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18 August 2011 10:15am
We are an ecommerce fashion site and are contemplating printing a catalogue with a send to 90k UK customers, in your experience will this drive more people to re-order online or pick up the phone?
If you have done this are you able to give the split? We are trying to work out where to add capacity and ensuring the servers are robust enough to cope wioth the higher traffic.
Any advice Please!
Managing Director at indiumonline
18 August 2011 15:40pm
Hi Anonymous,
Unfortunately I can't share any actual stats with you but...
Any catalogue will drive a certain number of people online, and others to pick up the phone. The mix will be quite influenced by your demographic - so if you're Damart you're going to see a higher percentage of phone orders (and postal orders) than ASOS would get.
It will also be highly affected by how good your data is, assuming when you say "90k UK customers" you're talking about people who've already bought from you - then you should get a pretty high response rate. And if this is the first time you've ever send a catalogue then I'd anticipate a split between phone and web orders to be fairly similar to what you get at the moment. Maybe a couple of percentage points more phone?
You might also find the industry stats from Royal Mail's Home Shopping Tracker Study useful.
http://www2.royalmail.com/royal-mail-you/home-shopping/tracker-market-research
So, I'd probably be worrying more about the servers than the phones - but probably have an overflow call centre ready just in case.
And, if capacity is the big issue - then why not stagger the mailing? Send a few out at a time - it will reduce the size of the peak and shouldn't affect the level of sales.
Hope that helps, and feel free to get in touch
Chloe
indiumonline.co.uk
18 August 2011 16:17pm
Hi Chloe
Thank you! A brilliantly thorough answer just what i was hoping for..it's along the same lines as our thinking but it's still taking a leap into the unknown.
The staggered send would be great were it not for the omninous spectre of Christmas looming large!
thanks again!
Tom
Managing Director at indiumonline
18 August 2011 16:26pm
Hi Tom,
No problem - do let me know if you've any other queries.
Chloe