PRESIDENT'S CORNER So as we say goodbye to 2007, we are looking forward to an exciting and challenging 2008. Integrating and managing the multichannel business formulae will continue to be high priority. We know from various research studies that an unprecedented percentage of budgets is being shifted to e-commerce marketing. It is estimated that by 2010 search marketing will comprise 43% of total online advertising, according to the Abacus 2007 multichannel report. So it is no surprise that we routinely see 60% of orders being placed on our clients’ websites. By working with our many multichannel clients, at LENSER we have learned just how vitally important it is to accurately attribute sales based on the dozens of touch points and variables along the customer’s path to purchase. Old school circulation and marketing methods don't work in tomorrow’s world. In fact, the old methodology could quite possibly contract your business and ultimately will have a negative effect not only on how you evaluate catalog ROI, but also on how you attribute marketing resources, which should be based on what is actually driving your sales. Today, over half of our staff’s time is spent not on circulation management but on analyzing results of our clients’ marketing programs. Matchbacks to mail files are the norm. Attribution of your sales to specific mailings, email programs, keyword advertising, comparative shopping sites, or organic search is the focus of our staff activity. We expect that our role will continue to evolve in this direction in 2008. This past year, we added a variety of services including LENSER Data Solutions, LENSER Landing Pages, and LENSER Analytics. With the continued support of our clients, we will expand these programs in 2008 and add several additional e-commerce services to help our clients and our industry alike. After all, we are only successful if our clients are successful. So, thank you for a fruitful 2007 and here’s to successfully meeting head-on the new challenges of 2008.FEATURE ARTICLE CASE STUDY CIRCULATION TIP CREATIVE TIP multichannel TIP CLIENT HIGHLIGHT—ANNIE'S ANNUALS EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT—JIM WHITFORD AFFILIATE FOCUS—SITEFORM
PRESIDENT'S CORNER As another year closes, LENSER has much to be thankful for. With the support of the more than 80 clients we have served this year, LENSER continues to enjoy much success and growth. This year we added eight new staff, took on an additional 15 clients, held another successful and well-received LENSER Client Summit, and added new services to our ever expanding areas of expertise. So as we say goodbye to 2007, we are looking forward to an exciting and challenging 2008. Integrating and managing the multichannel business formulae will continue to be high priority. We know from various research studies that an unprecedented percentage of budgets is being shifted to e-commerce marketing. It is estimated that by 2010 search marketing will comprise 43% of total online advertising, according to the Abacus 2007 multichannel report. So it is no surprise that we routinely see 60% of orders being placed on our clients’ websites. By working with our many multichannel clients, at LENSER we have learned just how vitally important it is to accurately attribute sales based on the dozens of touch points and variables along the customer’s path to purchase. Old school circulation and marketing methods don't work in tomorrow’s world. In fact, the old methodology could quite possibly contract your business and ultimately will have a negative effect not only on how you evaluate catalog ROI, but also on how you attribute marketing resources, which should be based on what is actually driving your sales. Today, over half of our staff’s time is spent not on circulation management but on analyzing results of our clients’ marketing programs. Matchbacks to mail files are the norm. Attribution of your sales to specific mailings, email programs, keyword advertising, comparative shopping sites, or organic search is the focus of our staff activity. We expect that our role will continue to evolve in this direction in 2008. This past year, we added a variety of services including LENSER Data Solutions, LENSER Landing Pages, and LENSER Analytics. With the continued support of our clients, we will expand these programs in 2008 and add several additional e-commerce services to help our clients and our industry alike. After all, we are only successful if our clients are successful. So, thank you for a fruitful 2007 and here’s to successfully meeting head-on the new challenges of 2008.FEATURE ARTICLE The holidays remind us of our past and give us hope for our future. At least that’s what most of us wish for. But each holiday season, there is one event I recall that was a disaster. Fortunately not my own—but one that I learned from. It was a catalog order gone terribly wrong. In the big picture of life, it’s overly dramatic to call it a disaster. In perspective, we Americans are strong in the face of real disaster. Californians, especially, certainly know what a disaster looks like with our plethora of landslides, fires, earthquakes, and such. While these occurrences are actually extremely rare, the outside world hears what the media spins, and you’d think we’re ready to fall off the left side of the U.S. and into the Pacific Ocean by now. Hey, Nevada, start preparing to own beachfront property! But even though these disasters are rare, we’re encouraged to prepare for them. None of us were really prepared for the earthquakes of 1989 and the early 90s in California. But, having survived the Northridge earthquake in 1994, in the weeks that followed, we all filled bottles of water and set aside earthquake kits with clothing, camp food, and manually powered Eton radios. I