Multi-Channel Advertising Strategy

We don't read a lot about the nuts and bolts of properly executed multi-channel advertising strategies these days, do we?

We know we're supposed to execute 'em. We don't always know what we should do.

Let's look at a multi-channel retailer executing a Valentine's Day multi-channel advertising strategy.

The retailer uses three traditional advertising tools, all geared to drive sales to the call center, the website, and retail stores.

• An 80 page catalog featuring favorite Valentine's Day merchandise, mailed on or around January 23.

• A postcard mailing, informing the customer that the sale ends February 14. This postcard is mailed on or around February 4.

• Two e-mail campaigns, featuring hot items available in all channels. One e-mail campaign is delivered on January 30, another is delivered on February 6.

The multi-channel database marketing team tested eight different contact strategies. The following table illustrates the results of the test, across all channels:

Multi-Channel Advertising Results: Valentine's Day Promotion
Catalog	Postcard	E-Mail		Ph/Mail	Website	Store	Total	Profit
Yes	Yes	Yes		$5.80	$6.25	$12.60	$24.65	$6.49
Yes	Yes	No		$6.25	$5.35	$13.05	$24.65	$6.50
Yes	No	Yes		$5.80	$6.40	$12.25	$24.45	$6.73
Yes	No	No		$6.15	$5.85	$12.05	$24.05	$6.62
No	Yes	Yes		$3.45	$5.40	$12.75	$21.60	$6.17
No	Yes	No		$3.75	$4.90	$12.75	$21.40	$6.12
No	No	Yes		$3.90	$5.30	$11.30	$20.50	$6.14
No	No	No		$4.00	$5.00	$11.00	$20.00	$6.00
Catalog Marketing = Yes				$6.00	$5.96	$12.49	$24.45	$6.58
Catalog Marketing = No				$3.78	$5.15	$11.95	$20.88	$6.11
Incremental Benefit				$2.23	$0.81	$0.54	$3.58	$0.47
Postcard Marketing = Yes				$4.81	$5.48	$12.79	$23.08	$6.32
Postcard Marketing = No				$4.96	$5.64	$11.65	$22.25	$6.37
Incremental Benefit				($0.15)	($0.16)	$1.14	$0.83	($0.05)
E-Mail Marketing = Yes				$4.74	$5.84	$12.23	$22.80	$6.38
E-Mail Marketing = No				$5.04	$5.28	$12.21	$22.53	$6.31
Incremental Benefit				($0.30)	$0.56	$0.01	$0.27	$0.07

There's a lot of interesting information in the table, don't you think?

First, take a look at the eight test panels. The strategy that drove the most volume included a catalog, a postcard, and potentially the two e-mail campaigns.

However, the most profitable strategy was to mail a catalog and the two e-mail campaigns.

Reviewing results across eight test panels can be a challenge. At the bottom of the table, results are summarized by advertising channel.

Catalog advertising appears to be the most profitable strategy (not always the case), driving an incremental $2.23 to the phone/mail channel, $0.81 online, and $0.54 to stores. The average customer spent $3.58 across all channels, generating $0.47 profit.

Postcard advertising changes customer behavior. Notice that postcard advertising cannibalized phone/mail sales and website sales (not always the case), but worked very well in the retail channel, increasing volume from $22.25 to $23.08 per customer. The average customer spent $0.83 incremental volume, generating a loss of $0.05 per customer.

E-Mail advertising also caused a shift in customer behavior. The two e-mail campaigns cannibalized the phone/mail channel, significantly benefited the online channel, and did drive incremental volume in stores. E-mail marketing (usually the case) drove the least volume, but was much more profitable than postcard marketing --- driving $0.27 volume and $0.07 profit. By the way, your typical e-mail metrics suite (open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate) fail miserably when analyzing multi-channel strategies ... the metrics mentioned above miss the phone/mail cannibalization and miss incremental retail sales.

Multi-channel advertising strategies are challenging to manage. We're told we have to "do everything", that we have to "integrate everything". To understand if the pundits are offering the right strategy for our business, we need to test different strategies.

In this example, we learned that each advertising strategy benefits one channel. Store Managers, for instance, are going to be proponents of postcard marketing, because they will clearly see the traffic increase from postcard marketing in stores. And good luck sitting down with a store manager, telling her that next year you won't execute the postcard strategy because it was unprofitable. Ha! Catalog marketing benefits the phone/mail channel ... without catalog marketing, the phone rang 40% less often.

There are subtleties involved in multi-channel advertising strategies. Catalogs and e-mail campaigns mailed early in the week benefit phone/mail and online channels. If catalog and e-mail campaigns are mailed later in the week, stores are likely to get a little more help.

Also look at what happens to store sales across each test group ... on average, marketing increases sales by maybe five percent, on average. This is a very typical outcome ... and oh, by the way, your matchback vendor might attribute the other 95% of store orders to the three marketing activities, grossly overstating the results of your marketing activities. This happened to me during my days at Nordstrom, a reputable matchback vendor mis-allocated store orders to marketing activities ... one has to be on top of their game to ignore what appear to be brilliant results!

Only well-executed tests and rapid test results help the marketer avoid matchback biases.