Omnichannel

For the third consecutive year, American teenagers plan to spend less on holiday gifts for others, according to a recent survey of more than 1,500 teenagers conducted by JA Worldwide (Junior Achievement), a youth education and volunteer network. Fifty-seven percent of teens plan to spend more than $75 on gifts this year, down 3 percent from last year and down 5 percent from 2004. Other teen shopping data revealed by the survey: * 66 percent of teens plan to spend less or about the same as last year on holiday gifts; * 38.3 percent of boys say they will spend more than last year;

If you’re looking for potential savings across your company in light of the upcoming postal rate increase, here are some areas where you always can cut costs: Outbound freight: Don’t be afraid to request a discount from your current carrier. You should at least be able to get a lower cap on the current fuel surcharges. Track your carrier’s performance and request a refund for all late deliveries. Credit card processing: Call your current credit card processor and request a discount. It will most likely match anything you find in the marketplace. Circulation: Identify your Web-only customers and don’t mail them a catalog.

Editor’s note: This will be Jim’s final Contributions to Profit column. In October, CatalogSuccess.com launched his blog, Profitable Cataloging. He posts a new entry every Tuesday, and based on reader comments, responds throughout the week. Visit CatalogSuccess.com/blogs/JimGilbert.bsp, and post your questions or comments about catalog marketing. In addition to being my final print column, this also is the third in a three-part series on the hierarchy of customer status. A quick review: I’ve defined the behavioral groupings of prospects and customers as suspects, prospects, triers, buyers and advocates. Then I discussed strategies to turn prospects into single buyers (triers). Now, onto the next step: conversion. 1.

The Web is an essential channel for catalogers. Customers expect catalog companies to have effective, well-designed e-commerce sites. The Internet is undergoing a period of rapid innovation, often labeled “Web 2.0.” It includes tagging, visual search, wikis and Ajax. Web 2.0 technologies will transform online retail over the next two years. Catalogers will need to upgrade their sites to remain competitive. I suggest you read this month’s column with a computer close by — as I’ll tour some Online Retail 2.0 ideas that will transform e-commerce. The first stop is del.icio.us, the social tagging site. (Go to del.icio.us/catalogsuccess, and you’ll find a

The advent of blogs, message boards and online social networks has become a double-edged sword for multichannel merchants. Consumers now can easily heap goodwill and praise on your brand and products, but they just as easily can disseminate complaints and vitriol about a poor service experience. So what do you do when your erstwhile customers are shouting your flaws from the rooftops? Following are five steps to deal with negative word of mouth offered by Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the World of Mouth Marketing Association, taken from his recently published book, “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.” 1. Know what

Looking for some quick ideas to bolster your Web site or online holiday shopping initiatives? Jay Shaffer, vice president of marketing at home furnishings merchant DirectlyHome.com, offered several of them in a session at the recent Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. • Cheap market research is just a coffeehouse away. “Every six weeks or so, I’ll go into a Starbucks and find a soccer mom who hasn’t had an adult conversation in a year and offer her a coffee gift card for 15 minutes of her time,” Shaffer said. He then shows her three pages on the DirectlyHome Web site: the home page,

The first key to successful testing online is to take a full commitment to the process, said Stephen Cheng, marketing manager at online bookseller Alibris, in his session at last month’s Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. “Accept the fact that you will have duds, ideas that just don’t work when you test them,” Cheng said. Following are his tips for a better online testing process. 1. Establish a cross-functional team suited to the task. A Web site test shouldn’t be run just by the marketing team or the IT person responsible for the site, Cheng said. Both departments should be involved, as well

Last night I had a dream. I had a vision of many customers. Not just any customers, but the most coveted buyers of them all…mail order buyers!

And They bought often and recently, and liked to purchase many products at a time. They loved these products so much that they would never consider returning them. They liked to purchase in a specific category – they were niche buyers. A plentiful niche that was easily identifiable, a targeted market – the lowest hanging fruit from the tree!

And I remember in my dream that I felt warm and secure knowing that these were soon to

Looking for tips from the top? Three chief executives from online and multichannel merchants fired out ways to increase profitability by creating a unique multichannel experience through personalization, at last week’s Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. On hand were: Hannes Blum, CEO of online bookseller Abebooks.com; Josef Mandelbaum, president/CEO of greeting card marketer AG Interactive; and Mike Stamn, CEO of multichannel auto supplies merchant The Eastwood Co. Following are their recommendations: 1. Organize customer information to provide better personalization. Eastwood produces multiple catalogs, sends different messages and provides separate offers depending on whether the targeted customer is a consumer, a small business or

Matchbacks have become routine for catalogers. This is the process in which you check your orders against your recent mail tapes to give credit to the proper source code — to see where sales are originating, and which key code should be given credit for each sale. With the amount of business going to the Web, it’s next to impossible to track results to a specific source code without doing a matchback. How a Matchback Is Done Matchbacks link orders to mailings using merge/purge logic. The process allocates unknown orders back to mailed records based on customer-provided source code, customer number, merge/purge results,