10 Important Advantages of Direct Mail Marketing Campaigns (navistone.com)

Come next year things are going to go from bad to worse. Senior marketers know it and are already making contingency plans. Read: rationalizing ad dollars. Less than a third (29%) of the world’s largest advertisers plan to slash ad dollars next year, according to a study of 43 multinational companies from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Ebiquity. Three quarters of the sample “agree strongly” or “agree” that 2023 budgets are under heavy scrutiny. Marketers are already being required to justify their investments. For many of them, 2023 will feel a lot like a recession. It’s not all doom and gloom. Some of those marketers surveyed (28%) claim they will invest more next year, per the study.

2020 is a year we will always remember, yet one we would like to forget. It was a year that changed our lives forever. Some have been affected more than others, but we all have a story to tell. People talk about “the new normal,” but what exactly does that mean to retailers and direct marketers? Let’s take a walk into the future and see what it looks like. Actually, we're living the future now. Several of our clients cut circulation in early 2020 in light of the advancing pandemic. They reduced their marketing efforts in anticipation of what was to come. It was the logical action to take, but for many consumer mailers, it was the wrong thing to do at the time. Revenues increased unexpectedly and remain strong today. Trips to retail stores reduced by at least half, and consumers went online to order gifts, apparel, home furnishings, food and other products. COVID changed the way we shop. It also leapfrogged us into the future. From a marketing standpoint, 2020 looks more like what we would have expected five years from now. read more at source: https://www.mytotalretail.com/post/catalog-and-digital-marketing-the-future-is-here-now/

More often than not, we engage with seasoned ecommerce professionals tasked with running print programs while simultaneously holding some measure of responsibility for Profit & Loss statements. And as such, they tend to look at performance metrics with a ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) lens instead of a more critical metric – Contribution Per Order (CPO). Why is that important, and why does ROAS lack adequate insight as a key metric? Let me explain. While ROAS is an efficient measuring metric, it cannot assign health to a channel, making it a relatively useless tool. The reality is it could be hurting your business as a primary form of indicator. ROAS can't tell you how much money you are making for every order received. As an example, a ROAS of 6x is more efficient than a ROAS of 5x, but that doesn't mean you made more money (or any money). A ROAS of 6x on $10 did not make you more money than a ROAS of 5x on $10,000,000. The volume grew top-line demand, but it did not increase profits. In contrast to ROAS, Contribution Per Order (CPO) brings in the magnitude of the campaign segment targeted (marketing cost and cost of goods). This metric will help with your payroll and to keep the lights on – in other words -- adding top-line demand and bottom-line profits.