Cover Story: 50 Best Tips of 2011

Affiliate Marketing
1. Translate your brand message and product benefits into compelling resources and materials that will be useful for affiliates, including a completed and persuasive sales page, banners, graphics, email copy, AdWords text and keywords. By offering these materials, you’ll already have an advantage in attracting affiliates because you’re making their jobs much easier.
Brad Wiskirchen, 
Keynetics
“Optimize Your Affiliate Relationships by Finding a Niche,” April 19, ROI Report

B-to-B
2. With today’s high level of connectivity, customers are more interested in talking with other customers than talking to sales reps. People buy from those they know and trust. Individuals desire 
customer-centered relationships. Build your community with case studies, testimonials, and audio or video snippets that illustrate results from other customers. Ensure your customers become selling avatars.
Drew Stevens, 
Stevens Consulting Group
“Tactics to Help B-to-B Sales Reps Shine,” Feb. 17, ROI Report

3. Dump cold calling. It’s extremely discouraging to see how many people believe this methodology still works. Cold calling is a disruption. It wastes time and people are too busy. Very few are successful at it, and very little product is sold. Retailers’ financial resources are better spent increasing visibility and investing in customer-centric relationships.
Drew Stevens, 
Stevens Consulting Group
“Tactics to Help B-to-B Sales Reps Shine,” Feb. 17, ROI Report

Catalog Marketing
4. Don’t use an early expiration date of a promotion to pull sales forward. Testing has shown that while you can pull some sales forward from customers wanting to use a promotion, you’ll also lose sales that you would have normally gotten. The net effect of an early expiration of a promotional offer will be fewer sales than if the promotion ended at the close of a catalog’s normal order curve.
Jim Coogan, 
Catalog Marketing Economics
“What to Consider Before Finalizing Your 2011 Catalog Circulation Plan,” Jan. 6, ROI Report

Channel Integration
5. To succeed in cross-channel marketing, it’s imperative you adopt a centralized view of your customers’ behavior across all channels. You need to be aware of how customers choose to engage with your brand. In order to have a centralized view of your brand from a marketing and creative standpoint, you need a single leader from marketing who can drive, optimize and create synergy between all channels, vehicles and new technologies.
Wanda Gierhart, 
The Neiman Marcus Group
“The Top Women in Cross-Channel Retailing,” April, Retail 
Online Integration

6. Cross-channel retailers need to remember the qualitative and quantitative advantages of being a multichannel retailer vs. what pure-play online retailers lack. Multichannel retailers have the advantage of providing opportunities for customers to interact with products, information and services at various points of intersection that ultimately help them make smarter purchasing decisions. Being present and available at all times to assist wherever a consumer is in his/her shopping journey allows them to view cross-channel retailers as more than just a place to buy product — we help them build confidence and satisfaction in their purchasing decisions.
Julie Krueger, 
OfficeMax
“The Top Women in Cross-Channel Retailing,” April, Retail 
Online Integration

7. Compare website traffic to brick-and-mortar store traffic. By comparing online to offline traffic, you can begin to understand the dynamics of web-to-store behavior. For example, if spikes in online traffic precede spikes in brick-and-mortar traffic, understanding the timing and volume of these movements could help you provide a better, more seamless web-to-store experience and fewer lost sales.
Mark Ryski, 
HeadCount Corporation
“Tips for Converting Website-Driven Traffic In-Store,” Aug. 1, ROI Report

Creative & Copywriting
8. Do some of the work yourself. You want your copywriter spending time writing sales copy, not doing legwork. Business owners can cut their copywriting costs in areas such as research by providing spec sheets for product descriptions, providing previous sales letters, gathering their own testimonials, among other tasks.
Denise McGill, 
McGill Copywriting
“Get the Most for Your Copywriting Dollar,” April 29, ROI Report