carried a kit in the trunk of my car, too. That’s just human nature in action—while it’s still fresh in our minds, we are well prepared for disaster. Never mind that now my car’s earthquake kit is gone and if we had a dramatic temblor, our sole water supply would be our hot water heater and the Jacuzzi in our back yard. It’s been a lot of years, for goodness sake! But I digress. Back to the catalog order disaster and its lesson. Many years ago my good friend, Otis Maxwell (writer and strategist, and now our Director of Creative Services here at LENSER), annually sent out holiday cookies he ordered from a former client of his, Neiman Marcus. While he worked on a number of projects for NM, Otis had gotten hooked on their collectible tins of butter cookies, and it was something we all looked forward to getting from him. This story becomes more relevant when I add that one of Otis’ biggest projects with NM was writing their entire trove of customer service correspondence. Everything from thank you letters (for a job well done) to customer apology letters of varying degrees, which they rarely ever had to send since NM is known for outstanding service. So, as his tradition continued, that year Otis generously ordered his cookie tins for all of us lucky enough to deserve them. That year, about three weeks before Christmas, I received two giant jars of Neiman Marcus’ private brand jalapeno and tomato salsa. They were huge! A surprise, and while I sighed that I had not gotten the cookies, it was certainly a fun and original gift. A few days later I got a call from Otis, asking if I’d gotten his gift. When I thanked him for the gargantuan jars of salsa, I heard despair in his voice. The nearly infallible NM had completely botched the order. He found out when one of his favorite clients had gotten an NM Hot Dog Kit (“So, Otis...” she apparently said, “Are you saying we’re a bunch of hot dogs here?”). The rest of us got a variety of other things, none which were cookies. Otis made his frantic call to Neiman Marcus and told them what had happened, and without hesitation, the company went to work to clean things up as quickly and graciously as possible. The next day, I got my coveted tin of cookies with a letter of apology explaining that they’d sent me the wrong thing on Mr. Maxwell’s behalf, and these cookies were what he had intended—with a nice letter. After all, Otis had written it just a few years before! In fact, we all got our cookie tins that next day—all sent via FedEx with the letter enclosed. And Otis received a gift from them, too, with “the letter I’d hoped they would never have to send out,” described by Otis as a sincere but groveling letter saying that they had no excuse for this error and hoped that he felt they had done their best to make it right, asking forgiveness, etc. As a follow-up, I did receive those cookies again the following year, a testament to both the quality of those cookies and the quality of the service Otis received from a very apologetic cataloger. My points with this tale of woe-ho-ho are these: First, as many of you heard in one of our presentations at our LENSER Summit and in a recent newsletter, the unexpected happens. And we, both the clients and vendors in our business, are probably some of the smartest and best able to handle these things that feel like a disaster at the time. An order of merchandise that arrives in the wrong color. A botched print job. A slew of catalogs with an incorrect price. Stuff happens. And when it does, we think our heads will explode. But fortunately we’re surrounded by people who are very good problem-solvers. We just need to ask for help, knowing that not only are they willing to help us pull out of the mess, but also knowing that they probably have gone through this themselves. It’s called being human. In fact, it’s a relief to know you’re not the first one to create a mess. And second, while it’s not human nature to expect the unexpected or the disastrous, it’s a smart thing for us to be prepared. All of us should have an automatic backup system in place for our computers—even though it costs money, it’s a great investment (yes, even for designers and writers). We should all have someone to call for technical help, when we’re in a jam and feel like tossing our [phone, printer, computer, Blackberry] out a third story window. Every office should have fire extinguishers in a few places that are easy to reach, plus a route of escape. And we should all have that series of customer service letters to thank, negotiate, problem-solve and beg forgiveness. They say that people don’t read like they used to, but a letter is a classy and heartfelt effort, and it is taken seriously if it’s written sincerely. If customers are our most valuable asset, and of course they are, then we need to be prepared every day to make them very happy.CASE STUDY When consumers visit a website, they typically search for a product or area that they are interested in. A conscientious merchant or web manager painstakingly assigns cross-sell and up-sell products they believe are appropriate for each item the consumer might light upon. These recommendations are based on the search results and “targeted” for no more than mass appeal since we don’t know if it will be a man or a woman, a college student or a senior citizen, who will be viewing that product and the associated cross-sell recommendations. In addition, every time a product is discontinued or a new product is added, the same exercise must be repeated. The problem with this approach is that it is incredibly time-consuming and is often based on the limited results of a search rather than the intention of the search. Instead of working on negotiating better margins or finding that next great product, the merchant is sitting behind their computer