How consumers buy is changing has changed. In fact, 79 percent of U.S. consumers shop online, in comparison to just 22 percent back in 2000. And the Amazon Effect will continue to disrupt the market, both online and off. More big box stores will announce their closure, fast food restaurants will continue to roll out apps for online ordering and businesses will keep doing more to accommodate convenience.
But here’s the thing, it doesn’t just impact B2C companies. As consumers’ expectations keep rising, more B2B companies will also push forward with eCommerce plans. With marketing teams being held responsible for things like proving ROI and with data flying in from all over, how do you really know if your marketing efforts are related to driving sales?
See How One Client Attributed Sales to a Marketing Newsletter
Take for instance, our work with Parts.Cat.Com. The client came to us wanting to promote their new eCommerce platform as they retired their old online parts procurement platform, PartStore. The challenge was twofold; transitioning customers who were used to the old way of ordering and engaging a new audience that had yet to adopt ordering parts online.
The solution: We opted to leverage a newsletter to promote longer-format promotion of Parts.Cat.Com and developed a targeted approach to deliver content that aligned with a customer’s past purchase relationship. We were able to put in place a data process to tie purchasers from our database with the client’s database to run fulfilment. Using last click attribution, sales figures could then be attributed directly to the newsletter – including the fact that readers were spending 43 percent more year-over-year. This tracking across databases took a lot of planning at the forefront and heavy collaboration between Simantel and Caterpillar. All in the interest of providing ROI.
Take a look for yourself to see how well it worked.
