Return On Investment When Business Is Good

If you're one of the lucky folks managing online or catalog marketing at a company that is "winning", you have an interesting opportunity.

Let's say that this profit and loss statement represented what you expected to happen in April.

Demand	$100,000
Net Sales	$85,000
Gross Margin	$42,500
Less Marketing Cost	$25,000
Less Fulfillment Expense	$10,200
Operating Profit	$7,300
% of Net Sales	8.6%
Ad to Sales Ratio	29.4%
Average Order Size	$85.00
Number of Purchasers	1,176
Cost Per Purchaser	$21.25
Profit Per Purchaser	$6.21

You expected to generate $7,300 profit, and 1,176 new customers.

You execute this marketing plan, and observe these actual results for the month of April:

Demand	$115,000
Net Sales	$97,750
Gross Margin	$48,875
Less Marketing Cost	$25,000
Less Fulfillment Expense	$11,730
Operating Profit	$12,145
% of Net Sales	12.4%
Ad to Sales Ratio	25.6%
Average Order Size	$85.00
Number of Purchasers	1,353
Cost Per Purchaser	$18.48
Profit Per Purchaser	$8.98

Courtesy of the magic of your merchandising team, customers loved what you offered them, spending 15% more than expected.

Here's the challenge. If you believe that during the month of May you will see similar results, you can pocket a similar level of sales and profit.

Or, you can increase your advertising, and acquire more names, while still generating the same level of profit you promised to your CFO. This example shows what could happen, if you boosted your advertising spend:

Demand	$143,635
Net Sales	$122,090
Gross Margin	$61,045
Less Marketing Cost	$39,000
Less Fulfillment Expense	$14,651
Operating Profit	$7,394
% of Net Sales	6.1%
Ad to Sales Ratio	31.9%
Average Order Size	$85.00
Number of Purchasers	1,690
Cost Per Purchaser	$23.08
Profit Per Purchaser	$4.38

This is one of those unique mysteries that complicate the lives of those of us who manage profit and loss statements for online or catalog channels.

Choice number one allows us to pocket an additional five thousand dollars of profit.

Choice number two allows us to achieve our budgeted profit, but grows the top-line by an additional $28,000, and adds an additional 337 customers that contribute to future sales and profit.

I've always advocated spending more money when times are good, and spending more money when times are bad (to liquidate merchandise, but not at liquidation prices) --- holding to the marketing budget when business is close to plan.

What would you do? Would you pocket the profit today, or, would you spend more to acquire more customers, customers that deliver future sales and profit? Your thoughts?

Setting Your Online Marketing Budget

Undoubtedly, many of you are putting the finishing touches on your online marketing, e-mail marketing, or catalog marketing budget for 2007. Oh, the excitement!

Is there anything more enjoyable than sitting across from your Chief Financial Officer, having to defend why it is important to advertise with a certain affiliate at a time when expenses need to be trimmed by ten percent?

CFO's demand rapid, financially-based answers to questions. The humble Chief Marketing Officer or Online Marketing Executive needs to be able to respond in a credible, but timely manner.

Most of the time, when asked a random question, you don't have the appropriate data with you to answer the question quickly. This is where the "square root" function comes into play.

Frequently, sales generated by advertising follow a "square root" function. In other words, if you had the opportunity to increase your marketing budget by twenty percent, your net sales would increase by the square root of 1.2. This number is (1.2 ^ 0.5) = 1.095. In other words, a twenty percent increase in marketing spend yields a 9.5% increase in net sales.

This becomes important when the CFO makes a random statement like,"Please reduce your marketing budget by ten percent, you have no choice in this, everybody must share in the pain."

Look at this example, where the online marketing budget is reduced by ten percent:

High-Level Online Marketing Scenario
		Reduce Ex-	Incremental
	Base Case	pense by 10%	Sales Lost
Orders	90,909	86,244	4,665
Average Order Size	$110.00	$110.00	$110.00
Cost per Order (CPA)	$22.00	$20.87	$42.87
Net Sales	$10,000,000	$9,486,833	$513,167
Gross Margin @ 40%	$4,000,000	$3,794,733	$205,267
Marketing Cost	$2,000,000	$1,800,000	$200,000
Pick/Pack/Ship Expense @ 13%	$1,300,000	$1,233,288	$66,712
Variable Operating Profit	$700,000	$761,445	($61,445)
Profit as a % of Net Sales	7.0%	8.0%	-12.0%
Ad to Sales Ratio	20.0%	19.0%	39.0%

Notice how the profit and loss statement changes. In this case, the CFO may have a good suggestion, as the incremental advertising dollars are not yielding a sufficient return on investment. Conversely, the numbers might work out in your favor, giving you the ammunition to actually ask the CFO for more money!

Not every business follows the "square root" rule. Your analyst can help you figure out which relationship makes the most sense to build the scenarios around. But in a pinch, go with the square root function. And then ask your CFO to quickly cost-justify some of her investments!!

Return on Investment Formulas In Multichannel Retailing

Let's talk about some of the equations that individuals use to measure advertising return on investment in the multichannel retailing industry.

Ad to Sales Ratio: This is one of the most frequently used equations. Assume you spent $10,000 on an online marketing campaign, and generated $50,000 net sales. The ad to sales ratio is calculated as ($10,000 / $50,000) = 20%. Obviously, the lower this percentage is, the better your advertising performed. Multichannel retailers compare advertising efforts against each other with this metric.

Sales per Ad Dollar: Some industry publications like to use this metric. In the above example, we simply calculate the inverse of the ad to sales ratio. ($50,000 / $10,000) = 5.00. In this case, you get five dollars of sales for every dollar of advertising spent. The higher the metric, the better your advertising performed. E-Mail pundits like to use this measure, since e-mail has virtually no cost, thereby insuring that it has a good "return on investment".

Cost per Order: Online marketers enjoy using this metric, one that is maybe the least effective metric of all. Assume that the $10,000 spent in our previous examples generated 400 orders. Cost per Order (sometimes labeled "CPA" for cost per acquisition) is ($10,000 / 400) = $25.00. Each advertising strategy is compared, with lower metrics preferred. This metric is highly skewed, because the metric doesn't account for how much was spent, per order.

Profit per Order: A more effective, but less-used metric, is profit per order. Let's assume that, in the example above, twenty-five percent of the sales generated are converted to profit. In this case, ($50,000 * 0.25 - $10,000) = $2,500 of profit is generated. Next, divide the $2,500 profit by 400 orders. This yields $6.25 profit per order. This is one of the better ROI measures, because all aspects of the profit equation, sales, margin, and marketing cost, are included. Better yet, this measure can be stacked-up against long-term value metrics. For instance, if a marketer loses $10.00 profit per order, but expects to get $50.00 lifetime value back, the marketer should invest in the marketing activity.

Internal Rate of Return: This metric is not frequently used, but reflects what happens if marketing dollars are continuously invested over the course of a year. In the Profit per Order equation, we netted $2,500 profit on an investment of $10,000. Let's assume that this marketing effort took place over a twenty-six week period of time. The internal rate of return is calculated as ($12,500 / $10,000) ^ (52 / 26) = (1.25 ^ 2) = 1.56. In other words, on an annual basis, this investment has a fifty-six percent interest rate. The interest rate can be compared against all other marketing activities (many of which have a different time window --- e-mail may have just seven days, for example).

Your turn! What return on investment metrics do you like to use to evaluate marketing activities at your company?