10 Tips to Maximize Multichannel Sales

In a Catalog Success webinar last week called The Coordinated Sell — Redefined for 2009 & Beyond, Stephen R. Lett, president of the catalog consulting firm Lett Direct, highlighted his presentation on how to refocus your catalog company to thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s evolving multichannel environments with 10 takeaway tips for the audience to implement for improved profitability. Here’s a look at Lett’s top 10 list.

(This is the first part of our two-part coverage of this webinar that was sponsored by Sigma Micro. Next week, we’ll recap the presentation of Rob O’Connor, vice president of the Creative Irish Gifts catalog.)

1. Segment your one-time only Web buyers separately to track results. These people tend to be item buyers rather than shoppers, Lett said. Determine through testing if you need to mail them a catalog.

2. Test “flat” shipping as a promotion to drive traffic to the Web. Instead of offering promotions such as free shipping, which can eat away at profit margins, or free shipping when a customer reaches a certain threshold value for purchase, where customers frequently reach that number and then stop shopping, set a flat rate for shipping, Lett advised.

3. Test an order minimum threshold against no minimum. “This might seem a little scary,” he warned, “but it’s worth a test.”

4. Use an e-mail append program every six months. “We’re seeing consistent results where appending e-mail addresses back to the housefile produces hit rates in the 15 percent to 20 percent range,” Lett said of e-mail append tests he’s run.

5. Add more content to your Web site.

6. Matchback quarterly or by season. “Daily or weekly matchbacks is probably overkill for most,” Lett conceded.

7. Time e-mail blasts to hit a week after catalogs are in-home.

8. Try more channel-specific messaging.

9. Mail your Web-only buyers. “The catalog is the biggest driver of traffic to the Web,” Lett stated. “I’d be very careful about making assumptions about Web-only buyers in terms of whether they should be mailed before testing,” he added.

10. Use Web-only promotions to drive traffic to the Internet. The goal, Lett said, is to “get more people to order via the Web.”