Triggers: Weighting Transactions

From time to time, I work on projects where the goal is to set up various triggers.  This can be a complicated problem, because customers might perform competing activities.

I run regressions against various purchase, visitation, and social activities.  My goal is to identify when an activity should trigger a marketing tactic.  You learn some interesting things when you do this (your mileage will vary):

1. Old-School Catalog orders have a half-life of maybe 24 months.
2. E-Commerce orders have a half-life of maybe 20 months.
3. In-Store retail purchases have a half-life of maybe 16 months.
4. A click through an email campaign may have a half-life of 2 months.
5. A visit to a website may have a half-life of 2 weeks.
6. A social media action may have a half-life of 2 days.

Again, your mileage will vary.  But it's your job to know the half-life of all activities!  If a customer visits your website on December 13, but purchased in a retail store on December 1, it is quite likely that the retail transaction will carry more weight ... any triggers you plan are focused more on the retail transaction than the website visit.

Know the half-life of all customer activities.

Triggers: Website Visits

You probably already know this (or are executing these programs), but it is worth running a query to validate anyway.


Query:

• Segment customers by months since last purchase, through June 30.
• Add a segmentation layer ... 1 = customer visited website in June 2012 but did not purchase ... 0 = customer did not visit website in June 2012.
• Based on this level of segmentation, measure the amount of demand the average customer in the segment spent during July 2012.

Expected Results:

• Customers who visit the website but do not purchase, especially among those with 7+ months of recency, outperform those who do not visit the website in the past 30 days by a factor of 3x to 10x.

Anticipated Strategy:

• Kick out a hotline catalog to any lapsed, unmailed buyer who visits your website in the past month and does not purchase.
• Develop trigger-based email programs for customers who are lapsed and then visit the website, sans purchase.
• Call customers who exhibit this behavior, offering your handy/dandy promotional programs that you love to talk about.

Discuss.