The best returns come from integrating the use of traditional and digital channels, "in the same way that customers do, switching between them as appropriate."
You need to determine what kind of response rate and ROI you should be achieving across all channels by benchmarking your campaigns.
Never look your online metrics in isolation as you need to determine whether an online customer is a new one or one that just switched over from shopping over the phone or through your catalog.
Carve your data into meaningful chunks - "the Web page is the basic unit of measurement, and customer behavior is analyzed by department, product or product category."
Looking at this question from a different angle, a SearchEngineWatch article discusses how the impact and effectiveness of offline marketing campaigns can be measured with online analytics tools. Some ideas from the article - localize the campaign and then check for local traffic spikes, focus on a particular product and watch for sales/search spikes, measure the blog buzz and search queries, leverage microsites for easy measurement, use unique response codes/pharases, and allow customers to provide direct feedback.
The Chief Marketer article also provides some case studies. Moosejaw Mountaineering, for example, has seen a positive response to the mobile channel. It both allows customers to purchase via their smartphones and uses text messaging to foster loyalty (for one text message, they got a 51% response rate!) 1-800-Flowers.com created a younger group of buyers by allowing Facebook and MySpace users to send virtual flowers to their friends' phones.
A recent Gartner report (covered in Information Week and eMarketer) shows that currently twice as many US consumers are likely to check item prices by mobile compared with those who said they would buy items from their mobile phone (24% vs 12%). Other popular activities include finding stores and receiving promotions (20%). The report also showed that younger consumers are more likely to use the mobile phone to conduct retail activities.The report's bottom-line: "retailers planning to enter the area of
mobile commerce should differentiate themselves by offering
multichannel capabilities, such as the ability to order by phone and
pick up the item at the store or to save a mobile-phone-created
shopping session so it can be continued on a Web browser on a home PC. Also, because the survey points to a shopping preference, retailers should strive to have listings available on portals, price comparison engines and mobile maps."
According to an eCommerceTimes article, while "behavioral targeting could revolutionize how marketers interact with their target audience in an online world...this level of granularity...can easily trigger privacy concerns if the issue is poorly handled." A ClickZ article notes that the privacy issue will continue to heat up in upcoming months - "it seems the more complex behavioral targeting solutions become, the more problematic they are. Once the ISPs got into the behavioral targeting equation, privacy concerns leaped to an all-time high."
Currently, the debate centers on "how advertisers use personal identifiers and whether behavioral targeting should be opt-in versus opt-out." Marketers, obviously, hope for the latter option (similar to anti-spam policies) while consumer groups press for the former option, including a "do-not-track" list (similar to the telemarketing "do-not-call" list) that will allow "consumers to opt out completely of all behavioral profiling and targeting."
One option marketers may want to consider are self-optimizing behavioral targeting and personalization products that generate "representations of visitors and products solely from current user interaction on the Web site." According to a Multi-Channel Merchant article, these systems are based on analyzing traffic patterns and on-site behavior, representing the visitors' real-time interests and needs, and require no personal information, third-party cookies or special interaction with visitors.Posted by Universal Ad
The report also offers seven tips for achieving shopper marketing success:
* Get retailers and manufacturers to embrace the idea of joint planning.
* Set a date to evaluate the program in advance.
* Integrate consumer insights in your work (joint focus groups or research to validate those findings.)
* Use a common language that retailers and manufacturers, alike, can understand to achieve your goal.
* Find a common strategy for your objectives.
* Plan ahead (15 to 18 months out).
* Make a commitment and share the work equally.
A Shop.org/Forrester report (covered by AdAge, the Center for Media Research, StorefrontBacktalk and On Media) suggests that as the online channel matures and in order to stay viable during the difficult months ahead, retailers need to examine their strategic and tactical plans in order to make sure they support the most cost-effective ways of generating sales.
Specific suggestions include focusing on customer retention by mining data analytics for a deeper understanding of their customers, addressing shopping obstacles such as shipping fees (for example, by shifting funds from customer acquisition efforts to offset free shipping offers), adjusting SEM programs (for example, by tweaking landing page copy) and reconsidering the move to social networks (which may be effective for brand-building but less so at driving revenue or conversions.)
Currently, 53% of online retailers' marketing budgets are spent on
customer acquisition compared to 21% spent on retention, 15% on non-online channels and 11% on brand awareness. The top acquisition tactic is paid search (53%), followed by organic web traffic (18%), affiliate programs (7%) and e-mail (7%).Overall, though, e-mail to house
files is the top online marketing tactic with 92% of online retailers
using it. Additional tactics include free shipping with conditions (85%), percent-off promotions (82%), dollar-off promotions (69%), gift with purchase (68%), and print catalogs (nearly 50%).
“We are in the
Post-Advertising Age where brands that tell the best stories win - and
not just any stories, but stories that tie in to the brand's authority
to publish." Other brands such as Stella
Artois, Dove and Sprint are also moving towards creating "compelling, story-form content, reminiscent more
of media companies than product-pitchers."
Posted by Universal Ad