saying, “what products would most likely be bought with a decorative glass sphere?” These mass appeal recommendations, or sometimes simply best-sellers, do drive additional website sales, but are they building a relationship with the consumer? Are they showing each consumer who visits your site that you understand their specific needs and have addressed them? In most cases, probably not. Eureka! We found a solution to 1) creating a personalized and relevant shopping experience, 2) freeing up valuable time for the merchant and/or web manager and 3) driving incremental internet sales and increased customer lifetime value all in one technological solution. Resonance® is a behavioral targeting platform that dynamically profiles consumer interests and preferences, solely based on their individual online behavior and interactions with the website. This predictive behavioral model has the ability to immediately engage even with a first-time visitor and can typically profile new visitors in real time after only three to four clicks on the site! The underlying proprietary neural network of algorithms keeps learning more about each visitor with every click/interaction and also remembers the individual profiles of a returning visitor or customer through tracking of their primary cookie. Let’s take the challenge of selecting recommended gifts based on the birthday card you just purchased. With tens of thousands of greeting cards offered, most merchants, due to logistical constraints, would simply lump all birthday cards together and recommend a nice flower bouquet or a best-selling necklace. However, would the customer purchasing a child’s card (Happy 4th Birthday, Cowboy) really want to purchase flowers to go with it? What about an “over the hill” card? Well, maybe, but not likely if the card is for your old geezer uncle. This is where a predictive behavioral model can do the work of those ten people we didn’t have in the budget to start with. In client testing and roll-outs, we found that visitors are delighted when presented with individualized and relevant products that match their profile and current buying behavior, as well as their purchase history for repeat customers. By utilizing the current cross-sell area of the website, relevant items are presented by Resonance using a real time, proprietary method of profiling the consumer based on their own aesthetic choices…and this presentation is completely seamless to the visitor. There is no time delay or awkward design, since items are presented within a pre-established template. The behavioral model is constantly running and adjusting based on clicks and how the recommendations are performing. What a consumer may see for recommendations during one visit may not be the same recommendations she sees the next time even if the same products are clicked on. Additional variables can also be incorporated into the model. During a particular season, like during the holidays, inventory levels could be factored in to help manage sell-through and reduce clearance inventory in January. This payoff can be even more significant that simply adding incremental sales. Other variables may be appropriate to your site such as margin, review ratings, region, search, etc.
As direct marketers, we love to test and measure everything we do. This was really easy with Resonance. When the program was first implemented with a client, an A/B test was established. This tested head-to-head the results of the merchant-recommended cross-sells versus that of the model. As can be seen in the example below, the dynamic recommendations made by the model out-performed the site/merchant recommendations by 47%!
CIRCULATION TIP Generally, the more niche-oriented the magazine and the product you are selling, the more successful it will be in a catalog campaign. These types of publications usually allow catalog marketers to mail the name successfully without the need to identify any mail order characteristics. Many times a more generalized magazine will still be a successful prospecting tool, as long as there’s enough of an interest or lifestyle affinity with your product. Don’t give up on a magazine if you test it and the results are marginal. That just means that you need to take your process to the next step and identify mail order characteristics. This may be as simple as running a generic optimization through your choice of cooperative databases or can be as complex as running batch optimization or custom optimization based upon your own housefile. Which route you choose will depend on how general the magazine is and how marginal the results were. Magazine list owners typically won’t exchange names; therefore you will end up paying for the names you get. Since you are paying real money for these names, it makes it hard to throw away anything not selected through optimization. Usually you or your broker will be able to negotiate a net-net agreement for names that survive the optimization process, which makes it more fiscally palatable. Magazine lists are usually priced lower than catalog/internet lists and on top of that they usually offer a reduced rate for catalogers. This helps to even out the additional cost that you incur with the optimization process. The majority of magazine files out on the market have a substantial subscription base, which can give you a nice universe of names to come back to again and again. So stop overlooking those subscription lists within your circulation plans and start taking advantage of the universes they have to offer.CREATIVE TIP This is an unfortunate assumption, because more often than not, it leads to copy being an afterthought. “Poor stepchild” copywriting really shows as such in most catalogs. The result too often is the same old ‘products on a page’ routine, which we know from response numbers is not the best way to go. A designer alone doesn’t have the background or selling experience needed to make a catalog the strong seller it can be. Some of the most effective catalogs are actually quite copy-driven, utilizing added-value content, strong headlines and powerful, well-directed copy to help create a hierarchy on each spread. This is not something most catalog designers are able to envision, particularly when they’re given a certain number of products for each spread and told that this is what has to fit. Next time you look at working on upgrading your catalog creative, consider these opportunities to make it more effective…
