|
Once again it’s the time of year when we present our annual preholiday checklist. We are splitting this year’s checklist into two parts. In part one, we discuss offline marketing and operations. In part two, (in the Sep issue) we will discuss online marketing and ways to get your website ready for the holidays.
In the Oct-Dec issues of the FBMIU, we will cover trends and results we are seeing from specialty-food mailers throughout the Fall/Holiday 2010 season.
We would love to hear from you if you have any experiences—from trends in site traffic and catalog delivery times, to online techniques that are helping you sell more food—you would like to share with our other readers.
If you have any questions about the checklists, or you want to talk about new ways to grow your food-by-mail company, please drop me a line. In addition, if there are other topics of particular interest to you that you would like us to cover in a future edition of the newsletter, please let us know.
We hope these checklists and all of the information we cover in the Food-by-Mail Industry Update help you generate higher sales, more orders, happier customers, and record profits in 2010.
Warmest regards,
Tony Cox
President
5th Food Group
About 5th Food Group
5th Food Group helps specialty-food companies grow and make more money by developing, managing, implementing and analyzing their online and mail order marketing programs. We are the only internet/catalog marketing firm that works exclusively in the specialty-food industry. Helping smaller companies or large companies with small mail-order or internet divisions is what we do best.
Catalog and Offline Marketing
We have established holdout-group test panels, so we can quantify results from all incremental marketing programs. We are segmenting, key coding and tracking our offline (i.e., buyers who phone in their orders) and web buyers separately. We will measure how the two groups respond to see if we can maintain sales from web buyers while reducing mailing frequency to them. All lists in all mailings have a unique key code, so we can accurately track their performance. We have segmented our house file to eliminate unprofitable names from the mailings based on our current or forecasted margins and in-the-mail cost of the catalog. We have run our names through NCOA and other list hygiene procedures, so we are not wasting money by mailing catalogs to bad addresses. We are testing at least one additional mailing to “best buyers” to maximize their profit contribution. We will mail a catalog to new inquiries within three days from the date they requested our catalog. We will follow-up the first catalog mailing to new inquiries with a remail four weeks later. In late November, we will pull a list of all new buyers since our last list update and mail them a catalog directly from our location. We have chosen a printer that has a co-mail program. We have adjusted mail dates to ensure we can co-mail each drop, which will save on postage, and we can still hit our targeted in-home dates. We have gotten the addressing area on the back cover approved by the printer to ensure we can co-mail, ink-jet customer number and key code, and have an optional promotional message. We have sent updates to each of the co-op databases. We know based on our de-dupe rates how many rental names we need to rent. We have a post-merge model selected in case we run short in the merge/purge. If we do not print a spring catalog at a later date, we have printed enough catalogs for a couple of spring 2011 mailings to our best buyers and all new customers. We also have enough catalogs for new buyers and inquiries that we receive between now and the time we print our fall/holiday 2011 catalog.
Other Marketing, Promotion and Merchandising Ideas
We have a gift list program in place—we will mail it, upload it to our website, and make it available via email to registered customers. We are testing special offers to reactivate old or lapsed buyers. We have run the numbers and made an informed decision on how best to communicate the offers—no more seat-of the-pants or “because we’ve always done it that way” decision-making. We are testing at least one new program to convert more inquiries into buyers. All outgoing packages will have a customer survey card, a “send a friend a catalog” card, and food storage and preparation instructions (when applicable). We will communicate to customers via the catalog, other mailings and e-mail our cutoff date for Christmas delivery. We have scheduled a reminder mailing in early December to announce and reinforce our Christmas delivery cutoff date. We will read our key code reports weekly, and make on-the-spot adjustments to our marketing plan, if necessary. We have alerted all relevant publications (Press Releases) about new products we are carrying. All targeted publications will receive our new catalog, samples of new products, and other newsworthy information.
Phone Orders and Outbound Calling
We have developed an up-sell phone script to improve our average order size. We have set up several weekly contests to motivate up-selling by our phone reps. We have developed special offers to stimulate a self-purchase when gift buyers call to place an order. We have developed a list of “gifts under $50, gifts under $75, and gifts under $100” to offer to callers who do not know what to order. We will ask all callers if they have a friend who would like to receive our catalog. We will ask all callers if they want to join our e-mail list to receive special offers and announcements. We have set up a process to run a daily “exceptions” report for big orders that are past their anniversary date, and we have out-bound calling procedures in place to call these buyers to offer to help them with their order this year. We have planned an out-bound calling program for our gift list – our operators will call those buyers with significant gift orders a few days before their gift list arrives, letting them know it is on the way.
Planning, Forecasting and Operations
We have a written, documented plan to achieve our sales, profit and name-flow goals. We have a plan to beat the plan. Our marketing plan maximizes the number of online and offline buying opportunities from our most profitable house file segments. Our marketing plan is based on a thorough analysis of our historical online and offline response data. We did not make any arbitrary marketing decisions this year. Our marketing plan is designed to bring in enough new buyers this season to meet our growth needs next year. Moreover, we know how many new buyers we need this year to make our numbers next year. We have run a pro forma profit and loss and cash flow forecast on this marketing plan. We know what we will do if sales are 15%, 20%, or 25% above or below our projections. We have contingency plans for cash requirements, inventory, personnel, equipment and packing supplies based on our “15%, 20%, and 25% over-and-under plans.” We have used our mail plan and historical order curves to developed forecasts of the number of phone, Web, e-mail, fax, and mail orders we will receive each week. We have enough computer terminals and phone lines to handle the peak weeks as indicated in our weekly order forecast. Based on our weekly order forecasts, we know how many seasonal employees we will need; we know when to hire them. We have access to enough seasonal personnel to answer phones, respond to e-mail requests, and pick, pack and ship orders. We have a small “bonus” plan in-place, so most of my seasonal hires last through Christmas. Seasonal phone reps are trained in our customer service policies, know how to enter orders into our computer system, are familiar with our products, and they understand the importance of getting customer key codes on each order. We have run a Lifetime Value Analysis and know exactly how much we can spend to acquire a new customer and generate our desired ROI. We are rolling out all programs that meet our ROI criteria. We are ready to make Holiday 2010 the best season in the history of our company.
|
5th Food Group