Multichannel Forensics A to Z: WWW.

Few letter changed direct marketing more than WWW.

Prior to the mid-1990s, we pushed our message to the customer. And if we didn't push our message to the customer, the customer didn't buy from us unless she specifically requested a catalog.

Though it has been nearly fifteen years since the first e-commerce websites appeared, our evolution into the realm of "www." has been comparatively slow. Think about it. Our websites were drill-down oriented websites built by technical individuals, not by shoppers.

Once the infrastructure was built, we learned that modifying the infrastructure was hard work. Marketers wanting to make changes had to submit projects to a "book of work", where projects were prioritized based on available resources. Never before had marketers been so hamstrung. Catalog marketers were used to doing whatever they wanted, limited only by the constraints of the printing process. Online marketers require that information technology bridge to be successful.

In the past five years, it seems like the customer became frustrated with the slow pace of change in multichannel marketing. She no longer trusts us, and probably for good reason. We've failed her with false guarantees and marketing gimmicks. Now, she looks to her peers for advice. She looks at customer reviews of products, not the copy written by somebody paid to entice the customer into purchasing goods and services.

The future of Multichannel Forensics is not within any one brand, but between brands that sprawl across the internet. Our job will be to understand how our customers interact with other shoppers, websites, and brands. We'll demonstrate that Facebook is in Transfer Mode with Google, and that customers who come from Google are loyal to Google, not loyal to us. We'll use the Multichannel Forensics framework to make sense of the World Wide Web, a complicated entanglement of sites independent of each other. We will understand our place in this complicated "web".

Who is going to lead this charge?

Multichannel Forensics A to Z: Variety

If there is one customer you want to acquire, it is a customer who participates in a variety of activities within your brand.

Multichannel Forensics projects repeatedly indicate that customers who exhibit a variety of behaviors are customers that are worth watching.

If you are an e-commerce pureplay, segment customers who visit a lot of departments or landing pages. Segment customers who visit your site frequently. Segment customers who search your site. Segment customers who visit due to natural or paid search. Segment customers who visit because of social media. Segment customers who buy vs. browse. Segment customers who visit due to e-mail marketing. Segment customers who leave items in their shopping cart. Segment customers based on days since last visit, or last purchase.

And pay particular attention to the customers who exhibit a variety of behaviors. Use Multichannel Forensics to see what happens if one of the variety of behaviors is removed from the equation. What happens if you stop e-mail marketing? What happens if you take away key landing pages?

Often, removal of one factor impacts all the other factors, when customers exhibit a variety of behaviors.

Micro-Channel Consultant Success Stories

This image is of the Libey Economic Outlook. Don Libey is a multichannel direct marketing consultant. Once a month, he mails a newsletter filled with topics and parables relevant to the catalog-based direct marketer. When this document arrives in the mail, my first priority is to set down what I am working on, and read the publication.

Lenser marketing also has an e-mail marketing newsletter, though I tend to read the newsletter online. The online newsletter doesn't allow comments, though honestly, it doesn't need to facilitate a conversation.

The Rimm-Kaufman group hosts a blog. I almost never visit their website, though I am an avid reader of their information when it arrives via Google Reader. Their articles are among the content I most appreciate receiving. The blog does accept comments, allowing for a conversation to happen.

John Hagel is lucky to publish a handful of articles each year on his blog, but when he publishes them, they are must reads. I also read his articles via RSS Feed.

The next image is from Amy Africa's E-mail newsletter, called "Thinking Inside The Box". This newsletter has stories and is full of best practices to help struggling marketers improve performance. You can subscribe to her monthly newsletter here.



What's the point of all of this? Each example represents a specific use of a micro-channel, a preferred method for these folks to communicate with their audience.

Sometimes we're led to believe we have to do everything in order to be successful. We have to do direct mail, and e-mail, and have a website, and host a blog, and participate in social media.

Maybe we're better off focusing on fully capitalizing on a fusion of micro-channels that are appropriate for the audience we want to speak to? None of these folks are doing everything --- instead, they are specializing (and, by consequence, excelling) in specific micro-channels.

Increasingly, we have an opportunity to be excellent at one or two things, rather than being good across multiple channels. We have a chance to stand for something.