In all of these cases, the one taking the lead is the copywriter and that lead will alter the design of the spread—in some cases, substantially. You may even lose a little selling space. But here is the other bonus with a seasoned copywriter taking the lead: The better the writer, the more likely they are to be able to reduce the amount of copy by writing it more efficiently! So what space is lost by copy changes may come back to you in brisker, more to-the-point (but not cold and fact-only) copy. In the long run, all the suggestions I’ve made here amount to the same thing: Sell harder by using one of the most powerful tools in your reach—smart copy! So instead of making the copy an afterthought, team up your creatives earlier in the process and challenge them to use both copy and design to make your catalog a real selling powerhouse.multichannel TIP Consider this example: A mailer sends out a catalog on day 1 of a campaign, and 21 days later sends out a postcard to many of the same customers. The catalog might cost 3x or 4x more than the postcard. If an order is placed on day 28, what portion of that order was driven by the postcard? 33% of it? All of it? And what about that email that went out on day 12? You can see how murky this is when you have no keycode attached to the sale and rely on the matchback to tell you the order was driven by those mail pieces. But it’s not much better even if you do. To tease the data apart and make it actionable, you must set business rules that all stakeholders will buy into. Given that we’re talking about interpreting customer behavior, this is inherently paradoxical, but I do not believe there is a responsible way around it. One set of matchback business rules won’t fit all, and a matchback can’t provide all the information required to do the best job in today’s direct-to-customer business environment. So approach the development of solid business intelligence as an iterative and collaborative process.CLIENT HIGHLIGHT—ANNIE'S ANNUALS As Annie’s Annuals was near and dear to my heart—I’d been a devoted customer for several years—I cajoled John Lenser into driving with me to the industrial area of Richmond to visit the nursery that summer and to give Annie’s Annuals a free day of “Catalog 101”—including a sobering dose of reality. After a fair assessment of their potential and their constraints, Annie’s Annuals decided to make a tremendous leap of faith and plunge headlong into the catalog business. Against all odds, they became LENSER’s newest, and smallest, client. Working long, hard hours and making many mission critical decisions under the watchful guidance of LENSER Partner Geoff Wolf, Annie Hayes and her remarkably dedicated team published Annie’s Annuals & Perennials’ first ever catalog of rare, heirloom, and unusual plants in January, 2006. Mother Nature has a way of granting your wishes in weird ways. That spring, the San Francisco Bay Area was deluged with record-breaking rain for 40 days and 40 nights and Annie’s wholesale business nearly tanked, as no locals dared venture forth to the garden centers. But the catalog, with its wider reach, was a stunning success and literally saved the day. “Wow! Our mail order customers sustained us during our bleakest time. What an amazing response we had from our first ever paper catalog!” says Annie. “We feel so rewarded. We love our customers.” "We have thoroughly enjoyed helping Annie's Annuals launch their catalog. It has been a genuine entrepreneurial experience," says Geoff, an experienced entrepreneur himself prior to joining LENSER. “They listen, they learn, they do what they can do, and they continue to constantly strive to improve. That is joy for a partner at LENSER. At this rate, they won’t be our smallest client for long.” But it hasn’t all been a bed of roses for Annie’s Annuals. This success story is being hard-won every day through tremendous effort on the part of Annie’s staff. Elayne Takemoto, described by Annie as “conductor of everything,” works diligently in long hours making the catalog and website so very appealing and entertaining for the customers, yet with all the constraints inherent in a start-up catalog. “They say time is money. We don’t have time to do everything that we want, but we don’t have much money, either, so we spend the time wisely—hopefully by making a better experience for our customers.” “Following Geoff’s advice is not always easy—especially when he says you really need to do A and B and you know that you only have enough resources to do A or B and you must choose,” says Bari Barkley, Annie’s multi-tasking guru of computer and customer service. “But we have a clear vision on one thing. We always choose what’s ultimately best for the customer. That’s Annie’s way and that has to be our light.” Annie’s Annuals & Perennials’ 2008 catalog will be out in January and like most of her flower floozie devotees, I can hardly wait to see what delectable flowering delights will be offered—with juicy photography and yummy descriptions that fire the imagination and fuel the inspiration to dig dirt and garden. One grumpy Garden Watchdog pundit criticized Annie’s catalog from afar