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
3. Segment “pure” web buyers.
When doing a matchback, you have buyers who gave a source code to either your call center or shopping cart, online buyers who didn’t give you a source code but received catalogs, and buyers who ordered but didn’t receive catalogs. Flag those who didn’t receive catalogs as “pure” web buyers and segment them separately because they respond very differently to catalog mailings.
Jim Coogan, Catalog Marketing Economics
“6 Questions to Ask When Cutting Catalog Circ, Part 2,” March 24, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
MANAGEMENT ISSUES
4. Consultants should disagree with you.
Find a consultant who disagrees with you a lot. Most of the time, consultants are brought in to fix problems that exist within an organization that can’t be fixed internally.
Jim Gilbert, Gilbert Direct Marketing
“Consultant, Prosultant or Insultant, Part 2,” March 2, AllAboutROIMag.com columns
5. Coordinate internal integration matters.
Appoint an employee to be responsible for multichannel results communication. This employee should be able to illustrate the unique activities that drive ROI across all channels, while teaching company leaders how to balance the conflicting initiatives that drive results in channels.
Kevin Hillstrom, MineThatData
“Gauging ROI on Retail Email Marketing: A Complex Puzzle,” Aug. 24, AllAboutROIMag.com columns
PROSPECTING
6. Focus on response, not AOV, for prospects.
Don’t worry about increasing average orders to prospects, because it can impact response. When prospecting, the goal should be to add as many new buyers to the housefile as possible by maximizing response.
Stephen R. Lett, Lett Direct
Print-Plus column, “All Hands on Deck,” October, All About ROI
E-COMMERCE, EMAIL
7. If using auto-reply, answer the question.
If your company uses automated customer service technology to respond to customer emails, double-check each automated reply to make sure it really answers the question. It’s helpful to have the response acknowledge the email and provide a time frame for a human response.
Reggie Brady, Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions
Email Applied column, “Email’s Mounting Role in Customer Service,” September, All About ROI
8. Try free services like Twilert and Google Alerts.
These tools let you pick specific search phrases and then automatically email “mentions” to you on a schedule you choose. For search words, the possibilities are endless: company name, key products, services and more. You may find a blogger or two that loves your brand. These brand evangelists have the power to drive the masses in your direction. They can help increase traffic — and even sales — and they’re some of the best people to engage with online.
Bryan Jennewein, infoGROUP
“3 Ways to Make Social Media Work for You,” Sept. 1, The ROI Report
9. Use promotions in your transactional emails.
About 80 percent of commercial email isn’t opened. But transactional emails (e.g., “Your product was shipped today”) are opened and read at about double the rate of promo emails. While customers are reading about their transactions, promote a related product below the fold.
Arthur Middleton Hughes, e-Dialog
“3 Tactics for Email: Promote, Personalize and Be Relevant,” July 21, The ROI Report
10. How to make the best offer possible.
The best kind of offer encourages people to buy faster, contains a reply-by date and a minimum order size, is exclusively a product of yours or a gift with your logo and URL screened on to make it yours, and is easy to fulfill with online coupons and gift cards, both of which can be emailed digitally, for example, with no postage or breakage.
Carol Worthington-Levy, Lenser
IndustryEye Shop Talk section, “5 Creative Ways to Make a Good Offer,” June, All About ROI
11. Be mobile for mobile marketing.
“A mobile site should have a coherent and consistent presentation for a variety of mobile devices. We made sure a search box was prominent on nearly all of our mobile pages, because search is really important.”
Eddie Sutton, The Strand Bookstore
IndustryEye Mobile Minute section, “Q&A With Strand Bookstore’s Eddie Sutton,” June, All About ROI
12. Move product reviews to front row/center.
“When we started seeing what people were saying [in their online product reviews], we no longer wanted to keep it just on our website. We have this great information we can share; let’s put it anywhere and everywhere we can. If a review helps us sell a product, and sometimes it can hammer home the point even more effectively than our copywriters can, then we’ll use it in print [catalog], in emails, and we might even use it in some print ads.”
Glenn Edelman, Wine Enthusiast
Cataloger Spotlight: “Wine Enthusiast Shoots for the Stars With Ratings and Reviews,” May, Catalog Success
13. Empower consumers to write content.
Getting customers involved is the best way to create a destination site, while providing content you wouldn’t be able to create otherwise. Ratings and reviews, comments, and other original, unbiased content are great ways to keep customers engaged to drive return visits.
