Objectives

	Identify directions and opportunities for practical and easy to implement changes to increase short term sales and profitability and/or to reduce costs.
	Recommend longer term opportunities and improvements which may require additional effort to implement or further investigation and evaluation.

Identify new strategies for business growth.

Benefits

The business review process helps the client focus on the overall structure and characteristics of their direct marketing business operating environment. The analysis can be focused on any or all of the following topics:

	Corporate Strategic planning. Benchmarking. Management reports and controls Organizational structure. Nature of market growth and penetration relative to mail order competitors. Use of multi-channel marketing opportunities
	Marketing Effectiveness of customer contact strategies. Segmentation methods used to target contacts to customers, inquiries and prospects.  Size and potential universe of available names for customer acquisition. Marketing and program reporting. Market research.
	Creative Media, offer, and format testing to prospects and customers. Creative and technical critique of promotions. Creative and production execution.
	Financial Cost structure and benchmarking relative to industry norms. Breakeven sales levels required. Degree of customer loyalty as reflected in repurchase rates and lifetime value of new customers. Current customer acquisition costs and trends.
	Database Adequacy of existing management and marketing information systems. Nature and extent of information stored in the customer database and its application in  marketing and overall business management. List maintenance standards and procedures including merge/purge and updating routines applied.
	Merchandising Catalog item profitability. Merchandise performance reports.
	Operations Order processing and customer service standards and costs. Benchmarking of customer service activity levels and practices.

Approach

A review is typically conducted in three phases:

1. A request for and review of selected internal reports and working papers. Data gathering focuses on the Marketing, Database, Merchandising, and Operations sections outlined above. A checklist of information to be assembled by the client is provided to facilitate this phase.
   
2. A client visit to:
   
   - Address unresolved issues/questions raised by our examination of internal documents.
   - Conduct interviews with selected members of the client management team.
   - Develop a deeper, first-hand understanding of the client's business.
   
3. Compile findings and prepare a presentation or report with appropriate evaluation and recommendations. Recommendations will generally identify both immediate opportunities for business improvement and issues for further analysis or long term investment.

Main Menu