If you’re able to expand on your house file segmentation beyond the standard RFM (recency, frequency and monetary) to include order channel and type of web activity (organic search, paid search, email, etc.), are you taking the next steps to act on that information?
It’s common knowledge that pure online customers usually have different buying patterns and characteristics than those who are driven by a print catalog to order online, by phone, or by mail.
In order to gauge the value of pure online buyers, you should first measure the incremental sales from mailing a catalog to them so you’ll know the true sales you’re getting. Once you’ve gauged the value of these buyers, here are some suggestions on what you can do with the segmented data:
- Use the co-ops to help you understand which online buyers don’t respond to print catalogs and remove them from your print circulation.
- Identify the low-ticket web buyers and mail special offers to turn them into a multichannel multibuyer with a larger average order value.
- Decrease the frequency of mailings to web buyers.
- Web-driven consumers tend to order late in the holiday season, so mail them later in the holiday season than you would your print or multichannel customers. In fact, they may order only at a specific holiday time, so you might consider suppressing them from all mailings in the other seasons of the year.
Lisa Delzell is marketing manager at catalog consultancy Lenser.