Online And Offline Marketing Interact To Drive E-Commerce Sales

There are several interesting tricks that multichannel retailers can use to understand the interaction between online and offline marketing.

One such trick is to create "grids" that explain how online and offline marketing drive sales. A "grid" is a simple 2x2 table that shows the impact of two factors on sales volume.

The tables at the end of this post illustrate how a multichannel retailer might use a "grid" to measure the combined influence of Google, and a Catalog mailing.

In this simplistic example, the multichannel retailer observes a positive impact on conversion rate due to catalog mailings, and a positive impact on conversion rate due to a customer referred via paid and natural search at Google.

Multichannel CEOs and CMOs: Our multichannel marketing environment has grown more complex. Industry pundits tout the advertising vehicle they support, for obvious reasons. It is important for your staff to demonstrate to you the combined impact of online and offline marketing activities. Start your week off on the right foot, by spending a few minutes with your analytical folks. See if they can produce the following table for you:


Here's the table:

Number of Visitors
	Catalog = Yes	Catalog = No
Google = Yes	25000	75000
Google = No	125000	350000
Conversion Rate
	Catalog = Yes	Catalog = No
Google = Yes	5.3%	4.1%
Google = No	3.7%	1.4%
Average Order Size
	Catalog = Yes	Catalog = No
Google = Yes	$150	$140
Google = No	$175	$160
Net Spend Per Visit
	Catalog = Yes	Catalog = No
Google = Yes	$7.95	$5.74
Google = No	$6.48	$2.24
Total Volume
	Catalog = Yes	Catalog = No
Google = Yes	$198,750	$430,500
Google = No	$809,375	$784,000
Percent Catalog Influenced		28.3%
Percent Google Influenced		45.4%