as being from “a terminally sweet sugar plum fairy,” and the copy as being, “injected with I love the world serum,” but I say the world needs more love and when you spread this much magic and joy in the garden, you are worthy of dressing as a fairy princess and carrying a wand—as long as it’s a watering wand! To check out Annie’s Annual and Perennials’ offering of fabulous flowers and to sign up for some garden magic of your own, visit www.anniesannuals.com.EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT—JIM WHITFORD During his time at Quartermaster Uniforms, Jim was exposed to the analytical portion of the business and was promoted to Circulation Manager. However, Jim was looking for more growth and came across a LENSER ad in which we were looking for a circulation and marketing manager. “Normally we get staff recommendations and leads from industry professionals,” notes Michelle Houston, Vice President at LENSER. “But in Jim’s case it was very fortuitous for us since Jim has excelled beyond our expectations.” “Because of Jim’s business-to-business background, he has been assigned many of our business-to-business clients,” notes Michelle. “Jim started as we launched our new B2B department and he has been instrumental in the success of this division.” For Jim, this change has been a welcome growth opportunity as he expands his skills. “Circulation management in a small business can become a secondary job to many other mundane tasks. Unfortunately, you are not using the primary skills that keep you sharp in what should be your primary profession. LENSER offered a position that keeps me focused on my primary profession. This is not only a benefit to me and the other LENSER circulation/marketing managers, but a benefit to all LENSER clients.” Now that Jim has passed his one-year anniversary at LENSER, what does he think? “The LENSER staff and partners are skilled professionals. You can hear it every day in office conversations. In many ways, all LENSER clients have the assistance and experience of all the LENSER circulation managers and partners, something you just cannot get in one employee. All of this makes coming to work enjoyable.” Jim is our resident cycling guru and ring-leader. When not spending the weekends riding the Sonoma back roads with his wife, Suzanne, he also enjoys long hikes and exploring the beautiful Northern California coast. Jim can also be found around the house doing slightly less strenuous physical activities like gardening, working on cars, and woodworking. To learn more about Jim, please visit his bio.AFFILIATE FOCUS—SITEFORM “I always knew that John Deneen was a very bright guy with an incredibly sharp eye to detail and nuance. That’s certainly been proven out with his success building SiteForm and the success of his clients,” says John Lenser. John Deneen, President of SiteForm, has more than 20 years of direct marketing experience and in fact, all of the principals in the company have catalog backgrounds, and understand the client’s range of resources—graphics, photography, product databases, back-end and fulfillment systems—and how to cost-effectively use these resources to build fast, attractive, user-friendly websites. We asked John recently what he would attribute their success to in the seemly competitive environment of building and maintaining e-commerce websites. “In short, here’s how we are different from most: We focus ONLY on website development and recommend that specialized tasks such as email marketing, analytics, and search engine marketing be done by other companies specializing in these tasks. This way, clients can find the best-of-breed for each of these services,” says John. “Our goal is to have the client run their own site. We build the site. It’s owned by the client. They run it and come to us only for major changes. There are no maintenance or licensing fees. “We are small. SiteForm is a co-op of three owners, and a group of independent contractors each specializing in certain functions. Our overhead is very low, and our prices are moderate so clients get superior work at a good price. And we have excellent references. We strongly encourage prospects to talk to our clients about our work. “One more thing,” John added. “We limited our own growth. We pick up 2-3 new clients a year. That’s it. We are making a good living at what we do, we enjoy our jobs, and we enjoy our clients. We have no need to change a thing and everyone is happy—just ask our clients.” What is the perfect client for SiteForm? “A company whose top management demands a large company would be a poor fit for us, and a company that is looking for a one-stop shop for all e-commerce activities should be talking to someone else,” mused John. “The perfect company for us would be a mid-sized catalog company with website sales between $1 and $10 million, who wants to run their website themselves, and are looking for SiteForm to do the programming and design work to build the site.” As we continue to strengthen our breadth of services, LENSER has identified and carefully screened key services to support its clients, representing the best in their areas of expertise. As part of the LENSER promise, each of these companies will keep its fees competitive and “always go the extra mile” for LENSER clients. We have successfully partnered with SiteForm to our clients’ direct benefit. To get in touch with John Deneen at SiteForm or any of our other affiliates, please contact Michele Salmon at 415-446-2511 or email at LENSER.NEWS BRIEF
|
- Home
- What we do
- Services Offered
- Consulting
- Business Strategies
- Circulation Management
- Marketing Analytics
- Creative Services
- List Services
- Database Solutions
- Who we are
- News briefs
- Newsletters
- Articles
- Affiliate program
- Employment opportunities
- Contact us
