Wrap-Up on Circulation Theory

I spend a lot of time reading ... and when you do that, you obtain a biased view of the world based on the content you read.

So I wanted to test my theory that what I read biases what I learn. For instance, I pay attention to Internet Retailer and listen to what they have to say. They like to talk about Amazon, don't they? And for good reason. So I counted the number of times they mentioned Amazon on original / non-vendor tweets (excluding retweets) between April 22, 2017 and July 21, 2017.

Here are the results.

Whole Foods got in there because they were purchased by Amazon. I recoded any mention of "Prime Day" as "Amazon", for good reason, boosting the Amazon total. But take those 40 tweets +/- out and the story isn't different.

If I pay attention to what I read, I'll make a ton of mistakes that hurt my client base. Internet Retailer has to talk about Amazon, because that enables Internet Retailer to get paid. We "get" to talk about Circulation Theory ... it gets you paid! You don't get paid when you ponder what Amazon is doing.

I spent two weeks discussing Circulation Theory because the secret to keep doing what catalogers love doing is embedded in the ten posts on the topic. If you've executed mail/holdout tests and page count tests, then every secret discussed in this Circulation Theory discussion is available to you.

Yes, you!

You get to be the person who charts a path to the future.

You get to be the person who generates disproportionate profit amounts compared to the marketers who managed your brand in the past.

You get to free up ad-dollars to spend online and in mobile, allowing your company to "keep up".

You will attract online/mobile customers who have different merchandise preferences. Your merchandising team will observe the results and, as a consequence, they'll offer more of what an online/mobile customer wants ... enabling your conversion rates to improve, allowing your company to move into the future must faster.

You get to do all of this.

Yes, you!

Analyze your test results ... structure them into the framework outlined in this series of ten posts. Then go make magic happen!

What questions do you have? Any? What should I discuss in a future week of Circulation Theory?

Need help? Contact me (kevinh@minethatdata.com) and we'll structure your information into this framework and see what it means to your business.


P.S.: I know, those of you who are Executives will tell me that your CEO/Board won't let you do anything different. And those of you who are Managers/Analysts will tell me that your Executive Team won't let you do anything different. It is TIME to do something different. I spent two weeks showing you how to make your company a fortune. If Leadership won't let you cut back on frequency, then cut back on pages ... go deep with a small page count as a test and see what happens. If Leadership won't let you cut back on pages or frequency, then make all of the changes you want with mobile-centric customers and just tell your Executive Team or CEO/Board that this is what you are doing, end-of-story. Or don't do that. But it is TIME to do something different. So do something different, ok?