Judy, Jennifer, Jasmine: Happy Birthday!

On January 1, Judy turned 60 years old.  Jennifer is now a 44 year old shopper.  Jasmine is 28, beginning her 29th lap around the sun.  Happy Birthday!!

Remember, there are fundamental truths about these personas, validated across numerous research projects.

1. Judy = MAIL MORE CATALOGS.  Yes ... MORE!  Catalogers should love this!  In almost all of my projects, catalogers are UNDER-MAILING Judy!  Yes, under-mailing.
2. Jennifer = MAIL FEWER CATALOGS.  Instead of 18 a year, maybe 3-9 a year.  Take all of the money you save here, and reinvest it in a new Tablet Commerce Solution, for instance (click here).  Allocate the money online.  Go where Jennifer is.
3. Jasmine = START A NEW BRAND.  Her needs are fundamentally different than the catalog solutions or e-commerce solutions offered by catalog-focused brands.  Stop mailing Jasmine, take your catalog dollars, and reinvest them by focusing on a new brand that meets her needs.

Please click here to get Judy / Jennifer / Jasmine project pricing ... this is a good time of the year to get busy on implementing new ideas that will impact the Fall and Christmas timeframe.

Keep in mind --- Judy is 60 now ... 5 years from retirement ... and Jennifer is just 6 years away from being 50 years old.  Her future trajectory will not be in the social/mobile/local realm, based on the data I'm looking at (though we'll see - your mileage will vary).

Still available for next to nothing on Amazon.com (click here!).

Wall St. Journal Article on Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine

When the Wall St. Journal writes about Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine (not using the names, obviously), folks pay attention.  Click here to read an article from November titled "Shopping's Great Age Divide".

If you're analyzing actual customers transactions from your customer database, you know this article hits on an important trend.  The channels you choose to use in your "marketing mix" attract Judy, Jennifer, or Jasmine ... seldom attracting all three.  Your creative strategy attracts Judy, Jennifer, or Jasmine ... seldom attracting all three.  Your merchandising strategy plays a role as well ... seldom attracting all three.

You get to pick your customers.  Once you pick your customers, the channels that work best are pre-defined for you.  

Jasmine and the Direct Marketing Success Pyramid

Let's continue our discussion today, with Jasmine as our subject.

Merchandise:  Remember, Jasmine knows nothing of the economy of 1993 - 2007 that shaped Jennifer and benefited Judy.  Jasmine doesn't have money.  And yet, Jasmine is going to exhibit wild swings.  She'll pay $800 for an iPad, but she won't pay $0.80 for an app.  This will lead Jasmine-based marketers to solutions that "scale" ... you either find 1 customer that generates $400 of gross margin, or you find 1,000 customers that generate $0.40 of gross margin.  Jasmine's economy is going to be one of extremes ... low prices and low margins, or a few high priced winners.  Success in her economy is nearly opposite of success in Judy's economy, where you simply asked a co-op for 5,000,000 names a year at $0.06 each.

Creative:  This function will be reinvented in a Jasmine-focused businesses.  Social won't be a "channel", it will be a feature built into every part of the Creative process.  I think it is highly unlikely that Judy/Jennifer focused marketers will be able to lead this process, I believe this will come from Jasmine-aged employees.

Finance:  Finance Executives will be required to have "faith".  The business model is essentially opposite of the predictable "Judy-catalog-focused" business model that Finance folks are used to.  Jasmine-based Finance may require making many bets, hoping that 1-2 of 10 bets hit big.  More uncertainty, more pressure, more risk ... at least in the next 5-10 years as the app-based economy shakes out.

Service:  Jasmine is going to expect everything to be perfect.  She's used to a thousand apps that work seamlessly with her iPad or iPhone, and cost virtually nothing, so she's not going to tolerate $14.95 for eight-day shipping and handling.  And if she grumbles about something on Instagram or Twitter or Pinterest, she expects a response, now.  If Jennifer represented the end of the call center as we knew it, Jasmine represents the reinvention of the modern customer service center.

Passion:  So many of you tell me that you don't understand Jennifer, so you essentially ignore her.  When it comes to Jasmine, you tell me that you understand her, but you don't want to relate to her.  I think we'll see the passion of Jasmine's generation overwhelm existing businesses.  Jasmine will pick and choose her own winning brands, and the passion of her generation will provide her with her own solutions.  Look to employees who are like Jasmine, and harness their energy.  Too often, I visit companies that don't value the passion of younger employees.  This will need to change, to be successful marketing to Jasmine.

Excellence:  Jasmine needs a mentor.  Jasmine-focused businesses know more about Jasmine-centric tactics than anybody else.  They'll need mentors to help guide them through growth and Management issues.  With mentors, Excellence is certainly achievable.

Vision:  I think Vision is easier for Jasmine-focused businesses than for Judy/Jennifer businesses.  The Jasmine-focused business just needs to survive the short-term .. the Judy/Jennifer business needs to survive the long-term.  Vision will be easy, Evolution will be hard.

