40 DIRECT COMMERCE ASSOCIATION UPDATE DCA Behind Closed Doors
It was Winston Churchill who said ‘We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.’ I have always found that the most successful business leaders look to grow, develop and get a competitive edge, in equal measure with sharing, giving back and seeking to make a difference. It is for this very reason that I volunteer as Chairman of the
Direct Commerce Association (DCA) which brings together ambitious businesses keen to become more than they currently are. We are all hungry to learn and keen to share. Jan 27th saw the first of two planned DCA “Behind Closed
Doors” action learning sets for 2016. Tis first frank and open session looked at Christmas Past. Te next one will focus on preparations Christmas Future. Sixteen different business leaders from different sectors and of
varying sizes and locations compared notes, shared ideas and took away tips. Tis energetic session was packed with great shared content and was led by DCA President, the industry’s leading ‘share to win’ proponent, Nigel Swabey of Scotts of Stow fame. It being a ‘Behind Closed Doors’ session, you really had to
be there to get the full benefit because we shared everything on the basis of the Chatham House Rule, but these are a few of my personal take-aways. I learned to ask my courier if they are still charging us a 3 per
cent fuel surcharge despite the plummeting cost of fuel. For me, this alone was worth 6 times the cost of attending this gathering. Tose in fashion all seem to have had a rough time courtesy of the winter floods and milder weather with sales down in the region of 15-20 per cent against budgets. I was introduced to the interesting opportunities of consignment space in garden centres. We discussed the extent to which Amazon is now out there setting new rules in the distance-selling arena and how we are each responding to this challenge in our own ways. Some great practical tips were shared. We discussed the need to make sure that the SHOPs system is not allowed to pass away quietly into the night to our collective disadvantage. Tose running TV campaigns reported them performing pretty
well as part of the overall marketing mix once the ‘halo’ effect on the improvement of other channels is taken fully into account. We talked a lot about attribution, and how we were each being pitched by ‘attribution elixir consultants’ all of whom claim to have the magic econometric formula for attribution. If there was one major theme it was the loss of a line of sight between customer recruitment, marketing spend and margin. Around the table we were spending between 5 and 50 per cent of sales on marketing
2016 DCA Events
March 10th: Manchester March 17th:Brighton April 14th:Birmingham April 21st: London June 2nd:London June 2nd: London Sep 15th: London Oct tbc: London New date coming for Harrogate
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and we had one pure-play on-line recruiter doing some neat stuff with SEO. We talked about affiliates, about the use and value of Royal Mail wholesale rates and the ‘140g sweet-spot’. We shared sources of industry wisdom like the Hillstrom blog and neat web tools which we have each found effective in our conversion rate optimisation strategies. Tere was no consensus as to the seasonal peak days or average
order value shifts but pretty much everyone saw mobile sales rise as a percentage of sales and experienced better sale performances on Christmas/Boxing Day. We discussed the re-emerging role of paper in the mix of
customer content provision and the use of a ‘customer-club’ collaborative approach to help make sure data changes won’t stop us being able to communicate freely with customers and prospects. I learned that I’m missing a no-brainer in that we really should be taking inserts in some of our colder prospect mailings. We discussed the relative and changing costs of different media.
For example, did you know that the costs of inserts are running at 50-70 per cent of what they were four years ago? Useful to know for someone like me who drops 20 million+ of them a year, or if you are considering dipping a toe into this channel. We also discussed the impact on us all of the impending European Data Regulations. We agreed to share our carrier volumes, costs and service offerings to compare and contrast the different deals we each enjoy across the industry. I’m looking forward to getting these results because product delivery is a constant bug-bear in our business. Tis session, held in the Directors’ Suite at the Science
Museum turned out to be a fantastic use of my time. I showed up intending to give but took a lot more away. It was the perfect example of my opening remarks. As part of my own personal odyssey of trying to work out what the hell I am doing in the shifting sands of this business, it proved very useful, as I hope will a visit to the NEMOA (National Etailing & Mailing Organization of America) Conference in Boston in March. NEMOA is the closest US equivalent to DCA so we will be meeting to discuss how we might reach out across Te Pond to each other. If you are in the direct commerce industry or supply if you us,
you really should take advantage of the opportunities offered by membership of DCA. If my business could get the same return on our marketing spend as we do from our DCA membership, I’d be retired and living in Barbados. Alex Pratt OBE is Chairman of several businesses including innovative Reading Light manufacturer Serious Readers. He is Chairman of the Direct Commerce Association.
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