All About ROI December 2009
2010 Recovery Requires New Thinking
These days, decisions on all sorts of purchases go through many consumers’ personal “boards of buyers,” sort of a shopping version of the id, ego and superego. This imaginary board consists of the assorted moods we’ve all developed this year to stomach the economic bad and keep afloat financially.
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.
57 Channels (And Nothin On?)
This 1992 Bruce Springsteen song (sans the question mark) referred to the boom in cable TV back in the day. But at the rate marketing channels are popping up, it soon may apply to direct selling.
An Offbeat Way to Say You're Sorry
If you spend a lot of time in the great outdoors doing your thing, you’re probably in the doghouse. But a print, online and social media campaign launched this fall by Cloudveil Mountain Works, a Jackson, Wyo.-based outdoor sportswear marketer, is just for you. Cloudveil is offering customers and prospects the chance to buy apology gifts for anyone they may have offended by spending too much time skiing, fishing or climbing in the mountains.
Break Out of the Catalog Mold
PATIENT: Doc, I'm worried that my catalog program is in a rut. I'm tracking my competitors, but they're in ruts, too, so I'm not getting new ideas there. How can my team and I develop some new, innovative ideas instead of the same old retreads? CATALOG DOCTOR: It's hard to envision new ideas when you keep staring at the same old bag of tools. To stimulate your thinking, break away from the catalog world, see what the rest of the world is doing, then think about how you can apply that to your catalog.
Case Study - Green Valley Pecan Co. Is Nuts About Its Revamped Marketing Database
Problem: Green Valley Pecan Co., a multichannel retailer of pecans and other assorted nuts, sought a more sophisticated marketing database to help acquire, retain and grow its customer base. Solution: Hired a marketing agency to refine its strategies. Results: Increased sales and profits in each of the past five years. Web traffic, page views and time spent per page are up 50 percent, 102 percent and 35 percent, respectively, this year vs. 2008. Internet orders now account for close to 50 percent of all sales. The company is enjoying savings of nearly $10,000 annually from printing and postage costs thanks to a cleaner customer database.
Planning 2010: The Game Has Changed
For most multichannel retailers, developing marketing plans and budgets for 2010 is a daunting task. After two years of tough economic climates that meant sales reductions and downsizing for many, now’s the time to build a plan for another — perhaps better, yet uncertain — year.
Prospecting - The Container Store, Talbots, Crazy 8
Mobile Discounts Drive Retail Traffic for Container Store; Talbots’ Fall Catalog Back to Prospecting; Crazy 8 is Going Coupon Crazy
Shop Talk - Understanding Postal, Letter to the Editor
Letter to the Editor: Inventory Dilemma Calls for ‘Coopertition’; Understanding Postal: Failed Droop Test Could Wilt Your Postage Dollars
Taking SEO to the Next Level
Too many marketers judge their sites by how they look. What really counts is how they perform. How does your site rank? What kind of quality shoppers (who convert) does it attract? Last month, Larry Kavanagh gave you six ways to get natural search moving. Here are 17 ways to make sure that traffic includes qualified shoppers who will buy.
The Direct/Retail Balancing Act
Inventory flexibility is the best way to maximize sales in today’s economy. But many challenges prevent marketers with both direct fulfillment centers and retail stores from maximizing the inventory they have. E-commerce, catalog and retail have different planning methods and accuracy issues. It’s one thing to get the size distribution right for a region and store, but it’s another to plan for the way colors sell.