Evolution:  Jennifer-focused businesses are largely web-based, Jasmine-focused businesses will be app-based.  Something will come after this, something that Jadyn will embrace (Jadyn is currently 12-18 years old).  The Jasmine-focused business will need to evolve as apps evolve, and will also need to potentially embrace whatever it is that Jadyn embraces.

Chemistry:  You read so much about how Jasmine operates in a team-focused, de-centralized environment.  Chemistry is going to be different among Jasmine-focused employees than it is for those who have always dealt with Judy as a customer ... Judy-focused businesses often employ a centralized, command-and-control style of Management.  If Jasmine-focused businesses hire Jasmine-aged employees, Chemistry will be different.

Time for your thoughts ... how do you see the ten building blocks impacting Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine?

Good Questions!

Here's an email I received recently:

• "Your work on Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine got me to thinking about a few things.  Specifically, what happens when Judy stops buying merchandise?  I've invested my entire life in the field of Direct Mail.  I believe I am an expert in this area.  But what do I do when Judy stops buying merchandise?  What do I do for a job then?"

And here is another email I recently received:

• "Do you think we can convince Jadyn (the 15 year old that will replace Jasmine in a decade) to love Direct Mail the way Judy loves Direct Mail?"

Ah!  Now we are getting somewhere.

Our industry doesn't want to ask hard questions.

We need to ask hard questions.

I can take us back to Nordstrom, when we decided to kill the catalog.  You want to talk about a mass exodus, well, there was a mass exodus.  With the catalog gone, the work that people loved to do was also gone.  You could make a choice ... you could recalibrate skills to deal with the business as it existed ... you could switch to a new department and start over ... you could leave the company and find a place where the work you loved doing still existed.

People pursued every one of those options.

We can easily answer the second question.  We're not going to train Jadyn to love Direct Mail.  And we're not going to train Jasmine to love Direct Mail.  In 13 years, Jasmine will be in her prime earning years.  Just think what the world will look like in 13 years?

Jennifer has already been trained to trust two parties ... Amazon and Google.

Judy loves Direct Mail.  She has another 5-10 years to spend money.

Given that information, how would you answer the first question?

Conversion Rates: Judy, Jennifer, Jasmine

You remember our lovely ladies:

The first lady is Judy.  She's around 59 years old, and her behaviors tend to be "old-school" ... she buys via catalogs, and while she embraces new technology, she primarily shops via habits derived in the 1980s and 1990s.

The second lady is Jennifer.  She's around 43 years old, and her behaviors are hard to "attribute".  She hunts online for the best products at the best prices, touching many marketing channels.

The third lady is Jasmine.  She's around 27 years old.  Her behaviors are not consistent with Judy and Jennifer.  Social and Mobile are part of her entire adult experience.

We can analyze online customer behavior via each persona.  Here's a query I recently ran ... segmenting customers as of June 30, 2012, measuring online visit behavior from July 1, 2012 to July 31, 2012.  Each persona represents weighted life-to-date transactions for twelve month buyers.

Judy:

• 38,498 customers.
• 18.9% Re-Visit Rate.
• 3.568 monthly visits per visitor.
• 0.674 purchases per visitor.
• 7.3% conversion rate.
• 0.049 purchases per customer.

Jennifer:

• 143,984 customers.
• 24.3% Re-Visit Rate.
• 4.387 monthly visits per visitor.
• 1.066 purchases per visitor.
• 5.9% conversion rate.
• 0.063 purchases per customer.

Jasmine:

• 88,430 customers.
• 28.8% Re-Visit Rate.
• 5.220 monthly visits per visitor.
• 1.503 purchases per visitor.
• 5.2% conversion rate.
• 0.078 purchases per customer.

Notice that Jasmine is far more "engaged" than Judy or Jennifer.  Judy is much less likely to visit the website, and if she visits, she only visited 3.6 times in July.  Jasmine, meanwhile, is 50% more likely to visit than Judy, and will visit every 5-6 days.  Judy is more "purpose driven" than Jasmine, converting at a much higher rate.  Jasmine, however, because of her high likelihood of visit regularity, buys much more often online.

This is something the conversion optimization gurus sometimes miss ... we want Jasmine's behavior, but we optimize for Judy's behavior.  This is exactly opposite of what we should do.  We want more visits at a lower conversion rate, if the net result is a significant increase in total purchases, as it is in this example with Jasmine.

Email Marketing: Jasmine

Email marketing plays a whole different role when we're looking to "engage" Jasmine.


Remember, Jasmine's persona is somewhere around twenty-seven years old.  This means that Jasmine has been raised in the age of "The Great Recession".  Jasmine doesn't have the money that prior generations enjoyed at her age.


Email marketing needs to reflect this in three important ways.

