Marketing Science

Email open rates continue to drop

analyticspierce — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:19:40 +0000

This is an interesting article on decreasing email performance, citing a study from the folks at Epsilon.

Results like these beg the repetition of the formula for email success:

- Relevancy : the content must be relevant to your subscriber
- Recency : send communications in a timely and predictable manner
- Reputation : This means your email reputation, guard it and nourish it like the goose that lays the golden eggs because that is what it is.

Focus on these three things and your results will always surpass those mentioned in the study.

Let me know what you think.

Pierce

The path to Insights from Reporting

analyticspierce — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 05:11:59 +0000

Here are some thoughts (maybe guidelines) I have been pondering. I am often struck by the vast of amounts of reports most organizations produce compared to the tiny amount of actionable results.

Could these ideas be the drunk strip on the road from reporting to insight?

Its about solving business problems and achieving your goals.
- Don’t focus on metrics. The solution does not lie in a measure but what you do with it.
Do you goals and problems change?
- If they do, your reporting has to also. Insights come from relevant data.
Keep it simple and meaningful.
- With the amount of information available today, it is easy to create complex and overwhelming results. If you do, your business users (and even you) will get lost and lose interest.
Insights drive solutions.
- Resist the temptation to troll data and justify your opinion. This is a losing proposition that will get you in the end. Let the results be your guide.
Insights come from understanding how patterns and trends interact.
- If the light comes on after one report, turn it back off. Dig. Question. Investigate.

I hope these ideas lend clarity to your situation or at least create some dialogue around what makes for meaningful discourse of information in your world.

If you have any thoughts, please feel free to share.

Thanks,

Pierce

Interesting article on the gulf between analytics and business

analyticspierce — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:24:44 +0000

Here’s a great article on the challenges we face bringing analytics and business together. http://tr.im/ibnj

Who are valuable airline customers?

analyticspierce — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:39:00 +0000

So it has been a few moons since my last post, busy taking care of my daughter, working and traveling. Among other places, we flew to Thailand to see some family there. Apart from being a long way away, Thailand is a wonderful and beautiful country. If you ever have an opportunity I highly recommend the trip, particularly the Thai Massage at the Healthland spa.

The shear force of logistics to get from your cozy couch in the US to a placid beach chair can be overwhelming. We did the trip with a 10 month old baby. Our itinerary saw us flying from Denver to LA to Bangkok and back again a couple of weeks later. The first flight was only a couple of hours, a short flight on Frontier (http://www.frontierairlines.com/). At LAX, we switched to Thai Airways (http://www.thaiairways.com/) for a 17 hour overnight non-stop. Since I have flown this previously, I can only tell you that it is long and there are not enough showers. This time we added a baby, a stroller, a car seat and double the amount of carry ons.

One of the most interesting things during this trip was the difference in service between the domestic flight on Frontier and the international leg on Thai Airways. For our flights between Denver and LA, we flew Frontier where families traveling with small children receive no preferential treatment such as advanced seating or toys. We crammed all of our stuff down the aisles and into the seats and bins along with everyone else. Compare this to Thai Airways where we were seated before everyone else, had our stroller and car seat checked through for us, got a bag of baby food, juice and toys, and were constantly being helped by flight attendants helping to keep our child entertained.

For us the Frontier flights were very difficult, tough to get the things we needed and hard to do anything without making it difficult for someone else. I felt like we were the people who needed to board first and you know that the airlines frequent fliers and passengers who paid for an upgrade got to board first. I am not joking when I tell you that they made families, senior citizens and handicapped passengers wait.

After we made it back home I thought about this some more, yes it was frustrating at the time but after some reflection it made sense. Frontier was focusing on providing great service to its most valuable customers. Lets face facts, families traveling with 3 people in 2 seats, who have 4 carry on bags, spent two weeks shopping online for the best deal and will maybe fly twice this year are not that valuable.

Consider the business traveler who flies once or twice a month and typically pays more for those business tickets. This is where Frontier makes their money. The primary business problem is more about keeping these valuable flyers from going to another airline than keeping their planes full. On the other hand, the daily non-stop from LA to Bangkok is significantly more expensive and their primary challenge is selling all the seats. For Thai Airways, the costs associated with providing great service are a small percentage of the ticket price and are a significant market differentiator against competition.

So despite the difficulty of flying domestically with a small child I understand and have some appreciation of their focus on their most valuable customers. However, I do suggest they seat people who need assistance ahead of the rest of the planes passengers.

Cheers,

Jason

Fantasy football and breastfeeding…

analyticspierce — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:49:00 +0000

Today is was watching my scores for fantasy football and noticed some very odd ads being shown on the live scoring page on CBSSports.com.

For most of the day there was a skyscraper ad with the tagline, “Babies were born to be breastfed” (ad is to the right of the scores). I have an 8-month old daughter and wholeheartedly agree with breastfeeding. Its just an odd placement for a breastfeeding ad and it was on the live scoring page all day.

In the afternoon, the ad changed to something different, an add for proper booster seat sizing. All quite informative and I certainly agree with the message. Child safety should be paramount. Maybe that was part of the thought behind having a public service ad running on a live scoring page of a fantasy football site on Sunday.

It might have been good luck for me, as you can see the score (99-69) I am winning and now up by a bit more. I hope they run ads for the benefits of frequent diaper changes for Monday Night Football. I’m bound to come out a winner.

