Forrester Research Inc.

As many companies today cut back on catalog circulation and other marketing activities hoping to simply survive this rough stretch in the economy, smart marketers should seize this opportunity to grow market share and strengthen their businesses. This is the message that came out of a recent whitepaper, How to Beat the Bear: Seven Secrets to Recession-Proof Marketing, from e-mail marketing firm Silverpop on recession-proof marketing tactics, from which several tips are provided here. 1. Determine your metrics. Figure out exactly where your upper management stands in measuring success in terms of return on investment (ROI) and what levels of return it expects. This

Approaching $8 billion in total sales and $559 million in profit for its most recent fiscal year, CDW’s roots are in cataloging in case you forgot. The Vernon Hills, Ill.-based provider of technology products and services for business, government and education was, and still is, a B-to-B cataloger, but a far cry from a mom-and-pop startup. For the past decade, CDW (which stands for the company’s original moniker, Computer Discount Warehouse) recognized growth opportunities within the tech industry and sought a multichannel approach to reaching its customers. Using vehicles such as television, radio, Internet, in-house magazine publications, webinars, seminars, sponsorship events and catalogs,

To effectively reach the increasingly cross-channel shopping customer, merchants must understand the difference between multichannel merchandising and dynamic cross-channel merchandising. Multichannel merchandising usually refers to tactics contained within channels and isolated cross-channel tactics, such as buying online and picking up in stores. Dynamic cross-channel merchandising coordinates multiple channels to gain market share, grow revenue and profits, and increase customer loyalty. It sounds simple, but the industry is filled with much talk and little action. What are the steps merchants need to take to go from siloed actions to dynamic merchandising? 1. Rethink how decisions are made about the four fundamental merchandising considerations:

Summer’s almost gone; the holiday season’s creeping up. So besides making sure that shoppers find your site among the tens of thousands of retail sites available to them on the Web, what else can you do to ensure you’re ready when shoppers start searching for holiday gifts? Here are some helpful tips: 1. Figure out what works best for your business. For example, are your shoppers enticed by free shipping offers, or do you need to ship gratis just to be competitive? Do you sell the kinds of items that people tend to give loved ones perennially — namely sweaters, slippers, men’s shirts

It’s all well and good to talk about multichannel integration, but how are you going to get there? One framework suggests that before multichannel integration can be attained, marketers need a technology infrastructure that supports marketing strategy, development, delivery and measurement. Technology and market research firm Forrester Research outlines this technological approach to integrated marketing, named the Marketing Technology Backbone, in its most recent Forrester Big Idea report. The three steps to developing this infrastructure are as follows: 1. Create a centralized marketing hub. If your catalog doesn’t have a chief marketing officer or a cross-channel customer database, consider adding them before implementing support

Forty-one percent of North American households now have broadband Internet access, up from 29 percent two years ago, according to a recent Forrester Research survey. And 18- to 26-year-old consumers continue to spend more time online than older individuals. These Generation Y’ers spend 12.2 hours online each week, 28 percent more than 27- to 40-year-old Generation X’ers and nearly twice as long as 51- to 61-year-old baby boomers. Other results of the survey: * 75 percent of North American households have mobile phones; * Gen Y’ers are 73 percent more likely to research online and shop offline than they were in 2004; *

¥ 39.5 million U.S. households shopped online in 2004, up from 36 million in 2003. ¥ 70 percent of online consumers say they research their purchases on the Internet before making a purchase. ¥ 29 percent of North American households used broadband connections to link to the Internet in 2004, up from 19 percent in 2003. Source:”Forrester Research: The State of Consumer Technology Adoption,” released Aug. 2, 2005

Online retail sales (excluding travel) rose 23.8 percent in 2004, to $89 billion. That represents 4.6 percent of total retail sales, according to The State of Retailing Online 8.0, an annual Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research. In all, 137 retailers were polled for the study. Here’s what else Forrester found: ¥ $109.6 billion, expected amount of online retail sales (excluding travel) in 2005. ¥ 28 percent, average operating margins of online retailers in 2004, up from 21 percent in 2003. ¥ 32 percent, average operating margins for catalog-based online retailers, up from 28 percent in 2003. Source: Shop.org and Forrester

Want to improve your online customers’ shopping experience? In its new report, “10 Retail Site Fixes That Won’t Break the Bank,” Forrester Research offers these tips culled from a recent study of 100 retail Web sites. 1. Don’t let customers get away. Customers who mistakenly type in “wwwhomedepot.com” are still directed to Home Depot’s site. But those typing “wwwjcpenney.com” end up at a casino site. “Register and use common domain name misspellings of your site,” says James Crawford, a Forrester analyst. 2. Make it easy for customers to look around. Don’t force them to complete a long online registration form just so they can