This theme came up at the ACCM conference --- response rates are down on dramatic decreases in circulation.
The concept of a "death spiral" is well known --- cut out prospecting, the business gets smaller, so you cut more, causing the business to get smaller, and next thing you know, you're out of business. It is a concept that the retention experts conveniently leave out when talking about catering to loyal customers.
What is interesting is that it is the co-ops that are dealing with the death spiral. The co-ops destroyed the list industry, and that's fine, America is all about competition and capitalism. But if the data in the article is true (30% drop in co-op names), then you have a whole new set of challenges in the catalog industry --- is there enough business to support all of the co-ops that exist today?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Great Eight
1 - You must know who your AUDIENCE is. Your customer is different from your audience. Your audience represents the pool of prospects who m...
-
RFM is great for targeting one catalog to one customer. However, RFM is tough to manage in a multichannel environment. This becomes clear ...
-
Look at the first four rows of our life table (values of 0/1/2/3). These are the first 12-15 weeks after a customer buys for the firs... -
If you don't like geeky math, please skip this post, because I am about to show you how the sausage is made! I have eight variables in...