1. Great quality product at low prices.  Jasmine is not going to pay $399 for a handbag, so don't bother trying to get her to "aspire" to purchase something she can't afford.  Focus the merchandise assortment around what Jasmine can buy, not what you want her to buy.
2. Curation.  Put an assortment together for Jasmine, have a point of view!  Jasmine uses external sources like blogs to understand what might work for her ... that means that we as marketers are doing a poor job of curating for her.
3. Sharable.  Jasmine trusts her friends.  Make all content easily sharable, and let Jasmine help do the marketing for you.  This is very different than Judy and Jennifer, they aren't going to do the marketing for you!

Segment who Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine are.  Then speak to each persona the way each persona wants to be spoken to.  Go well beyond my research, actually test what works with each persona and then apply your learnings in the marketplace.

Contact me for your own, customized Judy / Jennifer / Jasmine segmentation framework.

Catalog Browsing on a Tablet: Article from WSJ Reporter Katherine Boehret

Well known Wall St. Journal reporter Katherine Boehret discusses three catalog apps for tablet devices in this article (please click here for the article from AllThingsD).


Maybe more important than the review of catalog apps is the tone of the discourse in the first paragraph.

• "Unsolicited catalogs take up a frustratingly large amount of space in my snail mail, and I can't remember the last time I ordered from one".

Ms. Boehret is most likely Jasmine.


We talked at NEMOA (email me for slides) that there are three customer personas, each relate to catalogs in a different way.

• Judy (59 years old) "is" catalog marketing, her behavior is not likely to change, and our behavior in marketing to her doesn't have to change, either.
• Jennifer (43 years old) is in search of a deal, if a catalog helps facilitate that search, fine, otherwise, 45% of the demand attributed to catalogs is incorrectly attributed, causing us to dramatically over-circulate to Jennifer.  There's a ton of profit to be had, here, folks (contact me for your customized project).
• Jasmine (27 years old) is not likely to be a catalog shopper ... that being said, there is no reason she can't be a loyal fan of your brand ... just don't expect her to shop via physical catalogs.

Now, I keep getting feedback ... folks who find instances where a person in her 20s purchases via the telephone after receiving a catalog.  I don't for a minute doubt this happens.  But it is a 10 in 100 event, not a 90 in 100 event like it is with Judy.  


We need to start thinking about the future, thinking about the different ways we will have a future relationship with Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine.

What Happens When We Stop Mailing Jasmine?

You probably have five year forecasts for your business, down to an Earnings Before Taxes level, right?


And you are able to run scenarios that allow you to see what happens if you change your business strategy, right?


If not, give me a holler, and I'll set something up for you ... click here please!


Let's run through an example.  Here's where our current business is headed.

Clearly, this business is stuck, highly profitable no less, but stuck.


Assume you have test results, and you know that Jasmine generates 70% of her demand without the aid of catalog marketing.  What would happen if you stopped mailing Jasmine altogether?

Well, this is interesting, isn't it?  The simulation (contact me for your own, customized simulation tool) actually suggests that, in the short term, profit increases ... but over time, there is housefile weakness associated with not having as many customers like Jasmine, resulting in an overall sales decline and slightly less profit in the fourth and fifth year.  Overall, the best decision, from a profit standpoint, is to not mail Jasmine.


Of course, some will say that this strategy is extreme.  Let's try a compromise, then.  Let's mail this customer 30% of the annual diet of catalogs.  Here's the outcome of the simulation:

Oh my!


After the first year, you lose, on average, 10% of top-line demand.


You are, however, more profitable every single year, to the tune of 13% more profitable over a five year time frame.


Go take the ad cost you save, and reinvest it somewhere, reinvest it in a way that grows the business.  Heck, you're better off finding another Judy from a co-op at a loss than mailing Jasmine a relentless stream of media she's not interested in.


In this simulation, we learn that we should mail Jasmine 30% of the annual diet of catalogs she's currently getting.  This advertising plan results in optimal profit for the company.


You probably have somebody in your company already running five year sales forecasts, simulating different outcomes.  Plug this level of business intelligence into your forecasting strategy, and see what happens!

Fixing The Jasmine Problem: A Five Year View

Every catalog business has a "Jasmine Problem".


You know this is true, you just don't know how to deal with it.  You have customers who order online, who you can't attribute to any form of traditional advertising.  You throw 2-3 catalogs in the outgoing package, you throw them a hotline catalog or two, and then you pummel her with 18 catalogs in the next year.  At the end of the year, your segmentation scheme suggests that "online customers aren't profitable", assuming your segmentation strategy accounts for channel preference.


For so many catalogers, this is the end of the road.  The online customer isn't profitable, so we stop trying to grow the e-commerce side of the business.


Here's the thing, folks.  There's no law on the books, as best I can tell, that says you ever have to mail a customer a single catalog.


