Abacus, a division of DoubleClick Inc., yesterday began offering ChannelView, its new multichannel measurement tool for marketers.
ChannelView is a Web-based tool that allows marketers to have daily updated access to the response generated by a direct marketing campaign from multiple channels.
“What we've been seeing especially over the last year and a half is that all marketers, but especially direct marketers, are becoming more and more multichannel,” said Paul Imbierowicz, general manager of ChannelView at Abacus, a division of DoubleClick Inc., New York.
However, many marketers are still basing circulation decisions on direct sales only, as opposed to including Web and retail sales generated by direct mail campaigns.
In fact, 95 percent of marketers now say they are multichannel but only 25 percent say they can measure the response from all channels, according to the Direct Marketing Association's 2001 Interactive Industry Report.
“Some catalogers cut circulation because they can't accurately align the revenue coming over their Web site or through their retail stores with the mailing list that drove those dollars,” Imbierowicz said.
Through order information provided by the client, Abacus' ChannelView allows marketers to look at response data in four different reports. The Quick View report is a basic view of orders coming in through all channels for a particular campaign or mail date. The Segment Analysis report shows a detailed analysis of orders in all channels. Summary View is a summary of the results of a mail campaign and Delivery Audit shows orders broken down by the SCF codes.
Since the client provides the data used to create the ChannelView reports, they are only as detailed as the data collected. The information is updated daily from each client's fulfillment system. Therefore, if a marketer does not collect any information on the customers who walk into their retail stores ChannelView will not be effective in that channel, said Imbierowicz.
Abacus enlisted J. Crew, Restoration Hardware, Bass Pro Shops, Paul Fredrick MenStyle, Vermont Country Store and Flax Art & Design to test ChannelView.
The product is available to members of the 88 million household Abacus Alliance database as well as to nonmembers.
