• Market Basket Analysis: The challenge for many distributors is how to sell more products and more product categories to the same customer. Through market basket analysis of transaction data, we discover the best cross-selling rules for your set of SKU's and products. It is typically the case that 20 to 30 cross-selling rules if properly applied can provide a 1% to 3% lift in sales volume. These cross selling rules can be applied by field sales, inside sales, and on the web to boost your share of wallet.
• Recency-Frequency-Monetary Value (RFM): RFM segments customers into how recently they have purchased and how much or how many time they have purchased. The premise of RFM is that customers who have purchased recently and frequently will likely continue to do so. Customers who are less recent and/or less frequent may need a stimulus to get back into a good buying pattern. The stimulus could be as simple as an offer. As shown below, there are 184 customers (upper right most green cell) whose most recent purchase was in the last 1 to 2 months who have made 2000 purchases on more in their lifetime. In the middle of the figure, there are 177 customers whose most recent purchase was in the last 6 to 11 months and have made 100 to 499 purchases lifetime. These 177 customers probably need some type of offer to make sure they don't defect. RFM is extremely powerful for increase marketing efficiency and marketing effectiveness.

They enable distributors to do lead nurturing and drip marketing. We work with a product call Net Results Marketing. With Net Results Marketing, the following types of actions are possible:

• Create a follow up response to customers who clicked on a certain web page
• Send an email alert to a salesperson if a customer is spending a great deal of time on the web site
• Send an email alert to a salesperson or an email to the customer if the customer puts items in the shopping cart but does not finish the order
• Create a follow up response to customers who did NOT open the monthly newsletter.
• See the web browsing activity of a customer or prospect from within a CRM system such as Salesforce

To address these common problems, Real Results Marketing has developed a set of best practices for distributor e-commerce sites. We place a heavy emphasis on understanding the profile of users of the website. This understanding allows us to build highly usable and attractive websites with content that is tailored to specific customers. For example, some sites need to serve both small contractors and large national accounts. Content for the contractor may be irrelevant to the large national account buyer. Using personas, we can make sure that each sees relevant content.

Of course, customers and prospects both need to be able to find your website. We have experience in search engine optimization and search engine marketing from developing some of the most successful distributor websites in the industry.

"Catalogs," or buying books, are designed to help customers and prospects find a product solution to a problem they are trying to solve. The key attributes of an effective catalog are product assortment and speed of use -- all things being equal, customers will generally prefer to use the catalog that allows them to find what they need the quickest. The product layout (called, "pagination"), use of tables of contents, tabs and indexes all contribute to build speed of use into a catalog. A common mistake is to design a large catalog as it were a promotional piece, with a focus on call-outs, flashy pictures and discounts. These tend to diminish speed of use and work against the overriding objective of a buying book.

Of course, none of this matters if the book isn't in the right hands -- as direct marketers say, the list is the most important component of a direct marketing campaign (next most important is the "offer," followed by creative elements). Some marketers have a tendency to rely on "compiled lists" from sources like Dun & Bradstreet and InfoUSA. While these suppliers play a role in the vast majority of B2B campaigns, marketers should also work with "vertical lists," like trade publication subscribers, trade show attendees, etc.

We have seen various distribution companies cut back on catalog circulation as more of their revenues originate on the Web. This is often driven by a misunderstanding of how customers are using the company's Website. Very often, even though the order is placed on the Web, a paper catalog was still involved in the purchase. In fact, most purchasers find the functionality of a print catalog superior to that of a Web catalog when it comes to finding a product quickly. There is no need to speculate about the respective roles of a print vs. an online catalog, however. If you have any doubt about the need for you maintain a print catalog in light of the growth of online business, simply pull 300 Web transactions, call back the person who placed the order, and ask if they used a print catalog in the course of making that purchase.

Many distributors view catalogs as a very expensive investment. However, like an e-commerce enabled website, they make your inventory visible to countless current and prospective customers. Given that no one will buy from you if they don't know what you carry, developing and implementing an effective print catalog may well be an excellent investment, if it's done well and is sent to the best possible respondents. Real Results Marketing can assess your catalog activities, make recommendations to help you lay out an effective strategy and give you the guidance you need to be successful with the critical, business-generating tool.