I've analyzed a lot of tests in my life.  In a typical catalog mailing, it's not surprising to observe the following:

• If you don't mail Judy, 20% of the demand remains, with 80% disappearing.
• If you don't mail Jennifer, 45% of the demand remains, with 55% disappearing.
• If you don't mail Jasmine, 70% of the demand remains, with 30% disappearing.

And in the case of Jasmine, the amount of demand generated is frequently small, as her interests and loyalty are different than observed with Judy or Jennifer.

So, why do we even bother to mail Jasmine anything?

Next week, we'll explore what happens to a business, long-term, that changes strategy with folks like Jasmine.

Compare and Contrast

Think about marketing channels, think about our three customers, and things become much more clear, don't they?


Catalog Marketing:

• Judy = 30+ years of practice shopping via catalogs.  This is her domain.
• Jennifer = Inspiration, but she's going to combine inspiration with the internet in order to get exactly what she wants at a price she's willing to pay.
• Jasmine = Wait, I own a mailbox?

Facebook:

• Judy = On Facebook to see pictures of her grandchildren.
• Jennifer = Likes brands because she gets special discounts and promotions.
• Jasmine = Views Facebook as a utility, an extension of who she is, but would switch if something better came along.

Mobile Phones:

• Judy = Owns a tracfone, or a Blackberry device if professionally employed.
• Jennifer = Owns an iPhone or Android device, browser-centric.
• Jasmine = Owns an iPhone or Android device, app-centric.

Email Marketing:

• Judy = Prefers to not receive email marketing messages.
• Jennifer = Thrives on email marketing, loves discounts/promotions, an avid subscriber.
• Jasmine = Finds email marketing to be "old school".

Affiliate Marketing:

• Judy = Has no idea what they are.
• Jennifer = Loves getting coupons for free shipping.
• Jasmine = Indifferent.

Free Shipping:

• Judy = Used to paying for shipping, appreciates free shipping but doesn't expect it.
• Jennifer = Won't buy unless she's offered free shipping.
• Jasmine = Post-free-shipping, values a $399 handbag for $99 and demands free shipping.

Loyalty:

• Judy = Loves a subset of brands that she has history with.
• Jennifer = Loyal to Google, Amazon, Apple, Verizon.
• Jasmine = Gamification leads to loyalty.

Now, every character crosses over into other categories in many ways, so these are not iron-clad rules by any stretch of the imagination.  That being said, my goal is to get you to imagine different customers.  A cataloger should not expect core customers to embrace an iPad app.  A cataloger should not expect mobile devices to replace e-commerce, or to even expect e-commerce to replace the catalog among customers like Judy.  A cataloger should not expect to generate five million dollars of net sales on Twitter when Judy isn't ever going to get her own Twitter account.

Too often, we fail to account for what I call "audience disconnect".  Data I analyze strongly suggests that different audiences use channels differently.  We have a responsibility to link audiences to the channels we manage.

Retail Alignment

For those who have a retail channel, you don't have much data to tell you if Judy, Jennifer, or Jasmine are shopping retail stores.


You do, however, have data that tells you which direct-channel customers are shopping your stores.


So, segment your direct-channel customer base ... I like to look at 12-month buyers, but include all purchase history, weighted by recency of course.  Once I have everybody coded (Judy, Jennifer, Jasmine), I split this audience by direct-channel only and retail+direct-channel.


Here's an example:


Direct-Only Channel Buyers

• Judy = 28%.
• Jennifer = 22%.
• Jasmine = 50%.

Direct Channel Buyers with 1+ Retail Purchase, Last 12 Months

• Judy = 24%.
• Jennifer = 24%.
• Jasmine = 52%.

This is a very common outcome when a retail brand elects to "integrate" the direct channel with the rest of the business.  It's common to have more "Judy" style customers in the direct-only side of the business, these are often rural shoppers without access to retail.

When channels are not in alignment, you'll see differences that are more substantial:

Direct-Only Channel Buyers

• Judy = 44%.
• Jennifer = 31%.
• Jasmine = 25%.

Direct Channel Buyers with 1+ Retail Purchase, Last 12 Months

• Judy = 25%.
• Jennifer = 35%.
• Jasmine = 40%.

In this situation, Management can elect to better "integrate" channels.  Or, Management can realize that different customers are shopping for different reasons, and capitalize on this opportunity.

If you are trying hard to align channels, then your efforts will bear fruit when the composition of Judy, Jennifer and Jasmine are similar for direct-only and direct+retail customers.

Observations About Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine

Ok, you've been hearing about Judy, Jennifer and Jasmine for close to a month.  You're going to hear about them more in the future.  My web analytics data on each persona reveals your perceptions about each individual.


In order, you prefer Jasmine first, then Judy, and Jennifer last.  If I put Jennifer in the subject line, you tune out.  This is so reflective of what we read in the trade journals and on Twitter, isn't it?  We're either told that we have to be "multichannel" ... which is ultimately a way of saying "we need to communicate with Judy", or we have mobile/social/local shoved down our throats like a garden hose hemorrhaging water.


