In my Catalog Success byline I give an overview of how this is the time for email marketers to act like a sharp businessperson and consolidate their own standing in the process. I give practical tips on metrics, segmentation and talking the higher level biz talk.
One of email's assets - it is a cheap channel - can also be a trap that blocks email marketers from using real business metrics and employing savvy methodologies such as segmentation.
Now is the perfect time for email marketers to take their game up a few notches. In many companies, the email team is the only one hitting their numbers (or at least not taking as big of a hit as the rest of the channels). Email marketers can easily capitalize on their comparative success and increase the strategic importance of email in their companies. In some cases, where email has been off to the side, this will mean getting to sit at the adult, strategic table with the C-level team.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A Love Affair Gone Way Wrong
Email marketers apparently just love to lower their margins and leave money on the table.
The mania for discounts is driven to a large degree by the standard practice of blasting emails to every possible email address. When presented with a business downturn, the Pavlovian response is to blast out discounts. The more discounts the merrier - too bad, though, about the impact on the bottom-line.
In reality, customers are not the same. Some will buy from you without regular discounts, some will buy from you with minimal discounts and some will require on-going discounts.
The trick is how to figure out who requires what. For decades in the offline world, marketers used Recency, Frequency and Monetary value (RFM) segmentation to resolve this issue. RFM can be used only even more effectively because it can be automated.
One of our customers decreased the amount of discounts they give out by 40% within a few months and was able to delay offering Holiday discounts by 6 weeks. How? Simple, they used RFM to segment the customers and give discounts to sale shoppers but not to their most engaged customers who are more interested in being first in line for the latest trend.
How will this play out for you? Well, you won’t know until the next time you feel the urge to blast and you just say - "No! I'm going to be a smart business person instead."
The mania for discounts is driven to a large degree by the standard practice of blasting emails to every possible email address. When presented with a business downturn, the Pavlovian response is to blast out discounts. The more discounts the merrier - too bad, though, about the impact on the bottom-line.
In reality, customers are not the same. Some will buy from you without regular discounts, some will buy from you with minimal discounts and some will require on-going discounts.
The trick is how to figure out who requires what. For decades in the offline world, marketers used Recency, Frequency and Monetary value (RFM) segmentation to resolve this issue. RFM can be used only even more effectively because it can be automated.
One of our customers decreased the amount of discounts they give out by 40% within a few months and was able to delay offering Holiday discounts by 6 weeks. How? Simple, they used RFM to segment the customers and give discounts to sale shoppers but not to their most engaged customers who are more interested in being first in line for the latest trend.
How will this play out for you? Well, you won’t know until the next time you feel the urge to blast and you just say - "No! I'm going to be a smart business person instead."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
