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 might someday buy from you as well as your current and lapsed customer base.

2 - You must have an AWARENESS program. End of story. Among the 40% of my client base that is catalog-centric, less than 20% have a credible awareness program. Without a credible awareness program, customer acquisition becomes very expensive.

3 - You must have a credible ACQUISITION program. Online brands grow via Google + Facebook + Instagram. Retail brands historically grew via malls ... and we all know how effective malls are today at helping retailers grow via acquisition. Catalogers leverage co-ops, and they're running out of 65 year old customers to prospect against.

4 - Now that the customer has been acquired, you need a solid WELCOME program. Most companies have 4-12 weeks to convert the newly acquired customer to a second purchase before the customer begins the painful process of lapsing.

5 - The ANNIVERSARY program is used to market milestones to your customer, so that you can push the customer into higher frequency brackets. Did the customer buy outerwear last October? Guess what? Your anniversary program must be ready to re-introduce outerwear to that customer next month. It's here that merchandise personalization plays a key role.

6 - Your OPTIMIZATION program is responsible for most of the marketing profit. E-commerce brands focus on email, catalogers focus on catalogs, retailers frequently focus on loyalty programs and credit.

7 - NEW MERCHANDISE is the lifeblood of a company. Without new merchandise, a company has no future. This is one of the demons haunting traditional retail. The marketer plays a key role here, featuring new merchandise to best customers in optimization programs.

8 - WINNING MERCHANDISE. In modern commerce, the number of winning items shrinks each year, due in part to poor new merchandise programs, due to the fact that everybody sells the same stuff which means that ultimately Amazon and Wal-Mart win (among others). The marketer plays a role here as well, getting winning items in front of prospects, turning prospects into customers.

Excellence in The Great Eight is required.

1. Audience.
2. Awareness.
3. Acquisition.
4. Welcome.
5. Anniversary.
6. Optimization.
7. New Merchandise.
8. Winning Merchandise.