By Tom Polanski

It’s clear to me that e-commerce businesses are short-changing themselves in a number of ways. First, they seldom factor in offline sales and lifetime value when making marketing decisions. Secondly, many think in terms of net margin (again they don’t factor in revenue from offline sales and lifetime value). In addition, many are still of the, “I spent a dollar, I want two dollars back now“, mentality. This psychology has left many with woefully underdeveloped CRM practices in place. Finally, most fail to understand that because the internet is a giant calculator, everything can be tracked. The ramifications of this are stupendous.  One example is that capital intensive testing can be amortized by positive discovery. Each conversion is an opportunity to spawn many more from the first purchase. 

There are exciting new online marketing models available for the purpose of expanding market share and driving revenue. In a down economy are you going to bury your head in the sand and hope that everything will pass over or are you going to invest in your site, your marketing and your brand?