Nice article in a recent issue of Direct Magazine about online direct marketers anticipating the holidays.
They hope to pull in 20% of their 2006 revenue during the holidays, according to a survey conducted by Forrester Research and Shop.org for WebTrends.
And it isn’t a small amount: The e-commerce total for the year is expected to top $200 billion.
Not that they’re doing much to ensure a green Christmas.
The article then goes on to point out the percentage of web retailers who are reducing perks like free shipping, repeat-buyer discounts, and free gift with order…but the really amazing stat to me was the slim percentage doing measurement (36% using ‘activity’ or order metrics, 28% using click stats from referring media, and 10% plan to ‘focus on unique visits’ (does this mean they’re looking at the little green page view counter at the bottom of their home page?) or deferred sales conversions (what the heck is a deferred sales conversion?–“Houston, we had a conversion–but it we won’t see it in our stats package for another month or two”).
The remainder won’t do any ‘demand measurement’. Ouch. Keep dreaming.
