Eight metrics to acquire and retain customers
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For example, if the correlation is .9, CoD would be .81. Said another way, 81% of the movement in Web orders is directly related to movement in phone orders (i.e., is driven by the catalog).
Knowing this number is essential before you cut any of your existing mail plans. That's because it will help you pinpoint the degree of loss that you're potentially facing by reducing mailings.
- Cumulative contribution per catalog mailed
This is another metric associated with mailing smarter. Contribution per catalog mailed is a calculation meant to give you visibility to profitability at the “piece mailed” level.
You must understand profitability from an order level and a customer level, too. But at the circulation level, you're able to see quickly where breakeven comes in. By studying cumulative contribution per catalog mailed, you can manage the overall campaign to ensure that you're maximizing sales and profits as you need to — without leaving dollars on the table or throwing money down the drain.
- Cart abandonment
Talk about an essential number to manage. In today's environment, if you're able to get a customer to put merchandise in her shopping cart, close the sale!
Studies indicate that 52% to 59% of carts are abandoned after merchandise is placed in them and before checkout is complete. While all business types affect the overall benchmark data, the key here again is to monitor your rates over time. This is an area where you don't want to run with the pack, you want to dramatically beat it.
There are several tips and tactics for increasing conversions and bringing customers back to your site to complete abandoned transactions. Some include sharing shipping fees early in the checkout process, improving internal search, and executing comeback e-campaigns to those who've abandoned.
You should also provide complete details for returns and exchange policies up front. The key is testing and managing the process from first click to confirmation.
BUILD A BIG PICTURE AND WATCH IT These eight metrics are not the end-all in managing your business. Rather, these numbers are indicators of the current state and trend of your business based on the changing landscape of multichannel marketing — or what I like to call Catalog 2.0.
By bringing these data points and some of your other favorites into a single report, you'll be able to monitor the health of the business and the effects of your marketing decisions much more quickly. And this means you'll be able to turn up your efforts — or turn them off — more quickly.
Steve Trollinger (stevet@jschmid.com) is executive vice president of J. Schmid & Associates, a Mission, KS-based consultancy.
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