Track Your Repeat Customers

If you aren’t tracking your repeat customers, then you’re losing money.

Your customers are not all the same – they are not clones developed in some lab. Depending on how they came to your site (Affiliate Program, Google, Banners, etc) they behave completely different. You see this already with conversion metrics – different campaigns have various click to sale %'s, so why would anyone assume that a customers’ behavior after they buy is going to be the same?

Sounds like common sense right? Yet I just had conversations with various marketers this week who don’t look at their CRM metrics. They just average all their repeat business into one amount and average it across their campaigns.

What was that? Oh, that was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor followed by my palm smacking my forehead.

Here is an example of what a new ValuLogix Client saw recently on two similar traffic sources...

Traffic Source 1
2435 clicks
56 sales
34 repeat sales
2 refunds
0 chargebacks
Profit = $2345


Traffic Source 2
2235 clicks
53 sales
4 repeat sales
6 refunds
2 chargebacks
Profit = $800

You can see pretty clearly that, although both sources of traffic convert about the same 2.3%, the profit margins were wildly off. Yet this marketer, up until they used ValuLogix, was paying out the same dollar amounts for both traffic sources. The high performing traffic source was subsidizing the poor performing traffic source. After seeing this report, they immediately shifted more of their marketing budget to Traffic Source 1.

Again, if you aren’t tracking your repeat customers, then you’re losing money.

So Stop Losing Money! Use ValuLogix. Track your repeat customers and spend your budget more wisely.

Higher Conversion doesn't always mean Higher Profits

That’s right – if your site is producing MORE sales, you might be LOSING money.

Wait – how is that possible?

Because every time you sell something to a customer, their actions AFTER they buy can seriously affect your bottom line. That’s why companies spend thousands (or hundreds of thousands) on CRM. Your relationship with your customers does not end when you first charge them for a product.

They can come back and buy again, refund, chargeback, complain, refer a friend, sign up for your newsletter, cancel your newsletter thinking it’s spam, commit fraud, sign up as a referring affiliate, send a testimonial, etc.

Every one of these actions can affect your bottom line. And every campaign you run (website, keyword, CRM, banner, etc.) affects how your customers behave once you acquire them.

For Example:

If you put this on your website as a headline: “Our Guarantee: If you aren’t satisfied we’ll refund your money and you can keep the product” your conversion might increase 50% – but you better start watching your refund rates and get a seriously good fraud monitoring system. You may find yourself upside down rather quickly.

So what’s my point? Oh yeah, the point is that we can help.

Track your customers’ actions after they buy with ValuLogix:

ValuLogix is the first ROI tracking tool of its kind that ties all your current systems (Tracking, Processing, CS, CRM, etc) into one easy to read dashboard giving you realtime profit figures as well as projected Lifetime Value of your customers. Everything is traced back to your original campaign (Affiliate, Keyword, Banner, etc.) so you get a complete and clear picture of what you’re actually making on every campaign in just a few seconds. It’s easy to set up and requires no changes to your current infrastructure or disclosure of customer information.

Sign up today and get your first 30 days free www.valulogix.com

Stop Paying Good Money For Bad Traffic

At this point you probably have several different methods of getting traffic to your site: SEO, SEM, Email, Affiliates, Social, etc…

And you have probably run some basic numbers to see that you are (hopefully) profiting from your Total Ad Spends.  But now is NOT the time to pop that champagne and start picking out a sailboat for retirement.  Even seasoned marketers know that they can quickly find themselves in a (sail)boat load of trouble by not watching their marketing like a hawk.

Literally thousands of variables can affect your campaigns – and most of it you can’t control.  Changes to legislation, ISPs, keyword rules and regs, fraud, blocked ads, competition…the list goes on and on.  Every minute of every day these variables are affecting your marketing and you have zero chance of preparing for all of them.  The only thing you can do is watch your marketing constantly to make sure every keyword, affiliate, email campaign, etc has a positive ROI.  And I’m not just talking about sales here, I’m talking about PROFITS.  Don’t think for a second that increasing sales equates to increasing profits.  Today’s $1000 profit on your affiliate network could easily turn into tomorrow’s $1000 LOSS.

I know, I know…who the heck has the time to sit at their desk all day just running reports, taking figures from 5 different tracking systems, putting them in a spreadsheet (zzzzzzz) and crunching numbers to see where you’re actually making money?  I know I don’t.

So what do you do?  Sign up for a Free Trial to ValuLogix Of Course!  The ONLY system that combines all your current tracking systems into one easy to read profitability dashboard.  Not only can you find out EXACTLY what you’re making on ALL your traffic, including ALL revenue and ALL costs, down to a granular level, but it also predicts what you’ll make from your current customers over their lifetime.  You can see with a few clicks of a mouse which ad spends are making you money and which ones to cut off.

Stop Paying Good Money For Bad Traffic and you’ll find yourself sipping Champagne on that sailboat sooner than you thought!      www.ValuLogix.com
 

Stop Affiliate Fraud with ValuLogix

Fraud. Anyone who markets their products online has come across it at some point.  It causes havoc to your bottom line or worse, to your merchant account.  As marketers, the more fraud-fighting tools we have in our arsenal the better.  So let me tell you about ours: ValuLogix.

