INMA_A01.QXD

1 Create automatic product relationships[i.e. Next Best Product]. A low-tech approach to

this is, for each product, to group together products, previously purchased together.

Then for each product rank product by number of times purchased together to find

relationships.

2 Cordon off and minimise the ‘real estate’ devoted to related products. An area of screen

should be reserved for ‘Next-best product prompts’ for up-selling and cross-selling.

However, if these can be made part of the current product they may be more effective.

3 Use familiar ‘trigger words’. That is, familiar from using other sites such as Amazon.

Such phrases include: ‘Related products’, ‘Your recommendations’, ‘Similar’,

‘Customers who bought ...’, ‘Top 3 related products’.

4 Editorialise about related products. That is, within copy about a product.

5 Allow quick purchase of related products.

6 Sell-related product during checkout. And also on post-transaction pages, i.e. after one

item has been added to basket or purchased.

Note that techniques do not necessarily require an expensive recommendations

engine except for very large sites.

An example of a site that has simple rules to show related products is UK dot-com

Firebox (www.firebox.com), shown in Figure 6.14.

An example of an e-retailer that uses many of the techniques described in this section

is Debenhams (see Case Study 6).

Loyalty schemes

Loyalty schemes are often used to encourage customer extension and retention. You will

be familiar with schemes run by retailers such as the Tesco Clubcard or Nectar schemes

CHAPTER 6· RELATIONSHIP MARKETING USING THE INTERNET

Figure 6.13Example of RF analysis

Source: Patron (2004)

40,000

35,000

30,000

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0

5

(^43)
2
1 5x
4x
3x
2x
1x
No. of cu
stomer
s
Recency
Frequency
Scoring
Recency:
Low
1 = > 24 months
2 = 19–24 months
3 = 13–18 months
4 = 7–12 months
5 = 0–6 months
High
Frequency:
Low
1 = One purchase
2 = Two purchases
3 = Three
4 = Four
5 = Five
High