Where Did You Come From?
Posted by Universal Ad at Monday, October 08, 2007 5:23 AM and is filed under multi-channel,Marketing,Customer 
This Multichannel Merchant article discusses how to match sales with channels as a source of action. It introduces a method called fractional allocation that attributes a sale to multiple channels. Although there's no way to be 100% certain about the source of each sale, Brookstone (the example given in this article) contends that the method helped them better direct their media spending.
Their process - using web analytics to determine how customers got to their web site (search, affiliates, direct URL, etc.) and the assigning a fraction to each of the touch points that led to the sale. One interesting takeaway - they add every new customer to their catalog mailing list (thus tripling their list size since 2001) because they've discovered that "Web buyers who regularly recieve catalogs stay loyal to the brand."
Their process - using web analytics to determine how customers got to their web site (search, affiliates, direct URL, etc.) and the assigning a fraction to each of the touch points that led to the sale. One interesting takeaway - they add every new customer to their catalog mailing list (thus tripling their list size since 2001) because they've discovered that "Web buyers who regularly recieve catalogs stay loyal to the brand."
Sounds interesting but not everyone agrees with their methods and the criticisms are also discussed in the article. For example, saying that fractional allocation "is only appropriate if the business is large and has a sufficient number of touch points." For more information, you'll have to read the entire article...
Posted by Universal Ad
Comments