Regular readers of Strategy Insights, I am certain, are familiar with response matchbacks. Whether these processes, aimed at allocating demand to prior promotions, are performed by a data processing services provider, by ChannelView (Epsilon/Abacus), or internally, the rate at which transactional records match promotions files, in our experience, runs anywhere from 35% on the low end (for multi-channel retailers that have a particularly strong and established brand and Internet presence, especially with respect to new customer acquisition, this percentage is not atypical) to 90% on the high end. For retailers that advertise primarily via direct mail (e.g., print catalogs, flyers, solo mailers), this percentage usually lands between 65%–80%. Read the rest of this entry »