Cover Story: 50 Best Tips of 2009

22. Call web buyers to upsell them.
Study the average order value, lines per order and units per order differentials between web and phone orders. If you see a significant differential, test calling web orderers to confirm and upsell them.
Terry Jukes, Ability Commerce
“Are You Taking Too Many Orders Online?” May 4, AllAboutROIMag.com columns

23. Identify customers influenced by a mailing.
To gauge customer activity, REI built an incremental model by building two models: one with a catalog-mailed group, the other with a no-mailed group. REI scored everyone on the file twice using the mailed and no-mailed group models. Subtracting the no-mail score from the mailed score leaves the incremental score. REI sorts by this score and mails the best incremental customers.
Mike Bowcut, REI
“REI Treks Ahead,” May, Catalog Success

24. 4 ways to demonstrate social media ROI.
It isn’t so easy to evaluate individuals working in social media. So consider these metrics that social media employees might track in order to demonstrate some level of return on investment: 1. customer service value; 2. new customers; 3. linkages; and 4. recent interactions.
Kevin Hillstrom, MineThatData
“An Employee’s Look at Social Media ROI, Part 2,” Sept. 14, AllAboutROIMag.com column

25. Who better than college kids?
Use college interns who are active with social networks to effectively keep up with all Twitter and Facebook activities. College kids seemingly spend a quarter of their lives on these sites, and are perfectly happy with this because they can add the experience to their resumes. After a little training on how to put on the best face for the company, let them do their thing all day long on these networks — and at such a low cost. A win-win for sure.
Paul Miller, All About ROI
“Robust Conference Bucks Downward Trend,” June 23, The ROI Report