The folks who have a passion for Jennifer have a passion for tactics, and for good reason.  Marketers speaking to Jennifer use tools like Google Analytics ... and as we all know, this tool doesn't allow us to do true customer-level research, so we never know the customer, we only know sporadic, channel-based facts about Jennifer.  Facts like the search terms she uses, the affiliates she snaps up a coupon code from, facts like her love for email marketing that results in 1 in 400 people who receive an email campaign actually buying something that generates profit.  When it comes to Jennifer, we only know tactics, we don't know the lady.  It's the great weakness of the "Jennifer Generation" of marketers/analysts.


Many of you love Judy.  I think this is because many of you can relate to her.  This is also a weakness ... many of you help run companies that cater to Judy, you are in her cohort, so you understand what motivates her.  This deep, thorough understanding limits knowledge of Jennifer, and as a result, has some catalog brands on the verge of falling off of a cliff.  Go perform a demographic analysis of your customer base.  Is your average customer 59 years old, or 64 years old?  If your customer is that old, ask yourself what you're going to do in five years when this customer is now 64-69 years old, or in ten years when your customer is 69-74 years old?


I realize that you're hoping that you'll be retired by the time your customer falls off the commerce cliff into retirement, but somebody is going to have to deal with this.  Don't put this problem off for five years, why not start trying to relate to Jennifer today?  I know, you don't have a passion for Jennifer, for this iPad-toting 43 year old professional who desperately wants to purchase with 20% off and free shipping.  You don't have a choice, folks.  Get to know Jennifer, start relating to her before it is too late.  For many catalogers, we're about to cross over into the realm where it is too late.


Your love of Jasmine is more of a curiosity than anything else.  You click on all of the links, checking out the businesses I mention ... whereas you don't click on any of Jennifer's links.  Here's where things get interesting ... the feedback stops after the links are clicked.  In other words, you want to know what Jasmine is doing, you don't necessarily want to take advantage of what Jasmine is doing.  You want to know that she likes buying a handbag for $99 on MyHabit instead of paying $399 at Nordstrom ... but you don't care about creating a business model to compete with MyHabit.  This is important, folks.  I get feedback like "but how do I get Jasmine to buy from my catalog?" or "nobody buys from social commerce" or "we can't sell something below cost" or "this audience isn't big enough to matter."  We won't get Jasmine to buy from a catalog.  And yes, almost nobody buys from social commerce today, and social commerce as defined today won't be what it will be in five years so why invest today, and I realize you can't sell below cost but maybe other companies have figured out different business models that allow them to cobble together a profit (or not), and yes, the audience isn't big enough to matter today, but it will be big enough to matter in five or ten years ... at the same time when the catalog generation retires.


So all of this is interesting, folks.  Your clicks, what you choose to look at, what you decide to focus on, dictate what you get from this series.  Your clicks suggest that you like Judy, you enjoy reading about Jasmine the most, and suggest that many of you really don't understand or have a passion for Jennifer, fueled by a focus on the tools that you use to analyze Jennifer (i.e. Google Analytics).


We end this post with an opportunity for you to share your thoughts ... what do you think of Judy, Jennifer, or Jasmine?  What resonates with you, what doesn't make sense whatsoever?  Who do you like, who don't you like?  What am I right about, what am I off base about?

The Jasmine Experience

We marketers really mess up the "Jasmine Experience", don't we?


Remember, Jasmine is a whole different shopper than we're used to.  The economy caused her to have a laser-like focus on price.  She's going to buy a handbag, but she'll pay $99 on MyHabit instead of paying $399 on Nordstrom.com.  She's going to trust what a friend says over trusting marketing messages.


So emails, flash sales, deals, Facebook, and friends comprise her preferred experience.


Let's say she buys from Cuddledown of Maine, maybe because a friend told her that the sheets are amazing.  All we see, as marketers at Cuddledown of Maine, is that this customer purchased online.  So, what do we do?

1. We send her a hotline catalog, after all, this is a "best practice" in catalog marketing, right?
2. We make sure that she receives six or seven catalogs in her first six months as a customer.
3. We push eight promotional email campaigns at her, each month, offering 20% off.

We make the mistake of treating Jasmine like Judy, don't we?

Not surprisingly, those dollars are largely wasted, causing us to say that some of these online channels "don't work".

Maybe, just maybe, we should work hard to identify this customer as "Jasmine" after the first order.  We take online data from Omniture or Coremetrics or Webtrends and append it to her customer record.  Maybe we ask her for her Twitter ID when she purchases, and then we thank her for her purchase within a day of the order.  Maybe we give her content that she can put up on her Pinterest page.

I know, you'll say that those are "dumb" ideas.  Maybe they are.  But how much dumber are they than sending a half-dozen expensive catalogs to a customer that has no interest whatsoever in purchasing via catalogs ever again?

We need to segment customers, and start treating customers differently.

