Cover Story: 50 Best Tips of 2009
We’re excited to continue our November tradition of offering you our treasure trove of the 50 best tips of the year. Our editorial staff reviewed every word published in our print publication over the past year, as well as in our e-newsletter and website. That includes All About ROI magazine, The ROI Report e-newsletter, and the best from our former incarnation, Catalog Success, and its related e-properties. From those, we’ve extracted the most “out-of-the-box” (sorry, I hate that cliché, but it’s kind of appropriate here) and easy-to-implement ideas, tactics and pointers.
In our usual cut-to-the-chase style, all the tips are here for you to act on them as is. Or, you can refer to the articles and issue dates we reference if you’d like to review the complete stories. And all of them can be accessed on our website, AllAboutROImag.com.
So feast on these money-making and cost-saving pointers, and know that although we put these big, sexy numbers before each one, they’re only randomly ranked; all of them are worth a look. —Paul Miller, editor-in-chief
CHANNEL INTEGRATION
1. Assess your profitability by channel.
“When you dig down into the core of the numbers by channel, it’s an eye-opening experience. There are a lot of people over the next few years who’ll have radical changes in their marketing mix.”
Jason Marshall, Gaiam
“Finding the Perfect Balance,” June, All About ROI
2. Integrate online and offline data thoroughly.
Having to create another inventory database can be a major headache when deploying a web store. Ideally, a web store should integrate with an existing brick-and-mortar store or catalog database to save time and money on setup and maintenance. One database makes purchasing, inventory control, product updating and fulfillment much easier.
Brad Malmberg, Xsilva Systems
“4 Ways to Make the Most of Your Web Store,” July 21, The ROI Report
