tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32202893.post2683117582959718860..comments2023-10-18T08:32:17.510-07:00Comments on Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData: Catalogers and Co-OpsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32202893.post-72228491857746244782015-04-02T11:25:04.267-07:002015-04-02T11:25:04.267-07:00This response came in from an anonymous catalog ma...This response came in from an anonymous catalog marketing professional, and is reprinted as it arrived in my email inbox:<br /><br />What you have proposed is a nice Christmas wish list. I think many of us mailers have been asking for something along these lines for years. In particular, I'd personally love to see 3, 4, 7 and 12 implemented as a start. That should be relatively easy, but perhaps not all as easy as it sounds, I would think.<br /><br />As for solution 4, the problem lies in establishing the value of "my" specific transaction data that was contributed as it relates to determining whether or not a particular household record was selected by the co-op as being included in a particular campaign, not the mere fact that the consumer ever had bought from me in the past. A particular consumer may have bought from my company, a food mailer and a woodworking tool catalog, but the presence of one transaction in the household might not have played a part in qualifying or selecting that household in a third-party clothing mailer's model. Perhaps if you could limit the "counting" of times the transaction played more than say a 10% weighting of the model-based selection scoring during fulfillment, that might be useful, although terribly difficult to manage.<br /><br />As for solution 7, the problem is trying to define "pure play". While I definitely agree with the basic premise, I am not sure how you could adequately determine what percentage of contributed transactions are required to apply the moniker of a pure play. What would be the acceptable threshold? If they get 3% of their transactions from postal promotions, are they no longer a pure play? And what about a pure play that wants to move into a multi-0channel strategy, as many have started to do recently?<br /><br />Or are we as an industry slicing and dicing consumer activity wrongly? Perhaps, rather than pitting catalog vs web, we should consider our sandbox to be simply defined as remote retailing and be channel agnostic.<br /><br />I am old enough to remember the flap within the industry when 800-numbers were first introduced. How were these buyers who didn't have to pay for their calls different from those that used toll-free numbers? Were they less loyal, more fickle, or more opportunistic than people who paid their own inbound phone calls? Some companies even set up separate divisions to service those customers because they were not true catalog buyers. <br /><br />Sounds very similar to me when comparing the current state of affairs with internet buyers. It is an order channel and if your business is based on one marketing-cost strategy, that is your strategy. As consumers evolve, making distinctions between brick-and-mortar, multi-channel, DM only and web-only as your go-to-market methodology will become as quaint as the distinction between 800-number consumers and toll-call buyers. <br /><br />It would be interesting if anyone has ever had a model that showed households with a high affinity for purchasing from web-based companies was a negative predictor and that metric was used to suppress households from being selected from my DM campaign, steering the model away from pure-play internet households and keeping me from mailing them simply because they made a single catalog purchase three years ago. I would imagine that blade slices both ways, if it is allowed to.<br />MineThatDatahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14014200122021988374noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32202893.post-91190684937921444982015-04-02T03:06:52.390-07:002015-04-02T03:06:52.390-07:00Excellent commentary Kevin. I wish you had been at...Excellent commentary Kevin. I wish you had been at NEMOA. Maybe someday they will give you more than 10 minutes to present this. The co-ops do themselves a disservice by being so defensive and secretive. Thanks again. Bill LaPierrehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10368230909291356012noreply@blogger.com