The Math Behind Best Customers

Those of you involved in Catalog Marketing run optimization tables, right?

Right??

Here's an optimization table for really good catalog customers. This brand mails really good customers 20 times per year, for the obvious reason that the brand has 20 in-home dates per year and they mail the best customer every single in-home date available.

How many catalogs should this brand mail this good catalog customers?

Look at the table.

Profit still increases as we go from 45 annual catalogs to 50 annual catalogs.

Do you understand what this means?

This catalog company is sub-optimizing profit among best catalog customers by a whopping $5 profit per customer.

This is a major trend for 2019 for catalog marketers. Bifurcation is overwhelming the catalog customer file ... with a small minority (i.e. 20% of the twelve-month buyer file) requiring MANY MORE catalog mailings ... and everybody else requiring FEW/NO catalog mailings.

Run the darn optimization table above and see if bifurcation is impacting your business.

Again ... this is a MAJOR TREND for the vast majority of classic catalog marketers. The math strongly suggests that catalogers are undermailing the best catalog-centric buyers.