9. Some catalog products work best when shot as a group (e.g., jacket, skirt, blouse, belt, shoes). Most websites require just one SKU per page, however. When shooting, ask yourself if your group shot can be cropped several ways to show each product individually. If not, sometimes a simple camera angle change or product rearrangement will make the photo work for both channels. Taking another shot with one of the products removed (e.g., jacket off of the blouse) is another option to give you all the images you need for 
all channels.
Susan J. McIntyre, 
McIntyre Direct
“Leveraging Your Catalog Assests Across Channels,” April, Retail 
Online Integration

Customer Service
10. Focus on customer retention. It costs anywhere from six times to 30 times more to get a new customer than it does to keep one you already have — and keep them happy. Let’s say it costs you $500 in sales and marketing costs to acquire a new customer. How long will it take you to break even on the cost of acquisition? On average, it takes 18 months to 24 months before you generate enough revenue from the customer to break even. If you lose the customer before a third year, you’ve lost money on the proposition. Start by doing the math to get a firm understanding of what customers are costing you to acquire and retain. Then take a look at your existing romance process. Don’t have one? Create one.
JoAnna Brandi, 
JoAnna Brandi & Co.
“A Little Customer Romance Goes a Long Way,” Feb. 15, Creating Positive Customer Experiences blog

11. Take a look at your company’s warranty. Is it clear, simple and to the point? If not, simplify it. Make it so easy even a child can understand it. Why? The internet, particularly social media, is the great equalizer. Simple things like upsetting a customer with a hard-to-understand guarantee will end up being tweeted, yelped and status updated.
Jim Gilbert, 
Gilbert Direct Marketing
“Warranties, Guarantees: Reducing the Barriers to Purchasing (the Good and the Bad),” March 1, Return on Intelligence blog

Database Marketing
12. Leverage point-of-sale interactions to collect customer information. Customers purchasing from you are already a fan of your brand. They’re more likely to opt in to your mobile efforts. When customers check out at a Steve Madden store, they’re asked to opt in to the company’s mobile campaign, where they’ll receive exclusive offers and a chance to win a $100 gift card. All the customer has to provide is basic information such as name, birthday, gender and, most importantly, what information they’d like to receive from us. This information, including the customer’s interests (chosen from future promotions, new products, online and in-store deals, and events) is used to build a profile, which is then put into 
a database.
Andrew Koven, 
Steve Madden
“From the NRF BIG Show: How Steve Madden Leveraged Mobile to Build its Brand,” Jan. 14, ROI Report

13. Use your statistics IQ when interpreting data. Interpreting data requires basic statistical knowledge. For example, when looking at average spend for teen shoppers on a hip retail clothing website for December 2010, and comparing it to average spend for their over-65 counterparts, you must understand that averages can be skewed by an unrepresentative subgroup of visitors. A better metric would be median spend value to compare the two markets. Understanding basic statistical concepts goes a long way towards enhancing site visitor data.
Sri Raghavan, 
Coradiant
“5 Best Practices to Optimize E-Commerce Sales,” Feb. 16, ROI Report

E-Commerce
14. Don’t wait for Cyber Monday. More than half of Christmas sales should be finished by Thanksgiving. Those merchants who opt to hold out for Cyber Monday miss the window. Make it clear to consumers that special Christmas deals are only available while supplies last. Offer free or heavily discounted shipping on multiple-item orders before Thanksgiving and through Cyber Monday, then switch to discounts on select single-item, expedited purchases through the last possible shipping day. Evolve messaging throughout the month of December and stay in front of consumers with fresh content.
Brian Horakh, 
Zoovy
“Changing Trends in Holiday E-Commerce: A List of Dos and Don’ts for 2011,” Jan. 7, ROI Report

15. Test user-contributed merchandising. End-user comments make your site a destination, a place that folks would want to visit regularly. It’s also a low-cost way to get great content and helps improve conversion rates because this kind of content is searchable through SEO.
Bob Myers, 
Sheplers
“From the NRF BIG Show: 8 Innovations in E-Commerce, Part 1,” Jan. 12, ROI Report