Oh Oh, Multichannel Customers May Not Be So Great ... Or Plentiful?

Online, catalog and retail trade journals (as well as industry conference speakers, vendors, and assorted industry leaders) have been telling us for nearly a decade that we must be "multichannel" retailers, or risk extinction.

So the folks who chose to listen to this advice must be thrilled to learn that research from 1,090 survey respondents indicate that multichannel customers are not necessarily the most loyal or profitable customers. I found the article via the Shop.org Smartbrief, a free and interesting daily e-mail summarizing news in the online marketing world.

Wonderful!

And then Experian tells us that only 10% of customers are true multichannel customers.

Wonderful!

I've become Frustrated. Exasperated. Agitated. Irritated. Irked. Miffed. Why wasn't the research conducted prior to the series of decade-long lectures from industry leaders suggesting that we all "had to be multichannel"?

Coremetrics, Abacus, Experian and Catalog Matchback

Notice the last paragraph of this article about Hanover Direct working with Coremetrics on Catalog Matchback algorithms.

My e-mail inbox and phone have been buzzing lately with queries from online analytics organizations looking to take market share away from established catalog attribution folks like Abacus and Experian.

It will be interesting to watch this trend unfold as executive leadership transitions to those with online marketing experience. These individuals have relationships with online vendors, not catalog vendors.

Matchback Analysis Challenge

Catalogers --- here's what I'd like for you to do on your next catalog.

Step 1: Randomly select 10,000 customers from your mailing.

Step 2: Divide these customers into two groups.

Step 3: In the first group, code these customers as "mailed". Send these customers a catalog.

Step 4: In the second group, code them in your promotional history as "not mailed". Do not send these customers a catalog.

Step 5: After these catalogs have been mailed and results have been measured, send each group of customers to your favorite matchback vendor, be it Experian or Abacus or anyone else.

Step 6: DO NOT TELL EXPERIAN OR ABACUS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO GROUPS. Simply perform the matchback analysis on each group.

Step 7: Carefully analyze the results in each group. Remember, the second group DID NOT RECEIVE A CATALOG. Therefore, every order that Experian or Abacus attributes to a catalog in this group represents an "overstatement", a "matchback bias" in web orders that are attributed to catalog mailings. Remember, these customers DID NOT GET A CATALOG, you're just communicating to your matchback vendor that they got a catalog, so that you can measure the "matchback bias" that exists in all of these analyses.

After you've done this little experiment, share the results with my audience. I'll be happy to publish what you've found, regarding "matchback bias". I think you'll be surprised by what you learn from this experiment. I think you'll see that you are over-stating the importance of catalog mailings at driving web sales.

Google, Online Vendors, and Accountability

For all of the e-commerce and multichannel executives who follow my commentary, I am curious what you think of Google.

For those of you who spent your formative years in the catalog industry, you know the vital importance of a partnership with the USPS, with your merge/purge house, and with your printer. Without these partners, your catalogs didn't get delivered to the homes of your loyal customers. If the catalogs didn't arrive, you didn't generate sales.

Today, the e-commerce ecosystem has replaced the USPS, Experian and Quad Graphics with your ISP, a myriad of e-mail vendors, and Google.

Do you view your ISP, e-mail vendors and Google as strategic partners? Do you apply the same level of pressure on them that you applied to Quad Graphics about image quality, Experian about duplicate names, or the USPS about delivering your catalog two days late?

Can you prove that 194,381 valid customers clicked on your sponsored link on Google? How do you hold Google accountable? How could you ever hold Google accountable?

Does the Direct Marketing Association lobby as hard for your online issues as they lobbied for postal reform?

What are your thoughts? Are you letting Google and others off the hook, compared with the other vendors you work with?