Multichannel: Three Integrated Marketing Strategies for the Coming Year

Seventy-five percent of direct marketing efforts targeted merchants’ housefiles in 2005, with the rest targeting prospects, according to the “2006 Multichannel Annual Trend Report” recently released by co-op database provider Abacus. The report also revealed that while response from mailings to housefiles was level at 4 percent compared to 2004, sales per book increased by 9 percent. Response from mailings to prospect files, however, were 14 percent higher than 2004, and sales per book increased by 17 percent. To keep this momentum going heading into 2007, Abacus offered the following tips:

* Analyze and evaluate the acquisition cost and lifetime value of customers acquired through search and affiliate marketing. Abacus recommends source coding these customers by type of affiliate or search engine so you can determine whether you’re paying for names already on your housefile or if non-catalog customers are responding to catalog offers. Additional value analysis based on whether customers searched for branded terms or product would also then be possible.

* Understand the value of customers acquired in different seasons. “As more demand is pushed later in the year toward the holiday season, marketers need to understand the lifetime value of buyers across seasons,” Abacus writes.

* Test and develop integrated customer contact strategies for various segments of your customer file. It may be appropriate to treat heavy catalog responders differently than Web-only buyers, the report’s writers suggest. Other questions to consider within an integrated contact strategy: When integrating e-mail and catalog campaigns, does the incremental response offset the additional expense? What’s the best strategy for your multichannel multi-buyers?

For exclusive data from Abacus “2006 Multichannel Annual Trend Report,” check out this week’s By the Stats.

For more info on Abacus “2006 Multichannel Annual Trend Report,” visit http://www.abacus-us.com/2006 Abacus MultiChannel Trend Report_Executive Summary.pdf.