Welcome to this month's issue of 1:1 eMessenger. I hope you find it useful and as always feel free to call me at any time.

Regards,

Jere Gill
Jere@lakelitho.com

The first thing marketers look for is response rate. Was it a 6% response rate? A 12% response rate? A 27% response rate? Yet response rates alone don’t tell you much. What is useful is the Return On Investment -ROI.

To calculate ROI, you need to know:

• The value of the sale
• The profit on that sale
• The total cost of the campaign, including program development, design and database development.

When a furniture retailer wanted to boost its sales, it set up a program by which it could follow up with visitors to the retail store. Once visitors entered the store and were helped by a sales associate, the associate asked for certain information. The retailer then sent a personalized follow-up brochure within 72 hours. The retailer created two versions of the brochure.

Version ‘A’ brochure was to visitors who made a purchase. The brochure thanked them for their business and included a coupon for 10% off any additional purchases during the next 30 days.

Version ‘B’ brochure was mailed to visitors who did not make a purchase. This brochure thanked them for visiting, included the store address & phone number, name of the sales associate who helped them and the hours of the sales associate. It also included images of the furniture the visitor had viewed or similar images of the furniture.

The results?
Version ‘A’ brochures generated a 10% increase in additional sales & Version B brochures brought back in 40% of the non-purchasers back into their store.
The cost of just one additional sale covered the cost of the printing and postage for the entire month.

The retailer tracked both the response rate and the dollars spent. Because they did, they were able to create a solid ROI calculation. They knew—in hard numbers—exactly how valuable that promotion had been to the bottom line.

Hit a home run with your next campaign!
By taking the time to track all of the relevant metrics and do the ROI calculations, you can use the information to justify those marketing dollars in a powerful and convincing way.