Matchbacks: Tools and Technologies to Try

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 mix that’s right for you based on the following information.

Step 2: Determine how much you’re willing to invest. Advanced matchback tools can come with prices that may be a bit too steep for smaller
companies and may not be necessary for your level of business. Determine at what point the cost of a matchback will outweigh the impact of the sales
decision. Take the following into consideration:
• the percent of unknowns to your overall sales,
•the proportion of your contact strategy that includes outside list sources, and
• if you suspect your allocation of marketing dollars will vary significantly based on the information.

Step 3: Study and compare resources. The discussion below addresses several possible solutions.
•Low-cost matchbacks. If your marketing channels are limited or your budget tight, look for low-cost alternatives to the standard technologies available. You’ll find that most data processing vendors offer some kind of matchback capabilities. Talk with your current data processing vendor to determine what kinds of matchback services it offers. It already handles your mailing files and is competent (or you wouldn’t use its services). Costs can range from $500 to $5,000 depending on the quantity of names mailed and your vendor’s pricing.

•No-cost, faux matchback test. If your budget is extremely tight, a good way to keep matchback costs low is to go through the exercise of allocating unknowns based on several methods such as percent of total sales across the season, percent of total monthly sales per group or percent of marketing budget spent. Compare the results of these allocation methods with your matchback results. If the results for faux and actual matchbacks are close, you may be able to do fewer matchbacks in a given time period by using whatever allocation method seemed to give similar results. Don’t skip doing actual matchbacks too frequently, however, as buying behaviors tend to change rapidly.

•Stand-alone products. With matchbacks becoming ever more popular and marketing channels becoming more diverse, several matchback solutions have become available during the past several years. One such solution, ChannelView by Abacus, provides you with timely access (as often as daily if you need it) to Web-based metrics that track performance for up to six channels, and by campaign or promotion. It even provides metrics on promotional investments by campaign. Costs can range from $10,000 to more than $30,000, depending on order activity and mailing volume. Abacus recommends its solution for direct marketers that mail six or more times per year; have annual circulation of 2 million or more; and have unsourced orders exceeding 15 percent. Visit: www.abacus-us.com.

BenchMark by Catalog Marketing Services incorporates SKU-level matching into its response-analysis program. This has proven a good solution for marketers who mail frequently and whose products vary between mailings. For example, what if a customer ordered in January, but ordered a product available only in the December catalog? A standard matchback process would attribute that order to the January mailing (assuming this customer received both mailings). By serving as a central database for both mailing- and product-level data, BenchMark can attribute the order to the December mailing. Visit: www.cmscms.com.

Matchback tools also can be added to your existing order management software. These programs offer immediate matchback capabilities by integrating mailing data and order information into a single database. When orders are received, they’re automatically matched to a mailed record. Two examples of these software solutions are the Media Matchback Module, which runs in Response Direct Commerce Software by CoLinear Systems, and the Matchback Response Analysis feature of WiseGuys by Desktop Marketing Solutions. The latter links to several standard order management software programs. Costs for these types of tools can range from $1,000 to $3,500 depending on what commerce software you use. Visit www.colinear.com or www.desktopmarketinginc.com.

Other worthwhile resources include: Channel Match by Experian (www.experian.com/products/channel_match.html) and the various solutions and services available from CognitiveDATA (www.cognitivedata.com).

Conclusion

Remember that matchbacks are not an exact science: There always will be a portion of your sales that come from unidentifiable sources. But keeping that proportion of your sales to a minimum can offer significant benefits to your overall marketing strategy.

Terrell Sellix is vice president of marketing at McIntyre Direct, a Portland, Ore.-based, full-service catalog agency. Sellix combines her love of data analysis with a sensitivity to the human side of marketing that stems from four years of marketing good health concepts in West Africa. For questions, contact her at: (503) 286-1400.