There are two types of fraud: Customer Fraud and Affiliate Fraud.  Most of us tend to concentrate on Customer Fraud and don’t pay enough attention to the Affiliate Fraud.  With ValuLogix, monitoring affiliate traffic for fraud is easy and effective!

Affiliate Fraud is when someone running traffic to your site sends fake clicks, fake leads, or buys your product with stolen information.  Their goal is to slip in unnoticed to your affiliate program, fly under the radar, and pick up enough payout before they are noticed.  And they’ve become extremely good at it in recent years, utilizing multiple company names, websites, identities, signup info, etc.  I once saw a “Work At Home” program where people could sign up for affiliate programs, buy the product, get the commission, then chargeback the payment and keep the item.

There are lots of tools out there to stop fraud, and I recommend using as many as you can to help stop the tidal wave from crashing.  ValuLogix is one of those tools you need in your arsenal.

ValuLogix tracks your customers’ actions (repeat sales, chargebacks, refunds, etc.) back to the affiliate who sent you the traffic.  Within a very short timeframe, you will be able to see that these customers don’t behave the same way your other customers do.  Typically they never buy again, refund and chargeback at a high rate, or just cost you money overall.  You may be watching this already using reports from your processing, spreadsheets, etc.  But if you do not have access to these numbers right away , you’re losing money daily.

ValuLogix is a real-time reporting platform that quickly points a finger to questionable traffic.  Don’t let fraudsters get the most of you this holiday season – give us a call today and we’ll give you 30 days free!  www.ValuLogix.com

Not All Customers Are Created Equal

Two men walk into a bar...

The first one orders a beer and pays $4. The second orders a beer and pays $4. The bar is happy – they just put a sign outside that morning: “Happy Hour Special - $4 Beers”. The sign worked! We’re going to be rich.

4 hours later the first man leaves a nice fat tip and leaves. The bar made $50. The second man doesn’t tip, goes to the bathroom, and pukes all over the place. The bar has to hire professional cleaners to come in and scrub down the whole thing. The bar loses $200.

Okay…so what is the punchline? Oh yes – the punchline is that all too often marketers pay so much attention to how many customers they acquire, that they fail to pay attention to what the customers are really worth. The customer's relationship with you is not over when they submit their payment info.

• Did they refund?
• Did they chargeback?
• Did they buy again?
• Did they eat up 30 minutes of your customer service floor with inane banter about their cat?

In order to REALLY know what your traffic is worth, you need to track this all back to your original campaign. See which marketing dollars produce the most profits, not just the most customers.

We can help. ValuLogix, our brand new tracking platform, will tie all your current systems together into one easy to read dashboard report. REALTIME stats about what you are profiting on every campaign. PLUS a predictive model that tells you what those customers will earn over the course of their lifetime with you based on historical data.

Try it now for 30 days Free: http://www.ValuLogix.com

Where A/B and Multivariate Testing Falls Short – Conversion

There has been a debate about A/B vs. Multivariate testing going on for years, and I definitely favor the latter. BUT…here is the problem: None of these debates focus in on an important aspect of True Market Testing. In a nutshell: What do your customers do AFTER you acquire them? Conversion has been touted as the “Holy Grail” of marketing – but really it’s only one aspect of a successful marketing campaign.

All of us know that you need to use these testing methods by rotating different websites, creative, marketing messages, price points, etc. to optimize your marketing campaigns. And I completely agree 100% that this is essential to any online business. However, where I disagree with most marketers out there is that you can’t stop at conversion. If you’re only optimizing to convert more sales, instead of optimizing to convert more profitable sales, then you’re not really optimizing your marketing dollars effectively.

That’s why we here at ShiftLogix have created the ValuLogix Tracking Platform. With ValuLogix, you are now able to track your customers actions AFTER you acquire them and trace it back to your original campaign, whether it’s email, keywords, banners, social, etc. You get a fast accurate picture of your profits per campaign in seconds. Immediate results on profitability, not just conversion.

Try it for free: http://www.valulogix.com

Your Customers and your Teeth – CRM Data Mining

Everyone knows that your customers are like your teeth – ignore them and they’ll go away. Those’s why thousands of businesses know that CRM is a crucial aspect of their marketing and spend big bucks on keeping their customers happy – simply following up with them to increase repeat sales, as well as reduce returns, can pay huge dividends if done right.

So this is pretty common knowledge right? If that’s the case, they why do so many marketers fail to tie their CRM back to their original campaigns? We don’t treat all our campaigns equally – the conversion on various ads and keywords can change conversion dramatically. All ads are not created equal, so let’s not assume that all your customers are either.

Depending on where you acquired your customers, your CRM can have wildly different outcomes. For example, if you acquired a customer through email, the best way to inform them about a new product would be a newsletter. If you acquired a customer through your call center, you may want to give them a ring about your upcoming clearance sale. Now this may be an oversimplified example, but I hope it also makes common sense.

Bottom line: Don’t throw all your customers into one CRM bucket and just hope for the best. Doing some simple CRM Data Mining can pay off big time.
And (surprise) we have the perfect solution to do just that.

We here at ShiftLogix developed the ValuLogix Tracking Platform to do just that. It tracks all your customers’ actions AFTER you acquire them back to your original campaign – email, keywords, banners, social media, etc. Optimizing your CRM will be a snap - Try it for Free: http://www.valulogix.com