As parents and grandparents as well as global citizens, we’re all interested in preserving the planet for future generations. But going green is also sound business. The Natural Marketing Institute estimates that the green marketplace (defined as products that are organic, natural or have an environmentally friendly benefit) is estimated to reach $420 billion by 2010.
According to Nielsen, half of Americans say they want to buy green, but don’t. It’s believed that this is a byproduct of consumer confusion about just what constitutes green and whether or not the price paid for a green product is worth it. As marketers of consumer goods, the direct response industry has an opportunity to take the lead on such matters by simply offering consumers cost-effective packaging that uses less plastic and is recyclable.
At SF Video, we are doing our part by promoting new green packaging solutions that reduce CO2 emissions, use less energy and are made from eco-friendly materials. What does all that mean? If you distribute CDs or DVDs as part of your product, now the discs themselves as well as the package they arrive in, including the insert that secures the discs, can be made of materials that are 100 percent recyclable. Marketers can take an environmentally conscious stand that will reflect well on their brand and be welcomed by all stakeholders from their customers to employees, not to mention Mother Earth.
If you need a reminder of why such stewardship is imperative, check out this video from Oprah. It profiles the Great Pacific Garbage Dump, an enormous floating pile of plastic sewage thought to be twice the state of Texas and large enough to stretch from the coast of California to Japan. According to the Huffington Post’s David Burdick, “Discarded water bottles from Iowa, takeout containers from New York City, flip-flops from California and plastic debris from the world over make their way from land into storm drains, streams, rivers and other waterways. They are carried out to sea, where they get trapped in swirling ocean currents - forming a giant, floating trash dump of an enormous proportion - no matter how you quantify it.”
While the magnitude of such ecological disasters may seem insurmountable, if business owners think of themselves as more than a drop in that ocean capable of embracing substantive change, together we can turn the tide.
Steven Feinberg is the CEO of SF Video and the current Treasurer and a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Retailing Association. Celebrating its 20th year, SF Video is the leader in DVD and CD replication and duplication to the direct marketing industry. Steven can be reached at 1-800-545-5865 or steven@sfvideo.com.
Electronic Retailer’sSeptember ‘09 issue featuring Montel Williams is now available online! For more information about Motel’s upcoming keynote presentation at the ERA D2C Convention on Monday, Sept. 14, click here.
In this world where “flat is the new up,” it is critical to make each visit of every shopper count. With fewer shoppers coming to your site, you have to be instantly engaging, catering to your shopper, making your site a destination. And, you have to get your shoppers to put as much as possible into their cart and then actually check out.
The question is - how can you take the flat or even decreased traffic and turn it into profit? Here are eight tips to help you entice your shoppers to buy more.
1. Shipping Offers - Lets start with getting people to your site. Shipping is something that shoppers are always concerned with. Free shipping, if you can afford it, always moves people to buy more. If your model does not support free, shoppers are also happy with flat fee shipping or even shipping with a minimum purchase (they will buy just one more product to qualify).
2. Incentives and Bundles - So, you got them to your site with a shipping offer, next, motivate them to buy more with incentives. Who doesn’t like getting a gift with a purchase or a special bundle of products for an extra discount? The shopper feels like they’re getting a bargain while you get to move more products.
3. Rebates - If you can’t offer discounts, another tactic to entice shoppers is to offer rebates. People get wide-eyed about rebates and will buy more to get them. Even if they do not actually redeem the rebate, they will be more loyal to your site for the service.
4. Personalized Product Recommendations - Next, lets turn to the customer experience. Today’s savvy shopper expects merchants to know them. Serving personalized product recommendations helps customers find what they’re looking for (and sometimes things they did not even know they wanted). The product detail page is the most logical location, but place recommendations throughout your site and most importantly in the shopping cart - it is a good place to put those impulse purchases - just like candy at the store check out.
5. Video - Another way to enhance the customer experience is to tantalize and engage your shopper with video. This medium can be used to demonstrate how a product works, show how apparel fits, or even do a virtual wine tasting. Video can answer questions shoppers have so that they buy even more than expected.
