Multi-channel is marketing and not just sales
Multi-channel retailing applies to marketing as well as to the actual sales channel, attendees at eTail 2004 in Palm Springs, CA, heard this week. Barry Rozenberg, director of e-commerce for The Children’s Pace, told attendees that the key to a successful marketing campaign is a combination of direct mail and e-mail communications. Response rates to marketing messages were 50% higher for customers who received both direct mail and e-mail than for customers who received only one or the others, Rozenberg said.
The effect of combined marketing was only one result of The Children’s Place’s multi-channel strategy. Rozenberg reported that the multi-channel customer spends three times as much as a store-only customer. The Internet-only customer spends twice as much as a store customer. The multi-channel customer buys four times as often in the store as she does online, Rozenberg said.
Interestingly, an online customer who receives an e-mail coupon good in the store or online is more likely to redeem it in a store than online. And the redeemer of the coupon spends more in the store than the typical store customer.
Rozenberg also reported that 2003 was the first profitable year for ChildrensPlace.com. Online sales in 2003 were double those of the year before and the online sales as a proportion of all sales doubled, he said.
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