Would You Buy This Multichannel Solution?

What has happened to the writing style used by folks in the multichannel marketing world?

At the end of my time at Nordstrom, I nagged my staff all the time about saying things that "Oprah and her television audience could understand". The data were seldom as important as the message used by the communicator.

Tell me what the following writing sample communicates to you. Pretend that "movie voice", the guy who does the previews in the movie theater, is saying this. Is this an effective form of communication? If it is effective, what is it about the copy that makes it effective? If it is not effective, how should it be written to become effective?


Article: Our Changing Landscape

By: Eldon Rothschild, President, Acme Multichannel Solutions

In today's fiercely competitive retail landscape, the need to squeeze value out of every customer transaction has never been greater. There has never been a time in history when placing the right message to the right customer at the right time has been more important.

And yet, customer loyalty has never been more fragile. A recent Forrester Research study indicates that eight-six percent of customers are frustrated with their overall shopping experience. We all know that it costs fourteen times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer. And yet, the "C-Level Suite" seems to be focused on other initiatives. Could anything be more important than customer loyalty? Maybe that explains why the average Chief Marketing Officer survives for only twenty-three months.

These days, multichannel retailers won't survive if they cannot provide solutions that exceed the needs of savvy online shoppers who switch loyalty at the click of a mouse.

What is the "C-Level Executive" to do? Here are three suggestions that any CEO can implement immediately to significantly grow top-line sales.

First = Apply Modern Targeting Strategies. Are you tired of receiving an endless array of useless catalogs in the mail? I am. Today's busy consumer doesn't have time to thumb through 124 pages of products she doesn't want. E-mail provides a viable, cost-effective, relevant, targeted alternative to destroying our planet by harvesting trees for the purpose of commerce.

Second = Become "Customer Centric". The days of managing brands by product lines or silos are over. Executives who manage the business on the basis of products or silos are destined to follow the path of the dodo bird ... extinction. This requires discipline, and a tops-down management initiative that communicates to employees that they need to focus on customers, not products, to survive in a chaotic marketing environment. By aligning incentives around key initiatives, the "C-Level Suite" properly focuses activities around the appropriate drivers of future business success.

Third = Implement "Multichannel Solutions" That Drive Customer Loyalty . According to Forrester Research, multichannel customers are worth six times as much as single channel customers. And yet, retailers continue to ignore systems implementations that bond customers to the brand forever. Studies indicate that multichannel organizations generate earnings that are 1.6 times as great as single channel brands. There's never been a better time to implement a systems solution that increases ROI (Return on Investment) while delivering upon the brand promise.

Today's complex marketing environment may provide endless challenges to today's time-pressed executives. Fortunately, multichannel solutions exist in the marketplace for managing these challenges. By implementing a multichannel solution that is supported by e-mail, the executive is able to retain and nurture loyal customers, ultimately driving a dramatic increase in ROMS (return on multichannel solution). There has never been a better time to implement a multichannel solution.

Eldon Rothschild is President of Acme Multichannel Solutions, a leading provider of e-mail and multichannel solutions for Fortune 1500 brands. Eldon can be reached at eldon.rothschild@zzz.com.