Bed, Bath and Beyond… again and again

analyticspierce — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:02:00 +0000

I guess the Bed, Bath and Beyond marketing team does not read my blog. They have cranked up the coupon machine once again. Between the beginning of August and the middle of September, I have received four 20% off any single items coupons. The delivery times and expiration windows are listed below.

Delivery for July 30th – Aug 1st
Expires Aug 27th

Delivery for Aug 6th – 8th
Expires Aug 27th

Delivery for Aug 27th – 29th
Expires Oct 9th

Delivery for Sep 10th – 12th
Expires Oct 9th

It is interesting that for each of the two expiration dates, two coupons were delivered approximately one week apart. I am curious about the effectiveness of such a frequent and undifferentiated couponing strategy. All of the mail pieces are the same and they show up so often that we barely give them any consideration any more. To be honest, it has become a nuisance.

As a direct marketer I struggle to see how this fulfills on the Bed, Bath and Beyond brand. This experience has certainly not raised my awareness of Bed, Bath and Beyond as a quality retailer that I want a consumer / brand relationship with. They come off as a mass retailer with no style. Sort of a Target store that begs for your business and is just not cool.

Maybe they have some results that prove my theory is worthless. However, even in that scenario that are some easy tactics that could make this a more effective campaign.

I’ll try to find someone else to pick on next time.

Diaper dandies and CRM

analyticspierce — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 03:34:00 +0000

One of the most impressive examples of relationship management has come from two diaper brands; Huggies and Pampers. Our daughter has recently turned 7 months old and we received emails containing articles and information on subjects such as learning to crawl and baby-proofing your home; all information that is relevant to parents of an infant on the verge of self-created locomotion.

The Huggies campaign (http://www.huggiesbabynetwork.com/) began with a direct mail piece about a month before the birth day. Inside was a newborn diaper, a sampler of baby lotion, a sample of wipes and advice on what to do when you bring the newborn home. Of course, I was too busy to join at the first piece. At 3 months, we received another dm piece. No freebies this time but more focused and relevant content. Once I registered I began receiving the emails.

With Pampers (http://www.pampers.com/), the messaging is similar but there was no dm piece, only the email. Both brands delivered relevant and enriching that our family read over and discussed for weeks.

The emails were too long however, and placed all available articles in the email content instead of using the email to create interest and drawing us into the site. In both cases, highlights for the content were sent in the email and available once you clicked through.

Another problem was with the Huggies email. They assumed that I am a Mom. The last time I checked I am a Dad and want nothing to do with the mom job. I would think that in a marketplace that shows such little tolerance for mislabeling they would have done some research to make sure they got the parental role correct.

Everything considered, these are well concepted and executed CRM campaigns.

What the #$%! is analytics anyway?

analyticspierce — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 04:41:00 +0000

Many clients and agencies are not familiar with what analytics is or what it can mean for their business. So I thought a quick review might help bring the idea out for discussion.

Every business has data about how its prospects and customers interact with it. Analytics focuses on leveraging this data to understand who the prospects and customers are, what medium drove them to interact, and how these factors influence their experience and probability of conversion through a call center, retail or through the web.

The key is that regardless of what kind or size of business almost all the data exists, it just needs to be collected and put to use. It does take some expertise and commitment to make it actionable. However, the rewards can be significant.

The way most businesses consider analytics are questions of how many people opened an email or how many visitors did my website get this month or how many calls did we get. These are good questions and valuable in evaluating the specific components that are involved (email, web traffic, call volume). However, there are two points that need to be taken into consideration:

1. Almost all customers interact with your business through more than one contact channel
2. Almost all prospects convert through more than one contact and/or more than one exposure

The bottom line for your business is that you build your client base over time with multiple contacts and messages. If you only evaluate your success by an email, by site traffic, or by call volume alone you might be missing out on the information that brings real marketing effectiveness.

A solid analytics approach provides the flexibility to address unique audiences with customized messages that provide the best message at the best time. Consider the potential of identifying your most profitable audience segments and addressing them with customized offers, through multiple media and contact channels.

This also illustrates how analytics births your CRM efforts and why the two are so intertwined but I will save that for another day.

Bed Bath & Beyond and The Culture of Discounting

analyticspierce — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:29:00 +0000

I got a 20% off Bed Bath & Beyond coupon in the mail today. Again. Actually, I get one about every two weeks. The same coupon, over and over again. Coupons are not bad and I live near a Bed Bath & Beyond store so I have cashed in a few.

Why keep sending out the same unqualified residential direct mail piece? I think the opportunity would be to start the same way, send out a residential dm with a coupon offer to bring traffic into the store. At checkout, BBB scans the coupon and keeps it as part of the transaction record. Capture this information and leverage it to build a household profile or merge it with external data so you can start communicating specific Bed Bath and Beyond benefits tailored for my particular station in life.

So many retailers today are discounting their way to store traffic and sacrificing higher margin for a short-term boost. The problem this creates shows up in consumer expectations. We believe we need the discount to shop. Bed Bath and Beyond is creating this atmoshphere with the coupon campaign. Why would I go there and pay full-price? Wait a week and I’ll get at least 20% off.

Make the effort to understand who your prospects and customers are you create a relationship and a sustainable point of differentiation from the competition. Any company can discount their way to mediocrity.

By the way, if you would like some Bed Bath and Beyond coupons let me know. I’ve got plenty.

- P