuitive level, the co-op name acquisition cost of $9.43 can be compared to the contribution yielded by a housefile mailing, $19.08. This would mean that the cost of acquiring a name that way would be offset after one additional subsequent order. If you have a high repeat order rate for your buyers, it might make sense to acquire new customers at that cost.

In the case of the outside list example, it would take almost two additional subsequent orders to offset the cost. What would this mean for your business? It would depend on the behavior of your recent buyer file: Would you expect new buyers to purchase a second or third time on average in the first year after their first order? If so, you would turn a profit—although you would have to front the cash until those second or third orders were placed and shipped.

Wrap-up
A simple Marketing Breakeven Analysis is a useful tool that every catalog marketer should understand. With a little help from your accountant, you should be able to set up a worksheet and perform this analysis. The values should be updated regularly and compared to the $/book and response rate you are seeing from the various lists that you mail to.

In a perfect world, none of us would have to prospect below breakeven. Realistically, that’s not always the case. If this is your reality, it’s critical you understand the cost of prospecting and make evaluations with respect to the expected behavior of newly acquired buyers in the first year (or two) after the initial order. Your accountant can also use the information to help forecast cash flow for mailing campaigns.

Now that you do care about Marketing Breakeven Analyses, if you would like further information, please contact your LENSER partner or email me at al.bessin@lenser.com. I would be happy to email a spreadsheet to you that will help with the calculations.

CASE STUDY
Do New Products Really Drive Sales?
By Michelle Farabaugh, Partner

Sourcing new products is a never-ending battle, but does all that effort really drive sales? The average cataloger will mail their best customer 12 to 14 times a year. Since 80 percent of sales are typically yielded from the top 20 percent of the buyers, it is very important for these customers to feel that your product offering is new and exciting. Without new products, customers and prospects don’t have a reason to open the catalog. The best customers and many of the prospects have already reviewed everything you have to offer.

The case study below analyzes the sales increase from one month to another when new products are introduced. In this case, new product sales increased 33% from one month to the next while the old products, or pick-up products, yielded only a 13% increase. That means that the total company sales increased 18%, a five percent increase from what the old products alone were generating.

	Month One	Month Two	+/-%
New Products	$273.2K	$363.1K	+33%
Old Products	$933.7K	$1,055.2K	+13%
Total Products	$1206.8K	$1,428.2K	+18%

Now that we can see new products do drive sales, the question is: How many new products are really necessary to drive this business? The answer depends largely upon the type of catalog you have. A source or supply catalog requires much less change than a fashion catalog. A source or supply catalog can drive sales with as little as 10% to 20% new product each season. A fashion or trend catalog requires 40% to 50% new product with each season. Keep in mind that a fashion catalog does not just include apparel. Hard goods, accessories and many other categories are seen as fashion by the consumer.

Good merchandising is more than just selecting new products. It means conducting merchandising analysis for both product performance and for the catalog they are presented in. It means understanding how the creative and pagination affect the sales of the item being analyzed. Featuring an item or presenting it in one of the catalog hot spots (front cover, back cover, inside front or back spread or even around a bind-in order form) can dramatically affect how many items are sold. Placement on the page or size and context of an image can positively or negatively affect the sale of an item. Was the item in the upper right hand corner one season versus in the gutter during another season? Was the item in a context shot (shown in use) versus a silhouette in another season?

A product history should be created to review trends and placement over time. It is just as important to pick the repeat products as it is to select new products. The identification of product categories and sub-categories that are taking off, versus those that are trending down at the end of their life cycle, will provide valuable insight into future merchandising strategies for those categories. Identifying early trends can drive sales forward before the competition has time to react.

In addition to product and placement, price points also need to be evaluated. Price points cannot change by more than 10% without a significant impact on sales. By analyzing prior catalog offerings and sales by price point, you will be able to make sure that your next catalog will still target the core customer.

There are several factors that go into selecting great product. The first two are centered on being in touch with your customer as well as trends in the marketplace. When selecting new products, it’s important to stay true to your brand and what your customer will respond to. Playing up new trends in the marketplace while reducing shrinking categories is important.

Once new products are identified, their features and benefits must be evaluated. Does this product provide something unique that the customer will want? Are you able to negotiate an exclusive agreement, even for the next six months or a year? Evaluating these features will give you a competitive advantage. Has this product already flooded the market, thereby taking the uniqueness from your brand? Determining if the product will meet your margin goals and objectives is critical. It is very difficult to make up a shortfall in margin rate through sales or other expenses.

Finally, if you source this product, is the manufacturer able to provide the timely supply you will need? Offering a new product that is backordered the first day the catalog drops or two weeks after it drops does not serve the company or the customer. Being out of stock on exciting new products is an easy way to disenfranchise the customer and encourage them to shop with your competitors.

For information on having a merchandising training session for your team, including product selection, pagination, and space allocation, contact Michelle at 415-789-5815 or michelle.farabaugh@lenser.com.

CIRCULATION TIP
By Alexandra Singer, Circulation and Marketing Manager

Are you reactivating old buyers and requestors? The key is determining whether to optimize pre-merge or post-merge. Many mailers are taking advantage of optimization or reactivation tools offered by the co-op databases in order to rejuvenate old buyers and requestors or names they may have received from a sister company. The question is whether to optimize pre-merge or post-merge.

Here at LENSER, we utilize the merge as a sophisticated reactivation tool, and urge you to do the first step of the optimization yourself, in the merge! If your mail schedule includes multiple drops, run a full merge including everything on your database—buyers, requestors, ship-to's/giftees (don’t forget these potentially good names!), exchange lists, and the usual co-ops and rental lists—without pre-optimizing any names.

Identify everything you normally would mail—buyers with good RFM characteristics, recent requestors and ship-to's, all multis on the housefile, and free prospect lists. Mail the names you normally mail as well as all names that are multis, regardless of RFM characteristics. These are active and responsive mail order buyers, regardless of their last purchase from your company. Send only the leftover uniques from those groups to a co-op to be optimized. Then use the optimized uniques in subsequent drops.

The benefits to this strategy are a) the merge is finding more names worth mailing without opto costs, b) you’re putting more names into the opto, resulting in better models and scoring, and c) this technique provides you with a clearer picture of why your optimization models are performing. Without those valuable multis from your housefile, do the opto segments still perform well enough to mail?

The drawback? Higher merge costs. Merge passing charges—as a cost per thousand—are levied on input names, so the more you have going in, the more you pay. Still, the cost is negligible when you consider how much you can improve your response.

CREATIVE TIP
“Tis better to give…”
By Carol Worthington-Levy, Creative Partner

One of the “absolutes” in direct marketing is an offer. Yet most catalogers view offers as too expensive or fear they’ll “train” their customers to expect a discount every time they shop. Most mailers believe they’ll lose control if they have an offer in place. In fact, your offer exists in order for you to control your customer! This is why it’s so essential.

The first place catalogs and ecommerce sites lose control is by offering discounts on their products. This is my LEAST favorite kind of offer, and it requires the least imagination! It’s time to spend less, and kick it up a notch!

One of my favorite directions with an offer is what’s called a “paper premium”. That means that you and your staff have some extensive knowledge about your product line and your customer that would enable you to inexpensively develop some kind of report or booklet or guide that would be offered by you alone—your competitors can’t offer it, and they cannot buy it in any store! This increases perceived value considerably.

I’ve worked to create “exclusively ours” calendars, booklets, and reports for both consumer and business-to-business clients that shot average order values up by over 30% and increased response rates by more than 25%. Sometimes in business-to-business, a report can be fulfilled automatically via PDF, although for consumer purchases, I prefer to provide something more tangible.

A company called American Slide Chart is one of my favorites for developing great premiums to be used as offers. The best part is, you can tell them what you want to make the chart do, and they’ll engineer it for FREE. What a deal! Plus, the prices on slide charts are very low since it’s nothing more than printed paper or cardboard.

For example, in the gardening world, a slide chart could be made to quickly and easily show what plants need be planted at what time of year in what part of the country. In the food and wine world, a slide chart could quickly show your customer which wines were best in what year, or which wines are best with different foods. This would be a much-appreciated gift that your customer would use again and again, and therefore be reminded of your expertise and thoughtfulness.

When you fulfill a gift like this, it weighs almost nothing, which is an added benefit to YOU. However, presentation is very important, so insert the chart, calendar, or other gift into a nice envelope with a “personal” note thanking them for their order.

Be creative with your offers and you can use them to control the sale—make it come in faster, and larger!

multichannel TIP
By Michelle Houston, Vice President of Circulation

Are you routinely emailing product offers to your entire email file? If so, you may be diminishing brand loyalty with your core customer. Year-long tests have shown that such email programs, which are common among catalogers, actually reduce overall catalog response of the buyer file. Since most catalog companies get 20 times more traffic driven by their catalogs than by their email programs, they are unwittingly killing off a large fraction of their overall direct business in order to get a small volume of sales traceable to emails.

The key to mitigating this trend is having an effective on-line contact strategy that blends channel contacts based on affinity and relevancy. LENSER is finding that e-mail promotions may trigger immediate sales with a lower AOV, but over the long term, this strategy consumes brand loyalty. Employing marketing databases will tremendously improve relevancy. And plotting out an annual contact strategy based on all channels will effectively manage how many contacts your customer can sustain.

CLIENT HIGHLIGHT—CRAZY SHIRTS
Homegrown in paradise, Crazy Shirts made its debut on the sidewalks of Waikiki in 1964. Since its humble days of airbrushing “undershirts" for locals and visitors, Crazy Shirts has evolved into “an internationally recognized casual apparel brand,” specializing in the highest quality fun and casual shirts on the market, featuring unique art, much of it Hawaii-themed. The company is now a multichannel retailer with a catalog, a website, and 42 retail stores throughout the mainland United States and Hawaiian islands.

According to LENSER consulting partner Michelle Farabaugh, “Crazy Shirts is a lifestyle company.” It’s easy to see why people become entrenched in the Crazy Shirts brand. Each Crazy Shirts store has a regional assortment of designs that feature the local color, and every custom-dyed shirt has its own uniquely designed gift wrap. Crazy Shirts staff members are excited about the product and passionate about the business. Laura Johnson says, “People love working for the company.” Some employees have been around for more than 10 years—they have a passion that’s impossible to manufacture.

Business is booming in paradise and LENSER is glad to help! In November 2005, Crazy Shirts hired LENSER to conduct a thorough business review to “identify opportunities for improvement and the underlying reasons for business success.” Laura Johnson says, “We chose LENSER because of their obvious expertise in the area of catalog circulation.” Since November, Crazy Shirts has also employed LENSER for monthly circulation management services. In this short time, LENSER has changed their customer contact strategy to maximize sales as well as worked to re-bid printing, which has saved the company more than 20% in expenses while adding functionality that wasn’t available in the past. Michelle Farabaugh notes that LENSER “employs best of class practices to drive proven results.” So far, Crazy Shirts has seen many successes: sales are right on track, exciting new initiatives are underway, and expense-saving strategies are being used. “Life is good, especially if everyone [who] reads this article buys a Crazy Shirt!”

Crazy Shirts will soon launch a new website to bring additional functionality and flexibility to their clients. LENSER looks forward to aiding Crazy Shirts on its path toward continued growth and profitability.

For more information on Crazy Shirts, please visit their website at www.crazyshirts.com.

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT—TRAVIS SEATON
Travis Seaton was identified in early 2000 as an up-and-coming direct marketer in the North Bay when he had a chance meeting with John Lenser. “I was on the client side at that time, but my supervisor wasn't a believer in the LENSER methodology, so we never had the occasion to build a working relationship.” However, when the opportunity came knocking, Travis jumped at the chance to join the firm. He notes, “I believed in John’s philosophy and recognized that what he was advocating was light years ahead of the industry.”

Having joined the firm when there was only a handful staff, Travis has had the privilege of being an integral part of this innovative company’s growth. His skills and ever-increasing experience have supported and contributed to LENSER’s own continuing success along with that of our clients’ growth and success. Travis notes, “When I started with LENSER, I could count the number of employees on one hand. Today I would need five hands to count all of us. That's tremendous growth for a homegrown company, especially given the economic struggles we encountered in the early 2000’s.”

Today Travis, as circulation manager and consultant, is committed to managing the marketing functions of a select group of retained clients. Of Travis’ skill, Michelle Houston, Vice President at LENSER, notes, “Whether a client is mailing 40 thousand catalogs a year or 40 million catalogs a year, Travis has the keen ability to quickly identify and adapt to their needs. He is able to go into any size company and streamline their circulation processes to maximize ROI.”

Now celebrating six years with LENSER, what keeps Travis here? It’s simple, says Travis. “I enjoy the personal relationships I have with co-workers and clients. LENSER is the greener pasture on the other side of the fence!”

On weekends, Travis can be found at home with his wife Catherine and their new baby daughter, Cassandra. When mentioning his hobbies, Travis laughs and mentions picking up toys, changing diapers, and perfecting the tone and pitch of "no" or "don't" or "oh, no.” “Seriously, though,” he says. “My real hobby is taking care of my baby and wife. There's nothing more rewarding than hearing them laugh, seeing smiles on their faces and knowing that they are happy.” To learn more about Travis, please visit his bio.

AFFILIATE FOCUS—DIRECT RECOVERY SOLUTIONS
Do you know what a guaranteed service refund is? As multichannel merchants, you make a guarantee everyday to your customers. If they are not satisfied with the goods or services that you provided, you refund their money. Don’t you deserve the same level of service satisfaction?

Certain UPS® and FedEx® delivery services are guaranteed to be delivered on time. If a package is delivered late, the cost of shipping is refunded. But you, the customer, must first file a refund claim with the carrier. Most of us just choose to overpay our UPS or FedEx bill rather than devote valuable staff time to dealing with the hassle and expense of processing the service failure refunds.

Now there's a simple solution we’d like to introduce to you that will help you avoid paying for failed deliveries. Our affiliate business partner, Direct Recovery Solutions, remotely verifies the delivery of every package you ship by working through EDI and the web. When the service promise of the carrier isn't met, they make certain your full shipping expense is refunded.

Notes John Lenser, “DRS audits billing, and they also screen for rate compliance, bogus address correction fees, and more. They operate on the standard industry contingency fee of 50% of the savings so there is no out-of-pocket expense for you. This is a no-brainer, and every cataloger in the country should be using them.”

Direct Recovery Solutions’ aggressive small package audit and cost recovery service, coupled with their comprehensive reporting, has helped them become one of the fastest growing firms in the industry and LENSER is proud to introduce this service to our clients.

For questions or contact information, call Michele Salmon at LENSER at 415-446-2500 x211 or email her at michele.salmon@lenser.com.

NEWS BRIEF

U.S. to Repeal Long Distance Phone Tax! Steve Reisman, our affiliate at BCN Telecom, kindly informed us that the U.S. Treasury Department conceded a legal dispute over long-distance telephone taxes and will begin to refund taxes paid on services from the past three years. According to the Wall Street Journal, this decision will lead to billions of dollars in refunds for both businesses and consumers who have paid the tax. “A 3% tax refund on three years of long-distance service is like getting a whole month free!” says Steve. This is significant for many of you who have long-distance telephone bills. Now, go collect!
Going to the New England Mail Order Association (NEMOA) Conference? We are. If you would like an opportunity to meet with us to discuss your own catalog needs, please contact Michele Salmon (michele.salmon@lenser.com ) to set up an appointment.
This month we welcome GaelSong, The Guild, Highlights for Children, and Peet’s Coffee & Tea to our family of clients.

This Month at Lenser June 2006

This Month at Lenser
June 2006