February 02, 2012

Sending Catalogs to Jasmine: A Bad Idea

And then there's Jasmine.


Brand marketers love Jasmine.  Advertisers love Jasmine.  They'll pay a premium to advertise on television shows frequented by 18-34 year olds.  She's the mobile/social/local guru that the pundits can't stop talking about.


If you're a catalog marketer, however, you want to steer clear of Jasmine.


You see, Jasmine (the Transformational cusotmer) thinks catalog marketing is something that her Grandparents participate in.  When you send her a catalog, this is what you're likely to see:


Jasmine isn't going to call Cuddledown of Maine to place an order.  And if she buys from Cuddledown of Maine, it isn't because she was mailed a catalog, it was because she has a need or because her friends told her to.  As she always says, "If I need to know something, the information will find me".


When you mail Jasmine a catalog, it looks like the catalog mailing is profitable.  But, it is not profitable.  In this example, only $0.69 of the $4.60 she spent online was "caused" by catalog mailings.  Again, the key word here is "caused".  Just because you mailed a catalog to Jasmine doesn't mean that it "caused" her to purchase.  You can easily verify this through mail/holdout testing to a segment of customers like Jasmine.


Jasmine warrants maybe one catalog a year, sometimes two catalogs a year.  We over-mail the living daylights out of people like Jasmine.  We'd be better served by investing the resources sending catalogs to Jasmine in business models and merchandise congruent with the way that Jasmine lives.


Want your own custom Judy / Jennifer / Jasmine segmentation plan and optimal contact strategy  developed?  Send me and email message, and let's get busy!!

1 comment:

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