Scott Todaro, Demandware
“Build Content You Can Bank On,” Feb. 24, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
14. Don’t let web shoppers ‘escape.’
Shoppers click helpful information links during checkout and never go back to finish. Think of the checkout lines at Target — alleys you have to proceed down with little hope of escape. Remove all links from your checkout process so shoppers have only one way to move forward.
Larry Kavanagh, DMinSite
On the Web column, “5 Online Metrics to Maximize All That Data,” May, Catalog Success
15. Get the goods on tape.
Directly contact your best customers and ask them for video testimonials. If some of your best customers are located near your offices, then by all means go to the places of their choice and shoot some video testimonials.
Jim Gilbert, Gilbert Direct Marketing
“How to Easily and Cost Effectively Add Video,” Sept. 28, AllAboutROIMag.com columns
16. Start a ‘5-second rule’ on your homepage.
Consumers must be able to find what they’re looking for within five seconds of visiting your homepage. “If they have to search to find it, you’ve lost the sale.” Homepages should include right-hand sidebars, taglines/slogans, strong headlines, no navigation, offer/data collection and a powerful direct response sales presentation.
Craig Huey, Creative Direct Marketing Group
“12 Web Site Design Mistakes,” June 23, The ROI Report
Search
17. Integrate SEM with other channels.
Do this to capture the demand search engine marketing creates. Align your company’s marketing resources and external agencies to ensure campaign metrics are speaking the same language.
Alan Osetek, iProspect
“Searching for the Perfect Mix?” June, All About ROI
18. Effectively redirect failed searches.
Logically redirect misspellings, synonyms, slang terms and brand names to the appropriate product pages. Prepare to redirect alternative search terms, such as “freight rates” when customers are looking for “shipping and handling.” Redirect products you don’t sell to substitute items.
Terry Jukes, Ability Commerce
On the Web column, “What’s Your Internal Site Search Failure Rate?” July, All About ROI
19. Focus on ROI and sales.
Focus equally on return on advertising spending and overall sales results. Challenge whoever does your paid search to increase sales and spend by at least 20 percent.
Larry Kavanagh, DMinSite
On the Web column, “7 Ways to Find New Customers Online,” February, Catalog Success
20. Be nimble with paid search.
Don’t leave your paid search campaigns at default so you’re able to react when something changes in your ecosystem that affects your keywords (e.g., out of stocks).
Kevin Lee, Didit
“Myriad Ways to Drive ROI via Paid Search,” May 19, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
Contact Strategies
21. Go beyond matchbacks.
Marketers ultimately want to get more out of media attribution [aka matchbacks] than static stats. Understand the relationships between marketing channels and transactions to gain insight to optimize contact strategies. By measuring, understanding and predicting individual behavior, retailers can be more targeted, providing the right offer for each person while creating more relevant messaging.
Michael Caccavale, Pluris
“Matchbacks: The Next Generation,” June, All About ROI
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
Social Media
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
26. Build a ‘social corner.’
Create a social area of your site with engaging content focused on lifestyle vs. products specifically to help deepen loyalty, increase referrals and drive sales.
Aaron Strout, Powered
“Get Real Social Media ROI,” Aug. 18, The ROI Report
27. Create a social media database.
Every time a Twitter user has something to say about your brand — positive or negative — enter the information into your social media database. If the user retweets one of your articles, capture the user name, date it happened and action (retweet). Did the user link to one of your web pages? Capture that information with the link.
Kevin Hillstrom, MineThatData
“Build and Reap the Benefits of Social Media Databases,” July 20, AllAboutROIMag.com column
28. Focus on customer-centric communities.
Acquire customers by using the viral power of social networking, focusing that power on targeted communities of people known to need a specific company’s products/services. This consists of a sponsored branded portal that acts as the homepage of the community and a tool suite that includes alerts, message boards, photo and file sharing, and other social network-type functionality. Let individual members create personal discussion groups consisting of friends, family and business associates. These groups by default create unlimited opportunities to acquire targeted new customers and prospects.
