Tracking the origin of the order

Retailers are still figuring out exactly how web, catalog and store channels play off each other, but one thing’s clear: the channels lift each other in ways that may not be immediately apparent. Todd Barr, vice president at retail consultants Kurt Salmon Associates, cites the relationship between a retailer’s catalog and web channels as one example.

“We’ve seen numerous instances of companies cutting back on mailing volume and frequency only to see robust growth rates turn stagnant or even fall off,” he says. “They didn’t understand how much of the business coming in over the Internet actually was triggered by the catalog.”

But that doesn’t have to be the case. Retailers facing that problem have found a solution in working harder to try to attribute an original source to every purchase in all three channels, Barr says. Even when information on the original order source is tenuous or non-existent, several workarounds can still point logically toward the likely channel source, he says.

“Properly designed web sites allow the company to either know or infer what the likely source of the order was – for example, making it easy to order by item number on the web, and knowing that the only customers who would use item numbers when ordering are those looking at the catalog,” says Barr.

Retailers can also track catalogs as the original order source with measures such as using discount promotion coupons to track store traffic generated by catalog mailings, utilizing primary consumer research to assign likely source percentages to orders of unknown origin in each channel, and gathering information via call center reps.

“Once you know what the various sources and volumes are, in the aggregate and at the individual customer level, you can make much better decisions about whom to mail what, and how frequently,” he says.