It Does Make A Difference

In yesterday's post (click here), far more of you clicked on the bait-centric link about the Top 20 Omnichannel Brands than clicked on the story about merchandise/presentation in a Macy's store.

#sigh

Can I show you something? I ran a Marketing Budget Experiment for the brand below. In each year, I added 2.5% to merchandise productivity ... 1.25% to response, 1.25% to spend. Look at how the top-line and p&l changes over time.

I mean, you barely notice a difference after one year.

At year five, the business is almost 20% larger, with more than 33% more variable profit (likely leading to 50% more earnings before taxes).

The best companies I work with are relentlessly looking for 2.5% more merchandise productivity, annually. They never quit.

When I share this stuff on Twitter, that audience looks for "marketing hacks" ... ways to cheat by spending marketing dollars.

The easiest place to improve merchandise productivity is email marketing. Easiest. By far. Look at how you present merchandise via email marketing ... this can easily be improved via testing. Look at what you present ... this can easily be improved by analyzing what customers purchase via email marketing (hint, it's different than what customers purchase via other channels). Look at what you offer ... this can be improved dramatically by showing every customer a different subset of your assortment.

Come on, let's get busy ... you can do this ... you can grow your brand without blaming Google for changes in their PLAs ... you can grow without depending upon an unholy alliance between Facebook and Apple paired with fabricated reporting from your favorite social media source. You can do this!