Reaping revenue from roving holidays

The following five tips can help you avoid robbing revenue from roving holidays:

• Keep accurate performance data by customer segment. The more detailed, the better your planning will be. Recap seasonal performance to include all pertinent information about the mailings as well as other multichannel efforts. If you have order curves for each campaign, especially by segment, you should plot the data to have a graph of the performance.

• Review several metrics to help guide circ plans. From the usual indicators such as response rate (orders divided by mail quantity,) average order value (revenue divided by orders) or dollars per book (revenue divided by mail quantity) to a GDS/MPC productivity measurement. This is gross demand sales divided by [(circulation times page count), divided by 1,000.] GDS/MPC helps you understand the combination of circulation, revenue, and page count. Also evaluate other relevant data points specific to your organization or industry, such as items per order or average price offered.

• No matter the industry, consider revenue per customer. This benchmark isolates total revenue divided by unique number of customers. Monitoring revenue per customer for each segment reveals the sales threshold tolerance, which lets you evaluate how much money customers generally spend by time period (you define the time period as seasonally, annually or by each effort.) If segment A represents 15,000 buyers who generated $503,500 for the Valentine's season in '07, the revenue per customer is $33.56.

• Compare monthly orders and revenue for each year. This high-level overview reveals cash flow gaps and provides the opportunity for alternate efforts to mitigate any shortfalls, the allocation of resources to support increases. Take the 2007 actual vs. 2008 plans with the shift of Easter to March from April. Data comparisons will show the need to develop campaigns to augment sales in April 2008. If the choice is not to supplement sales in April 2008, then don't be overjoyed when March 2008 year-over-year reports show a dramatic increase, or panic when April '08 vs. '07 comparisons are down.

• Build circulation plans and compare to same period last year as well as prior year. It's important to review the succession of contacts over the years and the responsiveness of customers. When comparing drops among several years, the naming convention may have changed, so use the in-home dates or mail date to accurately reflect same-period performance. Looking at the data over several years helps identify trends and may reveal opportunities for the contact plan.

And here's a final tip specific to next year: Start planning now, because in 2008 there will only be 27 selling days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Gina Valentino is the owner of Hemisphere Marketing, a catalog consultancy based in Kansas City, MO.