• Judy is the quintessential catalog buyer.
• Jennifer is a charter member of the online marketing generation.
• Jasmine is the social commerce shopper who will make the purchasing decisions that fuel the economy from 2020 - 2029.

Calculating Jasmine

There are two things that set Jasmine apart from Jennifer.

1. Jennifer is e-commerce old-school.  She'll buy on Amazon using Amazon Prime.  Jasmine says that "if it is important, it will find me".  Her social commerce purchases are influenced by her friends.
2. Jennifer is the "multichannel attribution" shopper, using search + email + affiliates and other channels to purchase.  Jasmine loves MyHabit, and isn't going to leverage Google's empire to buy, she'll leverage Facebook.  If you see Jasmine on your site, you're likely to see an e-commerce order that doesn't appear to be attributed to any marketing activities.

Remember our weighting strategy?

• Mail Orders = Weight of 0.00.
• Telephone Orders = Weight of 0.15.
• Online Orders Matched Back to a Catalog = Weight of 0.30.
• Search Orders Matched Back to a Catalog = Weight of 0.40.
• Email Orders Matched Back to a Catalog = Weight of 0.50.
• Pure Search Orders = Weight of 0.60.
• Pure Email Orders = Weight of 0.70.
• Online Advertising Orders, No Offline Interaction = Weight of 0.75.
• Pure Online Orders = Weight of 0.80.
• Mobile, Social, Flash Sales Orders = Weight of 1.00.

Well, here's what Jasmine looks like.  She placed an order 13-24 months ago, a pure email order for $100, and then she purchased yesterday via a link from Facebook, spending $100.

Net Weighted Value = ($100 * 0.50 * 0.70 + $100 * 1.00 * 1.00) / ($100 * 0.50 + $100 * 1.00) = 0.900.

Here's our segmentation strategy:

• Judy = Value of 0.000 to 0.333.
• Jennifer = Value of 0.334 to 0.667.
• Jasmine = Value of 0.668 to 1.000.

Clearly, this is Jasmine.


If you want to make this stuff even more actionable, you link your web analytics data to this solution ... referring URL becomes very important ... skew net weighted value based on visits from Jasmine-like sites.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about what we, as marketers, do to ruin the "Jasmine Experience".

How Do I Decide Who Is Judy, Jennifer, And Jasmine?

There are two key issues to consider, when deciding how to segment Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine.


Issue #1 = Weighting Dollars:  A telephone order in 2002 is virtually meaningless.  An online order in 2008 has some meaning.  A mobile order in 2012 means a lot.  I like to use the following weighting of historical orders/dollars (these weights are company-dependent ... more Judy-type customers usually causes the weights to be greater ... more Jasmine-type customers usually yields smaller weights).

• Orders 0-12 Months Ago = Weight of 1.00.
• Orders 13-24 Months Ago = Weight of 0.50.
• Orders 25-36 Months Ago = Weight of 0.25.
• Orders 37-48 Months Ago = Weight of 0.15.
• Orders 49-60 Months Ago = Weight of 0.10.
• Orders 61+ Months Ago = Weight of 0.05.

Issue #2 = Weighting Channels:  This one, of course, is important.  Each advertising channel gets a weight.  Now, we can debate the weights until the cows come home, and there isn't a right or wrong answer here, so pick up a broom and do some work.  Here's a starting point for some of you ... my weights are client specific, of course.

• Mail Orders = Weight of 0.00.
• Telephone Orders = Weight of 0.15.
• Online Orders Matched Back to a Catalog = Weight of 0.30.
• Search Orders Matched Back to a Catalog = Weight of 0.40.
• Email Orders Matched Back to a Catalog = Weight of 0.50.
• Pure Search Orders = Weight of 0.60.
• Pure Email Orders = Weight of 0.70.
• Online Advertising Orders, No Offline Interaction = Weight of 0.75.
• Pure Online Orders = Weight of 0.80.
• Mobile, Social, Flash Sales Orders = Weight of 1.00.
• Tablet Orders:  Right now, I don't evaluate these different than online orders, we need proof that these orders lead to different subsequent behavior, different than classic e-commerce.

Tomorrow, I'll show you a series of examples of how to calculate Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine.

Why Won't Jennifer Budge?

Many of you tell me that "social media doesn't work".

Or you tell me that you have an app that generates $225 sales a week, saying the strategy "doesn't scale".

The real issue, of course, isn't social media or apps or whatever the fancy, shiny new tool is.

The real issue is "whether Jennifer will budge or not"?

Remember, I like to think of our ecosystem as a mix of three customers.

• Judy, the 50-64 rural catalog shopping veteran.
• Jennifer, the 35-49 year old online maven who hunts for the best deals.
• Jasmine, the 18-34 year old social shopper who knows that information will "find her".

So, if you want fancy new channels to work, you really have two choices.

