Channel Crossing: Guiding Customers to Web Sites

When direct marketing companies first invested in the World Wide Web, creative strategies and marketing budgets for online and off-line operations were segregated.

Some executives believed the new medium required different marketing strategies and personnel, while others wanted to keep staffers and budgets detached, facilitating a lucrative Web spin-off.

Today both of these rationales have been debunked. The rules of direct marketing hold fast regardless of channel.

But the fallout from these early missteps continues: Catalogers sometimes measure the success of their campaigns in silos, neglecting the influence of campaigns across sales channels.

“When people try to track traffic to the Web, they see a decrease in response to their mail pieces,” says Paul Imbierowicz, product general manager for Channelview, an application service provider-based tool from Abacus that reports campaign results across multiple channels.

“They aren’t aligning the order on the Web with the direct mail piece,” he says.

Any decline in response is anathema to catalogers, but once sales on the Web site are accounted for, the decline disappears and cost savings become apparent. Channelview provides a daily view of campaign results on a list level, matching sales on all order channels to marketing campaigns in all offer channels.

“When we do the matching we find that up to 70 percent of people ordering on a Web site were sent a catalog in the past three to four weeks,” says Imbierowicz.

Take-away tip: Don’t be afraid to drive traffic to your Web site. Take advantage of the cost savings with a solid marketing strategy that truly crosses channels.

Move Customer Service Online

When Spring Hill Nursery’s new owners resurrected it from bankruptcy, they neglected to bring toll-free, 24-hour customer service back with the venerated garden catalog.

You may not be ready for such a radical move, but you can reduce the cost of servicing your customers by driving them to the Web with order and shipment tracking, lifetime order histories and other customer service bonuses.

If you have a customer’s e-mail address, consider sending shipping confirmation even for non-Web orders. You’ll reduce customer service contacts down the line and reinforce the idea of online customer service.

Remember, however, that self-service doesn’t mean no service. Travel sites such as Orbitz have become popular because customers can play with itineraries, stopovers and flight times, but the service wouldn’t work if phone and e-mail customer service wasn’t also available.

Take-away tip: Encourage online product registration. The technique most often is used by companies marketing entertainment and technology products (e.g., DVDs, games, computers, printers, peripherals, software).

For software and gaming products, in particular, the registration usually is part of the CD itself. The best approach is to have registration required as part of installation, but other types of registration can be incentivized with offers or rewards.

Leslie Ross, director of marketing communications at Naviant, which offers e-CD Registration, says most registration applications are data-gathering-oriented. “You’re going online to use the product anyway. By replacing the hard card, you’ve established opportunities for one-to-one communication, initiating the online relationship, introducing online customer service, and collecting data that can be used later. It’s a means to an end, a way to introduce a channel.”

Give Information and Content

Will Tifft, senior vice president/general manager at 24/7 Real Media’s network and mail division, suggests that catalogers give site visitors information that will help them make a purchase. “That way it’s not a hard sell,” he says. “You’re taking advantage of interactivity and showing them value.”

Indeed, you don’t need a full editorial staff to offer visitors a rich site experience. Content can be as simple as a list of best-selling products.

This function is used to good effect by companies such as AOL Music, Mp3.com and Billboard.com, the latter of which posts its vaunted charts in the “Hits of the Web” section on its site.

Another inexpensive and effective way to boost the richness of your site is customer-created content, such as Web communities. Your most active members/visitors will create traffic; your recent customers will return to rate products; and catalog and print buyers will visit to glean more product information.

Amazon is famous for its customer reviews of products, a service to consumers in search of commodity products such as books and electronics.

The concept of community doesn’t have to sell to be effective. Low-cost message boards can create customer loyalty and repeat visitorship even when not overtly attached to product. For example, clients of business seminars or home décor sites can trade tips and advice.

Take-away tip: Offer research tools, product information and related tips to increase return visits and lifetime value.

Add Practical Functionality

“Brochureware” sites are best consigned to the past. Your site can be more than an online searchable version of your catalog if you add opportunities for interaction.

While deploying technology for technology’s sake rarely pays off, adding practical functionality does. For example, telecom company Verizon provides easy-to-use wizards that help customers skip the usual marketing hard sell to identify the calling plans and programs that truly are the most effective and low-cost, thus reducing churn down the line.

Use the Web to take “friend-get-a-friend” marketing options further. In addition to offering bonuses on new leads, encourage visitors to pass along articles, irresistible discounts and virtual postcards.

The photo services of Ofoto and Snapfish have turned this into a science. When a customer has film developed, the service produces online photo albums that the customer sends to friends and family members, who must register at the site to view the photos. This introduces new prospects to the site and creates new marketing opportunities.

Use affiliate programs judiciously, concentrating your efforts on quality partners. Be sure your margins can withstand the bounties you pay, or eschew traditional affiliate relationships to build marketing partnerships among equals. For example, a Gap e-mail promotion featured fashion picks from the editors of In Style magazine, followed by In Style’s own content-rich (and richly sponsored) e-mail promotions (see page 31).

Take-away tip: Leverage the interactive capabilities of the Web, such as referral services and affiliate marketing.

Move Hotline Offers Online

Follow up off-line orders with e-mail offers for related items, or distribute gift certificates or coupons good for online purchases only.

Another tactic: Try reserving sales and clearances for Web-only or Web-first offers. For example, J. Crew’s printed clearance catalogs now bat clean-up for online pre-sales, in which customers can pick through the low-stock items, sizes and colors, tracking item availability in real time.

Or try providing a selection of Web-only products. White Flower Farm does this to good effect, listing varieties of shrubs and perennials available only from its Web site.

For a garden catalog, this provides a good opportunity to ride out nature’s unpredictability by offering plants that were propagated in numbers too small to be offered in the general catalog.

Take-away tip: Try giving exclusive offers to Web customers.

Mail Smarter

Reduce frequency and length of your mailings. For example, send postcards promoting secret sales and exclusives. Think of a postcard like a space ad—pick a solid performer or a new, hot or irresistible item to promote.

Consider the strategy employed by Old Navy for its retail stores—while it offers thousands of items, it builds expensive television media campaigns to turn single fashion items into seasonal must-haves.

“The Web is another ordering channel,” says Imbierowicz. “If it helps the customer do business with you, it can only be good.”

Kelly J. Andrews is a Philadelphia-area freelance writer. She currently develops online products for a major direct marketing company.