Neil Rosen, eWayDirect
“Do Customer-Centric Communities Answer the Scalability Question?” March 10, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
General Marketing Issues
29. Encourage call-center upselling.
Empower your telephone sales reps to make offers while they have customers on the phone. Be willing to pay a commission. You’ll be surprised how much incremental revenue you can generate.
Stephen R. Lett, Lett Direct
“Can’t Afford Catalogs Anymore?” May, Catalog Success
30. Cater to customer influencers.
Make it easy for your key influencers to recommend your product. Give them samples, information and discount offers for their “audience.”
Shari Altman, Altman Dedicated Direct
“Find Your Key Influencers,” September, All About ROI
Parcel Shipping
31. Substitute ground for air.
Both FedEx and UPS offer guaranteed delivery for ground service as well as air/express. Save money by using ground instead of air when guaranteed on-time delivery still can be made by ground.
Jeff Kline, Kline Management Consulting
“7 Ways to Cut Parcel Shipping Expenses Right Now,” March, Catalog Success
Operations & Fulfillment
32. Packing can always be more efficient.
Put packing supplies adjacent to the stations in your warehouse, and ensure you have the proper number of insert compartments, sufficient tabletop square footage and adjustable length stations.
Curt Barry, F. Curtis Barry & Co.
“15 Ways to Reduce Warehouse Expenses,” April 7, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
33. Lean engineering optimizes net recovery and sales cycle time when dealing with returns.
The practice of stashing returned items in a central warehouse is common, yet almost always creates an unnecessary drag on a company’s financial performance. Seek the expertise of an outsourced solution provider to develop a “lean engineering” process that makes it easier for customers, reduces the number of times products are handled/transported, reduces the cycle time and optimizes recovery.
Cayce Roy, Liquidity Services
“Debunking the Myths of Customer Returns,” July 7, The ROI Report
Postal Matters
34. Test personalized URLs (PURLs) and mobile keywords on mailings, ads and inserts.
Engage with customers through all available channels for the sole purpose of broadening the means of communication. Further develop your digital relationship with consumers by using PURLs, or test mobile marketing using mobile keywords on all printed pieces. Consumer response is traceable; once consumers have responded, you’ve established a new ability to communicate digitally.
Neil O’Keefe, Direct Marketing Association
“5 Tips to Minimize the Impact of USPS Rate Increases,” March 24, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
Creative & Copywriting
35. In-house photography has its advantages.
Save time, cut costs and increase flexibility by shooting at the last minute without having to hire somebody for the day. If your company has some extra space in its building, set up a photo studio there. Marketers can save a tremendous amount of money doing it in-house.
Jean Giesmann, Stony Creek Brands; Chris Bradley, Cuddledown of Maine
“10 Survival Tips From NEMOA,” Sept. 29, The ROI Report
36. Use active voice.
Active sentences carry more emotion and zest than passive sentences. Take these two examples:
* Active voice: Illuminate outdoor areas with a sconce.
* Passive voice: Outdoor areas can be illuminated with a sconce.
In the passive voice example, two “neutral” words, “can be,” bring no value to the content.
Denise McGill, McGill Copywriting
“9 Tips to Better Catalog Copy,” April 21, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
Database Marketing
37. Figure out time to next purchase.
Do you know how long it takes for a new buyer to repurchase? Is it three weeks or three months? With that knowledge, you can build a strategic campaign to reactivate buyers who haven’t repurchased by that time. Or, if you know new buyers won’t purchase in a given window, scale marketing efforts back to avoid overinvesting.
Tim Hoerrner, Carmot Marketing
“4 Tips to Better Understand and Retain New Buyers,” May 5, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
38. Sharpen your segmentation strategy.
Best segmentation practices start with needs/motivations, then overlay lifetime value, segment by where customers are in their life cycles and model based on RFM.
Paul Becker, marketing consultant
“From Market Segmentation to Customer Segmentation: Opportunities for Competitive Advantage and Growth, Part 2,” Aug. 4, The ROI Report
39. Capture social media for database marketing.
Store the date of the last social media activity in your database. It’s not difficult to create database fields that list the most recent date of a visit from Twitter, Facebook or any other social media website. This information can and should be used in future marketing campaigns.
