Special Report Matchbacks
8. Track catalog tails. Sometimes it's useful to match back orders even when a keycode was given. I'm continually amazed to find orders that came in during the month of, say, September with codes that were mailed last November.
Many experts note that a successful matchback rate must bring your percentage of unknown sales to 15 percent or less. But depending on your total sales, a successful matchback rate is anything that's strategically and statistically useful. Typically, we like to see at least 65 percent of unknowns/Internet sales matched back to mailed codes.
From general decisions about what marketing channels to invest in, to detailed decisions about what outside lists to rent for specific mailings, matchbacks give you back the ability to know where to put your money in order to maximize results.
Matchback Do's and Don'ts
The right steps for successful matchbacks.
The right steps for successful matchbacks differ only in their complexity of rules, priorities and match criteria. Not surprisingly, the rules applied get increasingly more complex the more contact pieces you have in the mail at one time. Therefore, well thought-out criteria are critical in maximizing the usefulness of the matchback process.
Do gather relevant data from your matchback vendor. Include in your file appropriate sales data such as name, address and customer number. Also include all order information such as date of purchase; order total with or without shipping (depending on how you typically do your reporting); and product information if you plan to analyze post-matchback product sales.
If you're using standard order export technology (e.g., Dydacomp's Mail Order Manager Export Module), do tell your vendor which fields to include in the matchback and which to ignore. And always provide a field record layout. Don't assume field name and content are obvious. When the wrong fields are used in a matchback program, you risk paying for an extra round of processing if you discovered that your post-matchback sales are less than your pre-matchback sales.
