Measuring Sales by Channel: Web vs. Call Center

In the second of a three-part series begun last week, catalog circulation consultant Jim Coogan takes an in-depth look at calculating revenue streams and measuring sales by individual channel.

Continuing my theme from last week, below you’ll find six key factors to help you most effectively determine how sales figures should be distributed among individual channels.

1. Source code the mix of Web orders and call-center/mail orders with keycodes. Do your Web buyers give you a lower portion of orders with source codes? Almost always, because the Web buyers reorder on the Web.

2. Can pure Web and catalog-generated Web orders be flagged for segmentation for future campaigns? Plan for channel segmentation to include multichannel buyers, call-center buyers, pure Web buyers (those who didn’t receive a catalog) and catalog-generated Web buyers. Segmenting pure Web buyers from catalog-generated Web buyers is the key to profitable circulation to Web buyers.

3. Are catalog requests segmented into Web vs. traditional catalog requests? Catalog requests range in quality from the very best prospects to the poorest converting prospects, so don’t lump them all together.

4. How differently do pure Web and catalog-generated Web buyers respond? Should you have a different mailing frequency strategy for these two very different types of buyers? The answer is almost always yes.

5. Will identifying unprofitable Web-buyer segments yield opportunities to profitably cut circulation? Catalogers find they almost always mail some Web buyers too frequently.

6. What are the keycodes and quantities of buyers from promotion codes or flagging Web feeds from affiliates, pay-per-click, natural search, co-registration or e-mails? Catalogers need to assign original source codes to buyers coming from the Web and to distinguish between the different kinds of Web buyers. As Web buyers grow as a proportion of total business, it becomes important to further segment Web buyers by their original source.

Next Week: In the third and final part of his three-week series, Jim focuses on the methodologies to employ in your matchback analytics while looking at opportunities to increase your prospecting lists.

Jim Coogan is president of Catalog Marketing Economics, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based consulting firm focused on catalog circulation planning. You can reach him at (505) 986-9902 or jcoogan@earthlink.net .