Kevin Hillstrom, MineThatData
“Explore Social Media’s Link to Database Marketing,” July 6, AllAboutROIMag.com columns
B-to-B
40. Follow the fiscal calendar.
Just prior to the end of the fiscal year is prime selling time for B-to-B marketers, as institutions must use all of their budgets or risk losing funding in subsequent years.
John F. Hood, MCH
“4 Tips to Help B-to-B Marketers Capitalize on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” July 7, The ROI Report
Inventory Management
41. Budget for holiday inventory control planning.
Prepare an inventory budget, and review it weekly. Know your cash limitations related to placing purchase orders, and live within those limits. If you have surprise hot sellers and need to reorder, this budget review helps determine whether you have cash available to place the orders or if you need to free up cash by adjusting other orders.
Ray Goodman, Direct Tech
Inventory Management column, “10 Steps to a Better Holiday Season,” October, All About ROI
42. Optimize inventory.
Take advantage of like-item historical data to drive current-day inventory forecasts. Optimize sizes down to the individual store level based on how many units that store is expected to sell. Use “open stock” inventory to supplement gaps in prepack inventory. While open-stock merchandise is expensive to handle, mixing it with prepack stock optimizes inventory by not having to mark down or liquidate.
Clarence Kelley, J.C. Penney
“4 Ways J.C. Penney Delivers a Compelling Shopping Experience,” Feb. 10, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
Customer Service
43. Keep the customer satisfied.
Marco Promotional Products sends an email survey after every order. The return email on the automated survey comes directly from CEO Dick Nelson, and 30 percent of Marco’s customers respond to it. Managers and team leaders go through customer satisfaction reports daily, sifting through every customer comment. If something’s wrong, they make it right.
JoAnna Brandi, consultant
“Mind the Gap,” October, All About ROI
44. Let CSRs see inventory status in retail stores.
Integrate the inventory in your stores with catalog systems. “CSRs can see on the phone if there’s a SKU that matches in the store. Daily, we ship products that don’t show up in our warehouse inventory but are in our stores.”
Chris Bradley, Cuddledown of Maine
“10 Survival Tips From NEMOA,” Sept. 29, The ROI Report
45. Chatter about live chat.
Companies excel at live chat when they respond quickly, cut the drama (i.e., CSRs know how to cut to the chase) and communicate well when no CSRs are available so customers don’t keep holding on forever.
Amy Africa, Eight by Eight
“The Practical Social Media,” July, All About ROI
46. Use automated greetings with the voice of the actual rep who’ll answer the call.
When a call is routed to a particular rep, that rep’s recorded greeting gets played. This buys you time to get the customer’s information on your screen.
Jay Minnucci, Service Agility
“Agile or Clumsy: How Does Your Contact Center Rank?” April 7, Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips
Merchandising
47. Communicate among departments.
Work to align your merchandise planning process with marketing planning and campaigns. Include merchandise planning for print offers, features on your website’s homepage and email campaigns. The more you align these internal functions, the greater chance you’ll have to maximize demand and fulfillment by delivering the best product at the best price.
Ray Goodman, Direct Tech
Inventory Management column, “The New Math,” August, All About ROI
48. Know what makes customers’ hearts beat.
“When analyzing product performance levels, I refer to a balanced view of traditional catalog metrics, matchbacks and sales across channels. As customers become more channel agnostic, knowing what makes their heart beat and multiple left-brain metrics provide direction for our merchandising decisions.”
Chris Tso, Musician’s Friend
“Juggling Stats?” April, Catalog Success
49. Make it a package deal.
Bundle items together, and let customers know they’re less expensive as a package than they ordinarily would be when sold separately. But don’t try to make it look as if you’re a low-cost leader, because you can’t be unless you’re Wal-Mart.
Paul Miller, All About ROI
Editor’s Take column, “Let’s All Survive, Then Thrive,” April, Catalog Success
Sustainability and the Environment
50. Reuse cardboard.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters handles tons of cardboard. It used to pay a company to take it away and dispose of it. But now it bands all cardboard up and ships it to a company that sells it to larger box stores that import from overseas. “Now we get paid to have it picked up.” As for the cardboard it doesn’t ship out? Green Mountain shreds it and uses it for packaging.
Paul Comey, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
“How Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Gets Greener Profitably,” June 23, The ROI Report