B-to-B

As circulation professionals, we know that when sales are good, it’s the merchandise. Yet, when sales are off plan, we tend to feel responsible. Is it the lists mailed to, the mail date or the way the merge was run? Just what’s causing the sales shortfall, and what can be done to avoid this in the future with proper advanced planning? In this column, I identify some pitfalls circulation professionals may encounter in the planning and forecasting stages, and provide tips on how to reduce the risk of failure. 1. Manage Outside Prospect List Usage List testing and usage should be based on

Introduction A matchback is the process of matching order records back to mailing-tape records to determine the actual sources of those orders. Matchbacks have been used for years on a limited basis to try to pinpoint the source of unknown orders: typically 5 percent to 20 percent of orders. With the advent of the Web and the increase in multichannel marketing, understanding where your orders and customers are coming from has become harder to learn — and yet more critical to know — than ever. This shift has brought matchbacks into the limelight of customer order-tracking and results analysis. This Special Report will outline for

Accurately determining what level of matchback your company needs can depend on several factors: available resources, the specifics of your contact strategy and time constraints imposed by future planning cycles, to name a few. Following are three steps that can help you select a strategy and vendors. Step 1: Identify marketing channels you’d like to include in your matchback. You get sales from several channels. Which channel’s orders should you include in your matchback, and which should you omit? You probably get orders from direct mail (e.g., catalogs, postcards, flyers, special mailings), Internet, e-mail marketing campaigns, paid search engines and affiliate marketing programs. Choose the

As a direct marketer, you have the advantage of measuring your successes (and unfortunately sometimes your mistakes) in ways that general advertising cannot. You meticulously test, code, track and analyze the results of your prospecting efforts. Such tactics have generated accurate metrics that helped guide you in meaningful directions. At least until recently. Today, knowing from where your orders and customers hail has become increasingly difficult. It’s the rare direct marketer who can survive in a single marketing channel, and most have at least two channels: catalog and Internet. Add retail locations, special mailings and opt-in e-mail campaigns, and the task of tracking sales and

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

Because business-to-business (b-to-b) catalogers often deal with multiple contacts at a customer’s company, traditional recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) segmentation can present a challenge. How do you segment your housefile when some contacts regularly request catalogs, but never purchase, while other contacts make purchases without a catalog request? Alternative segmentation strategies outside RFM are possible solutions. Gina Valentino, catalog consultant and owner of Hemisphere Marketing, a Kansas City, Mo.-based catalog consultancy, offers the following tips to jump-start your segmentation strategy if RFM hasn’t proven reliable. ¥ Analyze your inquiry pool and first-time buyers. First discern where most of your inquiries and catalog requests originate, Valentino says.

Looking for industry groups that are most likely to buy your products? Following are the results of an Abacus Alliance study of b-to-b purchases in 2004: ¥ Electronics, gadgets and tools are five times more likely to be bought by officials in heavy industries. ¥ Seminars and training classes are five times more likely to be booked by government agents. ¥ Books, newsletters and magazines are 18 times more likely to be purchased by those in the healthcare industry. ¥ Cards and stationary are more likely to bought by executives in finance/insurance and healthcare. ¥ And computers are more likely to be purchased by

If yours is a business-to-business (b-to-b) or a business-to-institution (b-to-i) catalog, no doubt you have questions about effective prospecting techniques. Below are some tips on how to use your housefile as a prospecting file, such as mailing by name of individual vs. by functional title. The Income Statement One of the significant differences between a consumer and a b-to-b catalog company is the income statement. The EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) of a typical b-to-b company ranges from 10 to 12 percent. Consumer catalogs tend to be less profitable at 3 to 6 percent. Direct selling expenses account for a large part

Ron Mis sees Galeton as the Dell Computer of the work gear industry: manufacturing and marketing its own product line to a loyal fan base. Mis, owner and president, likens Galeton’s business model to that of a true direct marketer, with cost advantages that a manufacturer enjoys when it sells its own goods direct to end-users. By selling direct in this way, Mis explains, it “makes our business truer to the original concept of a direct marketer than many who call themselves that today. Many who say they’re direct marketers actually are distributors of other manufacturers’ products,” he explains. Thus Massachusetts-based Galeton both

Every business-to-business (B-to-B) merchant should take the time to optimize its homepage space to ensure its customers have a positive experience, said Amy Africa, president of Eight By Eight, a strategic consulting firm specializing in online and offline integration, in her session “The Best of the Best: B-to-B’s Top 25 Web Sites” at the Sixth Annual MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op and Interactive Marketing Conference held last month in White Plains, N.Y. Africa offered the following tips for b-to-b marketers interested in taking their Web entry pages from so-so to stellar: 1. The entry page should download as quickly as possible. “Make sure important stuff loads in