Putting the Caboose First

If you haven’t thought about your campaign’s back-end lately, this may be a good time to give it a good, hard look to figure out if it’s operating up to snuff.

Defined as any product transaction that takes place after your infomercial or short-form commercial does its job, back-end sales go a long way in boosting a campaign’s profitability.

In fact, the Electronic Retailing Association reports that anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of all DRTV product sales are generated by a campaign’s back-end.

That’s a big chunk of change, and one that deserves your attention if you’re planning on making money through infomercial and short-form commercial advertising.

Still not convinced? Consider these points:

• Over one-third of DRTV viewers purchased via catalog, at retail or online after seeing a product advertised on direct response television.
• Your campaign’s back-end has the built-in support of television advertising with nationwide reach and frequency, and it pays for part or all of itself.
• DRTV creates high name recognition and a clear brand image at a low net cost, thus increasing the chances that consumers will become familiar with the brand and purchase it via channels other than DRTV.
• The detailed demonstrations shown on DRTV help to enhance and dramatize your product’s benefits, and work hard to establish clear consumer preference.

Whether you use telemarketing up-sells, outbound telemarketing sales calls, the web, direct mail, catalogs, club and continuity programs, or a combination of all of these methods, the goal is to stretch those media dollars to the point where consumers are doing more than just buying a single product from TV.

Building a robust back-end for a DRTV campaign sounds simple enough in theory, but in reality the task abounds with challenges. To increase the odds of a long-form infomercial’s success, back-end services must be best of class. They need to be able to hit a wide variety of consumers, and go beyond just picking up the phone to take orders.

Let’s look at telemarketing scripts as one back-end component that’s overlooked in many DRTV campaigns. These scripts can make the difference between success and failure on the back-end. In fact, we’ve seen marketers increase their sales by 30 percent by making adjustments to telemarketing scripts that weren’t delivering.

When trained, knowledgeable phone operators were added to the mix, sales went up another 20 percent. That’s a 50 percent increase in campaign sales thanks to a few script tweaks and some extra hours of telemarketing training.

Fulfillment is another often ignored front on the typical DRTV campaign. One of those unglamorous support functions of direct marketing, it may mistakenly get put off until the last possible minute. But unless your orders are packaged, handled, and shipped in a timely and professional manner, your entire infomercial effort – both in time and money – will be a colossal waste.

From lead generation to back-end selling and follow-up, selecting a professional fulfillment house can be one of the most important investments you make in your entire program. Several full-service companies specialize in meeting the needs of infomercial marketers by providing everything from warehousing to custom packaging, reports and customer service.

One way to assure that your campaign’s back-end gets the attention it deserves is to look at it not like the last piece of the supply chain, but as the first contact that you’ll have with all new customers.

Whether they are talking to a phone operator, chatting with a representative online or tearing open a box that was just delivered via UPS, that customer contact is a direct reflection of your company. It represents your brand, and ultimately determines whether that customer will ever buy from you again.

If it doesn’t go well, your competitors will get the next call, and you’ll lose revenue that could have gone to cover media expenses and other costs. By paying attention to your campaign’s back-end, and tweaking and improving it as needed, you can make sure that doesn’t happen.