Dear Dr. pROfIt
By Kevin Hillstrom
About Kevin
Kevin Hilstrom is president of MineThatData, a consultancy that helps CEOs understand the complex relationship between advertising, customers, products, brands and channels. His clients include billion dollar retailers, international direct marketers, publishers, catalog brands and online pure-plays.
Prior to founding MineThatData, Kevin spent nearly 20 years in multichannel retailing at some of the most well-known brands in the U.S., including Nordstrom, where he was the vice president of database marketing, Eddie Bauer and Lands’ End. Kevin is also author of numerous books, including his most recent, “Online Marketing Simulations,” available at Amazon.com.
Return on Inventory
Strategies For Training Your Inventory Staff
Jan 18, 2011Inventory is the single largest expense for direct retailers. It has a dramatic impact on all key financial metrics —...
Return on Intelligence
How to Mess Up a Perfectly Good Customer Experience
Jan 11, 2011As a marketer, you should be overly concerned about how your customers experience your brand, products and customer service. I...
Merchandising Musings
How Exclusive Merchandise Wins Sales
Jan 17, 2011Investing in customer-centric proprietary product development fends off consumer ennui and extends the brand experience in all the right ways....
Creating Positive Customer Experiences
The Season to be Jolly
Dec 23, 2010I was away last week teaching positive communication. Twice while walking through the lobby of the hotel, people stopped me...
Retail Rants & Raves
Happy Thanksgiving ... Now Get to Work
Nov 23, 2010While Black Friday has long been viewed as the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season, getting the frenzy started...
Increase Profits Via Email With Database Marketing Best Practices
|
Page Not Found
The page that you requested could not be found.
Please contact
webmaster@napco.com, indicating what page you were trying to access.
- Segmentation: Divide your email marketing list into three segments:
1. those who purchase because of an email campaign;
2. those who click through an email campaign but don't purchase; and
3. everybody else.
You'll immediately notice that the purchasers spend a lot of money, maybe 25 cents to $1 per email marketing campaign. Those who click through but haven't historically purchased spend maybe 5 cents to 15 cents per email campaign. And everybody else spends 3 cents per email campaign. Store the RFM value of purchasers and the recency and frequency of clickthroughs in your database. Report email performance based on these attributes. - Merchandising: Many retailers segment customers based on the merchandise they've previously purchased, then send targeted campaigns based on merchandise preference. This may work well among those who click through campaigns and those who haven't historically interacted with email campaigns. Among those who purchase because of email marketing, productivity is so good that it may make sense to introduce these customers to merchandise they haven't previously shopped for.
- Past purchases: If you need to maximize the ROI of each campaign, target customers based on prior purchases. Test what happens if you send an email to a customer who said she wanted to receive “accessories” email campaigns, for example, but only purchases women's merchandise. Often, the prior purchase yields better results as a segmentation variable than the stated customer preference.
- Retail: Retailers know that email marketing drives similar sales to retail stores as it drives to e-commerce websites. If the goal is to drive e-commerce sales, deliver your email campaign early in the week. If the goal is to drive retail sales, deliver your email campaign late in the week.
- Testing: Always execute mail and holdout group tests. The results from mail/holdout group tests are usually different — sometimes dramatically different — than what's observed via typical email marketing campaign metrics. Measure the incremental lift of an email campaign.
- Transition: Email subscribers are often in a transitory state, evolving their advertising preferences from traditional marketing (i.e., catalogs) to modern marketing (i.e., search, social media, visiting your website without need for advertising, etc.). Pay very close attention to the purchase habits of your email subscribers, and strongly consider a different traditional marketing contact strategy for them. Many marketers are doing mail/holdout tests with email subscribers, testing the optimal number of catalog and email contacts to drive sales across channels.
Kevin Hillstrom is president of MineThatData, a database marketing consultancy. He can be reached at kevinh@minethatdata.com.
|
Page Not Found
The page that you requested could not be found.
Please contact
webmaster@napco.com, indicating what page you were trying to access.