The Direct Marketer's Core Strategy: The Marketing Allowable

ALLOWABLESCUSTOMER ACQUISITIONMARKETINGALLOWABLESDIRECTMARKETINGSTRATEGY
Written By Ted Grigg
DMCG Results

Use marketing allowables to develop your marketing budget rather than a percentage of sales.

This focuses your budget on your most profitable customers and less on what's left over. Drive your plans using a single evaluation process to create successful marketing programs.

For example, if your customer marketing acquisition is $200 for each new customer. And your business plan calls for 10,000 new customers to make plan. Your total budget for acquisition becomes a matter of simple arithmetic.

$200 per customer X 10,000 new customers = $2,000,000

Your promotion, staffing, fulfillment, product deliveries, returns, phone support and and other related marketing costs for customer acquisition fall within this $2,000,000 budget.

You will also want to develop a customer retention allowable to add to your budget.

Keep it as simple as possible by quantifying your financial goals. Then determine the customer mix you need to achieve those goals.

This simple concept makes a lot of sense to CMOs, CFOs and CEOs. The devil lies in the development and agreement on the allowable details.

The customer lifetime value drives the creation of a reliable allowable. Most companies save the needed information to calculate customer lifetime value.

1. Average sale for all customers

2. Average profit margin per average sale

3. Average number of annual sales

4. Number of years and months the average customer remains active

5. The above information yields the average lifetime value of a new customer

Once you have the lifetime value, then the CFO or someone on his team calculates the allowables. His team will include present cost versus future value to come with the final allowables.

So far, my discussion revolves around the vital role of the allowable in preparing the marketing budget. The allowable plays a critical role in evaluating channel mix, offers, and creative executions. It can ven help divide the budget by marketing strategy such as social media support for traditional campaigns.

Through testing, how does TV or direct mail alone perform without the support of outbound telemarketing? How is social media contributing to acquisition or retention? Are we spending beyond our allowables? What mix performs best based on the allowables.

We must work to find ways to quantify all marketing spends. The first step is to create a reliable evaluation KPI. I know the allowable remains the Key Performance Indicator for all marketing activity.

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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