Debunking An Article/Study: Response From Abacus / Chad Elmendorf

From Chad Elmendorf, Manager of Customer Communications at Abacus, in response to "Debunking An Article/Study: Catalogs Still Rule". This was left as a comment to the original post where I mistakenly assumed that Abacus tossed the DMA a few bucks to underwrite the survey --- my error in assuming what the term "underwrite" meant:

"First off, Abacus supports the DMA and their efforts to provide catalogers with industry research. That being said, I wanted to clarify Abacus' involvement with the DMA State of the Catalog Industry Report. As a sponsor of the report, Abacus promoted participation in the survey to our clients through a client newsletter to support involvement. The survey was completely conducted, and the results compiled, by the DMA. Abacus had absolutely no involvement with compiling the data from the survey or giving the DMA survey data. The DMA survey results are from survey respondents only. Abacus supplied the DMA with the executive summary from our annual Multichannel Trend Report which is printed in it's entirety as an appendix in the State of the Catalog Industry report under the title "Industry Trends According to Abacus Multi-Channel Trend Report. If you would like to receive a copy of the executive summary from our Trend Report please email me directly at chad.elmendorf@epsilon.com. The executive summary is available to anyone who requests it (current client or not) whereas the complete data findings included in the full report are for the exclusive benefit of current Abacus clients."

ESPN: Multichannel Becomes Overwhelming?

From ESPN's own ombudsman, via Pro Football Talk:

"... a degree of multiplatform corporate synergy that often feels so relentless and all-encompassing that ESPN's heaviest viewers go berserk from time to time."

This is a danger of being "multichannel". The punditocracy keeps telling us we need to have common platforms across all channels, using e-mail to promote catalogs, using catalogs to promote store events, having online landing pages align with catalog mailings, having PPC campaigns integrate with store events, using blogs to promote new product launches that also appear in print campaigns.

It never ends. And it can be too much for our best customers. If fragmentation forces us to have three hundred micro-channels, there's nothing wrong with being different and unique across micro-channels.

E-Mail Cannibalization

Our industry doesn't talk a whole lot about e-mail cannibalization.

We do spend a lot of time talking about declining performance. Interestingly, performance declines can be correlated with increased campaign frequency.

Take a brand that used to send one e-mail campaign a month, generating $0.25 per e-mail delivered. Then they began sending one e-mail campaign a week, generating $0.19 per e-mail delivered. Then they began sending two e-mail campaigns per week, generating $0.13 per e-mail delivered.

An Executive might grumble about declining performance. It is the responsibility of the e-mail Marketing Director, however, to illustrate what is really happening. And we don't illustrate this with simple metrics like open rates and click-through rates and conversion rates.

A negative view of the world:

• E-mail campaigns used to generate $0.25 each.
• Then e-mail campaigns generated $0.19 each.
• Then e-mail campaigns generated $0.13 each.

A positive view of the world:

• E-mail marketing used to yield $0.25 of demand per customer per month.
• Then e-mail marketing generated $0.75 of demand per customer per month.
• Then e-mail marketing generated $1.04 of demand per customer per month.

Because of the non-existent cost of e-mail marketing, it is ok to look at demand per customer per month as an appropriate metric. As long as opt-out rates don't consume incremental demand, this is an acceptable way to view the business.

Now let's get back to the volume we observed.

As contacts increase, volume increases at a decreasing rate. This is a classic relationship. Some call it cannibalization --- each additional e-mail eats away at the productivity of existing e-mail campaigns. Others view this as diminishing returns. Either way, the concept is the same.

In the old school world of catalog marketing, cannibalization was critical to understand, because the incremental demand didn't offset the cost of delivering a catalog.

With e-mail, your cannibalization costs are based on customer frustration --- how many contacts until you no longer get enough revenue to offset the folks who opt-out of your campaigns? You can answer this by executing simple contact strategy tests.

September 11: Red Cross Landing Pages

Sometimes, a big shock causes us to change behavior.

In the days after September 11, many e-commerce brands instituted a Red Cross landing page, asking for donations. Brands suspended commerce in favor of a greater cause. E-mail marketing campaigns advertised Red Cross donation opportunities.

Funny, you don't read a single thing from the e-commerce and e-mail best practice community about Red Cross landing pages, or about giving, do you? And you didn't read anything about it prior to September 11, 2001 --- you would have been considered a moron to suggest anything so odd as the diversion of potential e-commerce sales to the concept of giving --- that's like encouraging shopping cart abandonment!

It took a few folks with a unique combination of sensitivity and horse sense to understand that e-commerce would not be compromised and doing good could be promoted, given the circumstances of September 11. Then the masses followed, and for a brief moment in time, you had a new best practice.

There are a lot of things that were surreal about that day. I drove to work at 6:30am and found that my local radio station was simulcasting radio from NYC, that was odd. I couldn't get into any media websites from work that day. We had employees who were stranded in NYC. Military ships patrolled Puget Sound. Co-workers missed meetings, crying, worried about loved ones who were in New York, or who were currently on an airplane. We let employees leave the office at about 1:00pm.

It was just as surreal to see e-commerce suspended in favor of a new best practice called "giving", followed by the anthrax scare. Then it was the holiday season, and we stepped back into the world of e-commerce, trying to protect annual profits, reverting back to what we used to do.

For a brief moment in time, e-commerce changed, best practices changed. I think everybody in America changed after that day. In some ways, it is a shame that the changes in e-commerce were not permanent.