7 Questions While You Attend Shop.org

Questions for you to consider as you mingle with the digerati and attend sessions at the Shop.org event in Las Vegas. We'll go with seven questions, a lucky number if you're shooting dice at the casino.

Question #1: If the Chicago Cubs can fail to deliver what fans want (championships) and still raise ticket prices by 200% since 1999 without a negative impact on attendance, why is everybody in e-commerce obsessed with discounts, promotions, free shipping, and various "free" business models? What do the Chicago Cubs know about marketing crappy products to disheartened customers that you could use to improve the business performance of your brand? And while we are at it, how do the Chicago Cubs convince you to spend more money each year to attend games in a run-down, antiquated stadium, while all of their competitors "convert" customers in state-of-the-art stadiums that follow baseball marketing best practices?

Question #2: You are an online marketer. What percentage of your day do you spend analyzing merchandise productivity across customer segments, and what percentage of your day do you spend analyzing marketing campaigns? Remember, the job of a marketer is to market merchandise!

1. 70% on Merchandise Analysis, 30% on Marketing Campaigns.
2. 50% on Merchandise Analysis, 50% on Marketing Campaigns.
3. 30% on Merchandise Analysis, 70% on Marketing Campaigns.
4. 10% on Merchandise Analysis, 90% on Marketing Campaigns.
5. 0% on Merchandise Analysis, 100% on Marketing Campaigns.

Question #3: You are an online pureplay with a 20% annual customer retention rate. You refuse to use print or offline marketing. What is your strategy for increasing your annual customer retention rate?

Question #4: Name five companies that use Social Media to generate at least ten percent of their annual sales? Now name five individuals who have experienced whopping success because of their Social Media presence. What causes brands to fail while individuals succeed?

Question #5: Name five companies that use integrated multichannel marketing campaigns (offline, e-mail, search, mobile, social media) to increase annual retention rates by at least ten percent? In other words, you might be able to prove that individual campaigns work. Can you prove that annual retention rates improve because of individual campaign performance?

Question #6: If you are a retailer, and you had to borrow $2,000,000 to open a new store, and the new store generates awareness that helps improve online conversion rates, do you allocate the interest payments required to keep the new store open as an advertising cost required to generate online marketing conversions? What would your online profit and loss statement look like if you allocated interest expense to the 'multichannel' and 'cross-channel' customers using your website?

Question #7: Which strategy do you think will generate bigger sales increases for your brand?

1. Merchandise Innovation.
2. A Thorough Understanding of Online Marketing and Social Media Tactics.