John Wragg > Website Tools > Merchandising Tools - English

Merchandising Tools

Tools for beginners and intermediate - English

User Requirements

This page reflects research work for a consultancy client who needs an integrated system supporting:

1. Mainly physical products, some electronic information and marketing material.
2. Multiple marketing campaigns, on line and off line, with tracking for commission purposes and affiliate management.'
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
4. e-commerce Shopping cart, hopefully integrated with customer and commission tracking.
5. Post sales follow up via email marketing and otherwise.
6. The potential to automate most business processes.

Each of these is considered separately and then the issues around integrated systems, before making recommendations.

System Components

The best in class systems for each user requirement are given below. Then we will look at system integration,

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

This is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects.

It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes company wide - principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support.

As such it can suffer from complexity, poor usability, fragmentation and poor security.

It is necessary to consider a change programme involving processes, people and technology, with full top management committment and professional project management. There have been many failures to implement full CRM.

Heavyweight systems come from SAP and Oracle, way out of our class! But there are some cut-down versions that are more tightly targeted and may be more suitable.

Customer Contact Management

It is well known that a potential customer may need seven points of contact before placing an order. These could include adverts, phone and email contacts.

Contact Management Systems aim to capture all interactions with a particular customer, displaying these as a history.

Additional database fields can be tailored but the systems don't have the flexibility to track multiple mail shots, their response and commission payments.

• SAGE ACT! is a good accessible product in this category. It is now owned by and to some extent integrated with SAGE, a popular accounting application. Cost is from $180 per user. I used ACT! for years.

Affiliate Marketing

This is primarily associated with email marketing, but the better systems actually support a range of commissions, campaign tracking and affiliate management.

As recommended by Dr Wilson there are two main types of affiliate programs:

DIY Affiliate Program

You use software to keep track of banners, affiliates, payments due, etc. and you write the affiliate checks when due. This is the lowest cost approach, if you're willing to do the work.

• Post Affiliate Pro is written in PHP and can be installed on websites that have PHP and MySQL (most do). The software is written by a programmer in Slovakia, part of the EU. I believe the company to be honest and bend over backward to clients get the program working properly. Cost for a license is $50 to $300. Recommended (by Dr Wilson)!

Affiliate Networks

The affiliate network handles much of the work. You can advertise your company to their network of affiliates, they keep track of sales, and also write the affiliate checks. You generally pay the affiliate network a fee based on the commissions paid out each month. There's also usually a minimum monthly that you must meet.

• Commission Junction is a full-featured affiliate network that many small to larger businesses choose. They provide a large and active network of affiliates, and their monthly minimums are not too large if you'll actively marketing the affiliate part of your sales program.
• MyAffiliateProgram is a highly respected hosted application and affiliate network that provides excellent support, instruction, and a number of options for special needs.

e-commerce Shopping Cart

The process is:

1. Select shopping cart software needed to sell your products or services.
2. Select a compatible payment gateway (Authorize.net, etc.).
3. Select a merchant credit card account that comes bundled with the compatible payment gateway you need. (Bundling these saves you money.)

For a few products only you can use PayPal or, for Charities Donate.

• PayPal can be the simplest shopping cart, a payment gateway, and a merchant account that allows you to take credit cards. But it is harder to automate as fully as stand-alone shopping cart systems with their own payment gateways.
• 1ShoppingCart wraps into a single piece of software several powerful applications: a shopping cart with digital delivery, a listserver for newsletters, an autoresponder, an ad tracker, and an affiliate program. It's best if you have only a few downloadable products.
• Drupal e-commerce is an Open Source system running on the Drupal code base, which I use and recommend for websites. It would need to be evaluated along with other Shopping Carts. It seems to do complete content management, shopping cart and order processing. It can use PayPal for payments direct or with any credit card.

• Zen Cart - another comprehensive shopping cart, claims to put the merchants and shoppers requirements first.

The choice of other shopping carts depends on precise requirements, discounts, affiliate tracking, customer tracking, campaign support etc

See also Ecommerce Review

Email Marketing

It is important to automate email marketing processes once set up, to reduce the effort required and give a smoother response to prospects.

• Aweber automates the management of subscribers, autoresponders, email lists, opt in, templates, mail delivery... Cost is from $19 per month.

System Integration

The top stand alone systems are usually better in their field than more generalised systems.

1. CRM attempts to do everything but falls down as too complex.
2. Affiliate systems can be good but offer poor support for specific postsales follow up.
3. A good dedicated Shopping Cart will support the right features but may be weak on campaign or affiliate tracking, or email marketing support.

"Do it yourself" is a black hole requiring near infinite resources. Find a product meeting 80% of your needs and adapt the business processes to fit!

It is best to determine what the critical function is for your business, and then see how the other functions might fit.

Infusionsoft

• Personalized Email Marketing - Capture leads, create ultra-targeted opt-in emails and follow up with intelligent autoresponder campaigns
• Powerful CRM - Identify hot leads and sell more with CRM and sales automation tools that maximize sales efficiency.
• E-Commerce - Increase online sales with an integrated shopping cart. Easily manage subscriptions and billing. Grow with partner programs.
• Smart Automation - Nurture leads and get repeat sales using intelligent automation. Automate repetitive tasks to save time and money.

Recommendations

It is recommended:

1. That we allow for as much automation and integration as possible, to increase sales at reduced running cost and effort.
2. That we maybe start with a single function. Which would be most beneficial - CRM with commision tracking?
3. That we look further at Infusionsoft, based on the above survey and my own internal research. They support a high degree of automation and integration, and it just feels right. They seem to understand the business requirements.
4. That we also need to do "due diligence", in particular as to our specific Shopping Cart requirements and whether Infusionsoft can meet them.
5. That we plan a business change project with full sponsor support covering the processes, people and technology.

John Wragg June 2011