1. Recruit Jasmine, in large numbers.
2. Convince Jennifer to become Jasmine.

You're not going to move Judy into Jasmine territory ... at least not fast enough to matter.

Too often, we try to convince Jennifer to become Jasmine.

Too often, Jennifer doesn't want to become Jasmine, she wants to be Jennifer!

Once you code Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine in the database, measure (or, as they say on Twitter, #measure) the percentage of each audience that switches in the next twelve months.

Here's an example:

Look at Jennifer.  Jennifer doesn't want to become Jasmine, heck, she'd rather become Judy!

Look at Jasmine.  Jasmine doesn't even want to be Jasmine, she's more likely to become Jennifer next year.

Customers are willing to try new channels, but sometimes they have a gravity for "moving backwards" to existing channels.  This was very common in the 1995 - 2003 timeframe, when customers tried the online channel thanks to a whopping 30% off plus free shipping incentive, then back-tracked to old-school shopping for a period of time.

I see this trend, over and over and over again.  When you see this trend, it means you have a customer base that does not want to change, they don't want your brand to innovate.  Your customers want things as they always have been.

There are a lot of smart people out there who tell you that you must move into new channels ... or risk becoming obsolete.  It's good advice, until you actually measure customer behavior.  In this example, we demonstrated that customers do not want to change.  When your customer doesn't want to change, you have a whole different set of strategic options to consider.


You'll know what your strategic options are when you code Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine in your customer data warehouse and web analytics solution.  Get busy doing this!!

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!!

Oh Jasmine, You're Fickle: Gilt Groupe

By now, you've probably had the opportunity to read this article about layoffs at Gilt Groupe (click here for the article).


Gilt is the quintessential "Jasmine" brand (click here to see the demographic composition of the website).  It is heavily skewed to the 18-34 audience, with some crossover into the younger "Jennifer" demographic.


The article talks about all of the discounting/full-price issues that everybody is forced to think about.


The article does not talk about the core customer.  In fact, these articles almost never talk about the core customer, focusing instead on channels and tactics that are the outcome of a relationship with the core customer.


Jasmine, of course, is loyal to "brands" ... but Jasmine is more loyal to price.  She can't afford what Jennifer can afford.  When Jasmine is given a lot of choices, Jasmine will spread her dollars out across choices.  This can only hurt a business like Gilt.  One can imagine the Powerpoints with lofty sales growth expectations, forecast not built on actual customer behavior.


Study Questions:

1. If you were an Executive at Gilt, how would you have forecast sales growth over the next five years?  Describe the methodology you would have used to avoid over-forecasting the future of the business.  How would you have protected the business from having to lay off employees?
2. Describe the marketing strategy that converts Jasmine from discount/promotion purchases to full price purchases.  Under what circumstances can you convince Jasmine to pay more, given you've invested considerable marketing effort in encouraging Jasmine to spend less, historically?
3. Is there a business model that might appeal to Jennifer, or Judy, and if so, how would you convince Management of the opportunity?
4. What role does social media and mobile play in a low price point business vs. a high price point business?

Most Popular Series Of The Past Year: Judy, Jennifer, Jasmine

You like Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine!

• Here's Judy.
• Here's Jennifer.
• Here's Jasmine.

Readership is up 40% this week, and clicks through links in the articles are at an all-time high.


We get a lot of conflicting information, don't we?  We're told that if we aren't fully fluent in mobile marketing, we'll become irrelevant.  Well, if our customer is Judy, mobile marketing is largely irrelevant!!


Email marketers tell us to focus on relevant content.  Well, for Jasmine, that might be everyday low prices.  For Jennifer, that might be 20% off plus free shipping, so long as the competition doesn't offer a better deal.  Judy just wants the catalog in the mail box.


Social media experts demand that you have a conversation.  Judy doesn't want a conversation, she wants to be on Facebook to see her grandchild!


In other words, it is important to know who your customer is!  Channels are irrelevant, to be honest, they are the means by which different customers with different interests express themselves.


Given the popularity of the series, you're going to continue to hear about Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine.  When you are ready to have me analyze your customer base, contact me!


Before I leave you, why not take a brief quiz?  Match the persona (Judy, Jennifer, Jasmine) to each brand below.  Once you ace this quiz, think about each business from a marketing standpoint.  How does social, mobile, classic e-commerce, and offline marketing impact Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine at each company?  What would your strategy be for each tactic?

1. Patagonia.com
2. MilesKimball.com
3. Bluefly.com

Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Jasmine

I previously spoke about a "Transformational" customer.  From this point forward, that customer will be known as Jasmine.


Meet Jasmine!


Jasmine is different than the customer we've been analyzing for a long, long time.  In fact, catalogers and many online marketers are uncomfortable with fundamental differences in Jasmine's behavior vs. prior generations.

