Wine Enthusiast’s Glenn Edelman on Multichannel Order Tracking
August 20, 2008 By Hallie Mummert, Editor In Chief, Target Marketing
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As the number of marketing and media channels continues to widen, so does the variety of paths customers travel down to place orders. Glenn Edelman, senior director of online marketing and merchandising at Wine Enthusiast, the Elmsford, N.Y.-based multichannel seller of wine accessories and cellars, likes to say that someone could receive his company's catalog in the mail on Monday; google the company on Tuesday, click on a paid search ad and sign-up for Wine Enthusiast's e-mail newsletter; and then receive an e-mail on Wednesday that prompts a clickthrough and an order that same day. In his opinion, all four channels-catalog, search, e-mail and the Web-deserve credit for this order.
To learn how Wine Enthusiast tracks orders to give credit where it's due, we talked to Edelman about matchbacks, call centers and order audits.
Target Marketing: In what key ways do you assess the effect other channels have on sales coming from paid search?
Glenn Edelman: The main thing we do is put the order code at the bottom of every [landing] page. So if people click through on a paid ad, we'll have that little code on the bottom. And when they call in, our salespeople will ask them to check the code on the bottom of their screen. So that's how we're tracking search to the offline [order channels].
How does the catalog affect search? [We use] matchbacks through our database. So, if someone was mailed a catalog and then they clicked through and used what we call a Google code or a Yahoo code, we'll do it that way to see where the overlap is.
We'll do a lot of order audits, as well. The Rimm-Kaufman Group, our vendor, will send me all the orders that they attribute to paid search. Whereas we also look at what order numbers were driven by e-mail, comparison-shopping engines and by affiliate. So, it's a lot of auditing of the various vendors, because everybody wants to take credit for the orders they drive. But unfortunately, in this world, what we find out is that in many cases there might be two or three different marketing vehicles out there that drive a single order-which will drive up my marketing costs and affect my ROI.
TM: How did you decide on the placement for your order code?
GE: We used to put it in various areas, but we found that telling customers, "Scroll down to the bottom, right-hand portion of the page"-there's even a question that says "Ordering by phone? Use code XYZ"-makes it clear. I've wanted to test making it visible on other areas of the [landing] page, but right now it's simple. And someone who's not on the phone and is ordering online, 99 times out of 100, is not going to see it. So, it's not intrusive or confusing to them.
To learn how Wine Enthusiast tracks orders to give credit where it's due, we talked to Edelman about matchbacks, call centers and order audits.
Target Marketing: In what key ways do you assess the effect other channels have on sales coming from paid search?
Glenn Edelman: The main thing we do is put the order code at the bottom of every [landing] page. So if people click through on a paid ad, we'll have that little code on the bottom. And when they call in, our salespeople will ask them to check the code on the bottom of their screen. So that's how we're tracking search to the offline [order channels].
How does the catalog affect search? [We use] matchbacks through our database. So, if someone was mailed a catalog and then they clicked through and used what we call a Google code or a Yahoo code, we'll do it that way to see where the overlap is.
We'll do a lot of order audits, as well. The Rimm-Kaufman Group, our vendor, will send me all the orders that they attribute to paid search. Whereas we also look at what order numbers were driven by e-mail, comparison-shopping engines and by affiliate. So, it's a lot of auditing of the various vendors, because everybody wants to take credit for the orders they drive. But unfortunately, in this world, what we find out is that in many cases there might be two or three different marketing vehicles out there that drive a single order-which will drive up my marketing costs and affect my ROI.
TM: How did you decide on the placement for your order code?
GE: We used to put it in various areas, but we found that telling customers, "Scroll down to the bottom, right-hand portion of the page"-there's even a question that says "Ordering by phone? Use code XYZ"-makes it clear. I've wanted to test making it visible on other areas of the [landing] page, but right now it's simple. And someone who's not on the phone and is ordering online, 99 times out of 100, is not going to see it. So, it's not intrusive or confusing to them.
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