6. Ratings and Reviews - Lets face it, shoppers are social creatures, and love to talk and get advice from one another. Rating and reviews helps people get feedback from each other. Some shoppers can’t resist the temptation; they have to buy top rated items and will fill their cart.
7. Customer Service - Speaking of people talking , another thing that really helps is something just so simple - offer stellar customer service, and you will not believe how far that will get you. People talk and when they have a great experience, they will tell everyone they know. I do all the time!
8. Alternative Payment Methods - Okay, you have used tips 1-7 on your site and the shopper has stuffed their cart - this is when you are at risk for the dreaded cart abandonment. There are many things you should do to motivate your shoppers to click submit, maybe that is for a dedicated article. Suffice it to say, make it easy to check out. Alternative payment methods make it easier for anyone to check out - so make sure you offer them.
The bottom line is that you need to employ many different tactics to boost your average order value; it is the only way to take flat traffic and turn it up!
Lisa Joy Rosner is MyBuys‘ vice president of marketing.
Before booking your travel to Las Vegas or San Diego, you may first want to get a few tips from “Saturday Night Live” travel expert Judy Grimes.
Did you miss out on the recent networking receptions in NYC and L.A.? Click here to view pictures from various events at Electronic Retailer’s Buzz page!
Don’t take the initial setup phase for granted - Clients sometimes rush or don’t put enough effort into the initial setup phase of the fulfillment engagement. This can lead to miscommunications and mistakes that have long-term ramifications. It’s especially important to communicate who all of your vendors are, and make sure all offers and file exchanges are thoroughly tested.
Understand how the decline cycle works - Companies who are outsourcing their payment processing and fulfillment need to have a clear understanding of how the decline cycle works. New clients who don’t understand the difference between soft and hard declines, or that multiple charge attempts are being made always surprise me.
Make sure your refund policies are clear and reasonable - I see many situations where clients try to save money by imposing strict or unclear refund policies. These can lead to increased chargebacks and customer service calls, as well as BBB and FTC complaints.
Consult with your fulfillment company regularly regarding packaging - Packaging is very important when it comes to freight costs. Your fulfillment company can help you come up with the best packaging to keep your freight costs down. Remember, once a package is above one pound, an extra ounce can push you to the next weight tier.
Work with customer service to plan for call spikes and backorder situations - Avoid backed up call queues and long hold times by proactively planning for call spikes and backorder situations. Fulfillment centers don’t have infinite numbers of customer service agents, so you need to work with them in advance to make sure that staff is properly allocated. In backorder situations, sometimes it is better to outbound clients or send them e-mails to let them know what is going on and thereby reduce inbound customer service calls.
Be prepared for dry spells and unanticipated storage costs - Many DRTV marketers think they will never have a dry spell and are often caught flat footed when retail orders dry up or campaigns slow down. If they have over-ordered inventory, they can end up with higher than expected storage costs, which can definitely impact their bottom line. My advice is to develop a contingency plan and build adequate cushion into your budget for storage.
Watch as ERA CEO Julie Coons delivers a sneak peak of what attendees can expect from ERA’s upcoming 2009 D2C Convention in Las Vegas September 13-15. Register now!Early bird ends July 1!
CNNMoney recently highlighted Jay Goltz’s seven business-killing traps that every entrepreneur must avoid.
1)Â Â Â Sloppy Accounting: Done properly, accounting is a diagnosis of everything that’s right and wrong with your company. You should be able to complete a pro forma income statement at the beginning of the year that shows your recipe for making money. Crucially, you need to understand the ratio of sales to expenses that will result in profitability. You want to be able to say, “This business needs to gross $800K for me to have a $100K profit,” as opposed to merely saying, “I hope I can make $100K one day.”
2)Â Â Â Unrealistic Pricing: You must truly understand your costs, which include often-neglected components like scrap, freight, damages, theft and obsolescence. Once you do, you need to figure out what your cost of goods sold (COGS) number must be for you to make money. Keep in mind that your selling price is not your average selling price — you have to factor in discounts, which will increase your COGS number.
3)Â Â Â Naive Hiring: It takes patience and skill to hire the right people. Busy entrepreneurs can easily be romanced by the applicant who says, “I work hard and I’m a fast learner. I just haven’t had the right opportunity.” Here’s the trick to smart hiring: Call references, ask them the right questions, and listen hard to their answers. Key question: “If Bob is so great, how come he doesn’t work for you anymore?” I want to hear this kind of reply: “Bob is brilliant. I’d rehire him in a second, but his wife got transferred.” A long silence at the other end of the line tells me this candidate isn’t worth my while.
4)Â Â Â Fear of Firing: No sane person enjoys letting people go, but it’s necessary if you want to run a great company. As in any competitive endeavor, it’s critical to have the best people. It’s easy to keep mediocre employees around, especially when they are nice and loyal — but it will hurt you sooner or later. Here’s a good test: Would you be relieved if anyone on your team quit tomorrow? If the answer is yes, you’ve got a problem.
5)Â Â Â Lack of Standards: One of your main jobs is to set standards in such essential areas as quality control, customer service and the company’s public image. In my picture framing business, the standard for quality control is arm’s-length inspection: If you can’t see a problem at arm’s length, you’re fine.
6)Â Â Â Lack on Controls: It’s easy enough for customer service failures, pricing errors and quality issues to get lost in the shuffle. You need to identify and fix these problems before they do lasting damage. In my business, one out of 200 times there’s a problem with a framing job: the wrong mat, the wrong color and so on. Every screw-up gets a “hot ticket” assigned to it. The mistake gets fixed, and every month I have a record of what the problems are and who’s causing them.
7) Poor Branding: Recently I gave a speech to an audience of appliance dealers. I told them to focus on the layout of their stores, their signage, even how their employees dress. One dealer said, “We tried that branding thing and it didn’t work.” Wrong answer. In business you brand yourself every day in a million ways. The real question is whether your branding helps or hurts your bottom line. Most entrepreneurs aren’t naturally talented in all seven of these areas, and that’s the reason a lot of businesses fail. But failure is a great teacher. Learn and you will earn.
Jay Goltz employs 110 people at Artists Frame Service, Chicago Art Source and Jayson Home & Garden, all based in Chicago. He is the author of The Street-Smart Entrepreneur.
Please join ERA at the New York Networking Reception on June 18, 2009 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. for cocktails and great networking with senior leaders of the direct response industry. The reception will be held during DM Days at the Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips offices in Times Square.
Immediately following the reception we will be holding our fourth Meet the CEO Dinner beginning at 8:15 p.m. It will be an intimate gathering where you can mingle with our new CEO, Julie Coons, as well as our Chairman, Nathan Fagre, board members, and ERA staff.
To register, please contact Katie White at kwhite@retailing.org or (703) 841-8284.
“There’s no way you can justify spending $3 million on a thirty-second Super Bowl ad, but you sure as hell can justify a half hour infomercial that you know the cost of when within 72 hours you know the revenue you generated from it.” — Chris Rebholz, president of Christopher Morgan Fulfillment
Look for more insights from Chris and other DR fulfillment leaders in Electronic Retailer’s upcoming May issue! Do you have an industry quote or industry event pictures worth sharing? Post a comment or send an e-mail to eMedia editor Pat Cauley at pcauley@retailing.org for possible inclusion.
As parents and grandparents as well as global citizens, we’re all interested in preserving the planet for future generations. But going green is also sound business. The Natural Marketing Institute estimates that the green marketplace (defined as products that are organic, natural or have an environmentally friendly benefit) is estimated to reach $420 billion by 2010.
In this world where “flat is the new up,” it is critical to make each visit of every shopper count. With fewer shoppers coming to your site, you have to be instantly engaging, catering to your shopper, making your site a destination. And, you have to get your shoppers to put as much as possible into their cart and then actually check out.
In addition to its upcoming 
Don’t take the initial setup phase for granted - Clients sometimes rush or don’t put enough effort into the initial setup phase of the fulfillment engagement. This can lead to miscommunications and mistakes that have long-term ramifications. It’s especially important to communicate who all of your vendors are, and make sure all offers and file exchanges are thoroughly tested.
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