Channel Challenges
A number of years ago I was in a kickoff meeting for a large project focusing on multichannel order management. The goal was to integrate data from different channels to arrive at a 360-degree picture of the firm’s customers.
Participating in this confab was one of the smartest and most knowledgeable direct marketers I’ve ever met. He was the primary client contact and the person responsible for bringing the project to life.
We opened by discussing objectives. Our expert DMer said a key aim was to identify new ways to encourage single-channel customers to order from additional channels. He referenced an internal analysis showing that shoppers who order through multiple channels are far superior to those who use only one.
Most database marketers would agree with this objective and rationale. It’s often been observed that single-channel customers order about twice as much as multichannel shoppers. And many agree that it pays to encourage those solo buyers to tap into additional channels.
Indeed, that goal is widely used as a justification for the effort and expense required to create a comprehensive view of a firm’s customers. But while there are many cost-effective benefits to be gained from multichannel order management, is it really important to encourage shoppers to order from additional channels?
Yes, multichannel customers are superior to single-channel ones. But should we as database marketers care? Should we buy into the conventional wisdom that the intrinsic interest of the single-channel buyer will increase if they are coerced into purchasing from additional channels?
This thinking is flawed because multichannel customers are inherently different from their single-channel counterparts.
Their impressive performance is explained by these underlying differences, not by their poly-channel ordering. And it is naive to think that prodding shoppers to use additional channels will increase their interest in a company’s products or services.
WHY ARE THEY DIFFERENT?
Multichannel customers, by definition, are multibuyers. In order to qualify as such, a customer has to have ordered at least twice.
As any DMer will tell you, multibuyers generally are much better customers than solo purchasers. They tend to be more loyal, with higher average order sizes, and
