DMA: Multichannel ads should be transparent

According to a recent study from the Direct Marketing Association, consumers want multichannel advertising campaigns to be transparent. This is a change for merchants, who in the past felt that Internet pricing and promoting should be different from brick-and-mortar models.

by Kristina Knight

Anna Chernis, DMA’s senior research manager said, “Consumers expect — in whatever channel they opt to use — to interact with one company with integrated systems that are transparent to that consumer. After all, the different channels feed off of each other — a consumer looking at a mail-order catalog, for example, may order online. So the marketer’s channels must all be consistent.”

Here are some other results from the study.

Merchant respondents said more than 40% of catalog orders were converted online and 33% said they believed those sales would not have been completed without the website option. Merchants also reported sales increases of up to 20%.

Many merchants are increasingly focusing their sales online. Roughly 45% said websites were the "primary focus", 33% said a paper catalog was the primary focus and 22% said retail stores were the primary focus.

For promotions, many merchants are sticking with the old stand-by of free shipping (42% plan to use this method) to increase sales.