• Jasmine is 27, but she is representative of a customer between the ages of 18 and 34.
• Jasmine doesn't have the earning power she will one day have.  Therefore, Jasmine has to find the best deals at the best prices.  She's not going to pay $400 for a handbag, when she can spend $99 for a handbag at a flash sales website.  
• You can't market to her by offering 20% off plus free shipping ... she simply won't buy unless free shipping is part of the brand, and she thinks brands inflate prices, so she's looking for deals that work for her.
• Jasmine approves of this (click here).
• Jasmine "lives" social and mobile.  This is a fundamental difference from Judy and Jennifer.  Jasmine's experiences are infused with social and mobile.  Facebook and Twitter aren't social media, they're "utilities", much like Comcast or your local electric company.  And this means a lot, because you cannot separate out and attribute social or mobile and assign marketing value to each channel.  She buys from Shoemint.com ... social and mobile and email ARE the experience, that brand curates for her, you don't separate and attribute her spend to any channels in this case.
• If Jasmine had to choose between internet access, a car, or her cell phone, she'd choose her cell phone.  The cell phone is to Jasmine as the internet is to Jennifer and as cable television is to Judy.
• Jasmine likes low prices, scoring a deal on MyHabit or One Kings Lane or Fab.com or Gilt Group.  She'll recruit friends to get discounts from businesses she shops at, she will use her phone to score a great deal, and she loves the simplicity of the mobile shopping experience.  In some ways, an element of gamification motivates Jasmine, she likes completing tasks and earning credits/discounts for completing tasks (see the first twelve steps required to be on Shoemint.com for an example ... go do that right now).
• Jasmine doesn't trust advertising as much as she trusts her friends and the opinions of others.  Her inner circle of 400 people provide all the information she needs to make good decisions.  She says that if something is happening in the world, "it will find her".  This is different than Jennifer, who spends time finding/hunting things, and is different than Judy, who likes to watch The Today Show to learn what might be important.  You will have to seed a lot of clouds to be able to reach Jasmine.
• Jasmine will take a picture of something she likes at Aldo Shoes, and solicit feedback from her friends before buying the item.  She might spend time at Best Buy with her husband, reviewing items, then comparing prices on Amazon while in-store, finally settling for a comparable item on Amazon.  While she participates in social commerce, Jasmine is almost post-social commerce, she's not going to be labeled, but instead, she is simply shopping in a way that is congruent with how she lives.  This style of shopping is not recognizable to Judy.
• Jasmine likes to share what she's doing, and likes retailers who make it easy for her to share ... notice that you click on "share with a friend" before "add to shopping bag" in this example at Francesca's Collections:
• Jasmine is not going to read a newspaper unless she's stuck at an airport for two hours and her iPhone needs charging.
• Jasmine likes Spotify, she thinks paying $10 a month for millions of songs is better than paying $0.99 per song.  Conversely, Jennifer loves iTunes, while Judy still buys CDs at her local Target store.
• All that being said, Jasmine will buy sheets from Cuddledown of Maine, but this behavior is not likely to be habit forming, and Jasmine had better get free shipping and an everyday low price.
• Judy loves a sale. Jennifer loves hunting for the best price. Jasmine shops if the business offers an everyday low price.  Jasmine will participate in a "gamified" experience that results in earning credits that yield a low price.
• Jasmine may or may not like this style of merchandising, but it is more aligned with her style than old-school marketing (click here please).  Conversely, Judy expects this content to be delivered to her via a television commercial.  Different approaches are used to reach Judy and Jasmine.
• Judy barely trusts having passwords online.  Jennifer has a hundred different online passwords.  Jasmine shares her passwords with trusted friends, it's almost a form of trust currency.

Last week on Twitter, an 18-34 year old individual told that people like Jasmine will "do the marketing for you if you treat her well and let her do her job."  This is the complete opposite of Judy, who waits for companies to rent her name from a co-op so that she can see their catalog.


It isn't hard to identify Jasmine in your customer base, so get busy!  Record the referring URL, any blogs in your industry or Facebook or Twitter are key indicators that you're dealing with Jasmine.  She's a "true mobile" individual, using her iPhone or Android device ... she may use an iPad, but that's more likely to be Jennifer.  She likes sales/discounts, but she prefers low price point items.  She demand free shipping. Heck, if you are Fab.com, half your database is comprised of people like Jasmine!  Even if you're a traditional catalog brand, you have online customers with no attribution to catalogs/email who shop infrequently, off price, with free shipping ... hint ... this is Jasmine!


We care about Jasmine, because the marketing strategy for her has to be very different.  In my studies, 50% - 80% of what Jasmine spends is not associated with catalog marketing.  In other words, catalog matchback programs significantly, and I mean significantly overstate what she spends because of catalog marketing.  Instead of 18 catalogs a year, Jasmine needs maybe 3, all within a month or two of a purchase.

So get busy segmenting your database.  Find out who Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine are, and start treating them differently.  You'll be significantly more profitable, and you'll make Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine happier.


Next week, we'll dig a bit deeper, learning more about how to deal with Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine.