Catalog Marketing 101 - Front End & Back End Marketing, Planning If you’re new to direct marketing and catalog marketing, one of the first questions you will have is, "What are front end and back end marketing." Although we don’t get into a thorough discussion of these concepts until after we have given you some background on planning for a catalog business...simply stated, front end marketing involves new customer acquisition, while backend marketing involves ongoing marketing to your customer file after they have made their initial purchase. Both are an important part of starting, growing and maintaining a catalog business. Front end, new customer acquisition is critically important; however, acquiring new customers is the most expensive part of starting a catalog business. And, the majority of your efforts should be spent on ongoing marketing to existing customers. In this section of the tutorial, you will learn how to develop your catalog marketing plans from acquisition, through conversion and retention, on to reactivation of good customers that may have stopped buying from you. You will learn about media buying and circulation planning, and also managing your house file (your customer list.) To download visit http://www.dwsassociates.com/marketing-tools/whte-papers-tutorials/tutorials/catalog-marketing-101/