Eight Ways To Use Multichannel Forensics To Trim Ad Expense

Undoubtedly, you're running a veritable plethora of scenarios for 2009. Now is a good time to leverage Multichannel Forensics to make appropriate cuts in the advertising budget.

Online Marketing:

• You spread dollars across Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Consider reductions in spend if customers acquired via MSN migrate to Google in future purchases, as an example, as the dollars in MSN might represent duplicate spend.
  

• Carefully track micro-channel evolution in affiliates and shopping comparison sites. If customers acquired via a shopping comparison site do not respond to e-mail or catalog marketing, suppress them from those advertising channels.

• Know your NET GOOGLE SCORE. How much demand does Google drive to your business, how much demand does Google take away from your business? Your Chief Marketing Officer needs to run around like his/her hair is on fire if the Net Google Score is negative.
  

Catalog Marketing

• Now is the time to identify online-only customers who do not shop your brand due to catalog marketing. If your Multichannel Forensics project points out a large number of customers in this segment, you have a significant opportunity to reduce expense without losing top-line sales.

• Know your ORGANIC PERCENTAGE. If forty percent of your volume among catalog buyers would happen without catalog marketing, you can take a hatchet to your catalog marketing budget, significantly increasing profitability. Your Chief Marketing Officer needs to run around like his/her hair is on fire if the Organic Percentage is high and yet catalog expense is flat or increasing.

• Remail Strategy. Identify customers who purchase from remail catalogs, segment them as being part of a new "channel", and run a full Multichannel Forensics analysis on these customers. Many catalogers can eliminate remails, offsetting new creative expense with increased demand and profitability.

E-Mail Marketing

• Create four micro-channels ... those who purchase from e-mail marketing campaigns, those who interact with e-mail marketing campaigns (i.e. click-through), those who never interact with e-mail marketing campaigns, and those who do not have an e-mail address. Thoroughly understand how these four micro-channels interact with all other channels in your business.

• Among customers who receive both e-mail marketing campaigns and catalog marketing campaigns, test eliminating e-mail / catalog / both. Some folks have learned that e-mail marketing performance doubles or triples in the absence of other marketing programs --- given that e-mail is close to free, from a variable cost standpoint, we want demand generation among nearly-free channels.