Just Tell Me What To Do

When I arrived at Lands' End in 1990 (November), I recall furious analysis of our Holiday catalog and our Holiday prospect catalog. One had something like 192 pages, the other 64. We conducted an A/B test between the catalogs.

• Among equal customers, the 192 page catalog generated something like $4.00 per catalog mailed. The 64 page catalog generated something like $3.00 per catalog mailed.

I recall folks talking about how the bigger catalog "worked better". Sure, it generated more volume. But a funny thing happened when you calculated profit.

• 192 Pages:  $4.00 * 0.35 - $0.80 = $0.60.
• 64 Pages:    $3.00 * 0.35 - $0.45 = $0.60.

Essentially, each version generated the same amount of profit. Any customer worse than the average customer should, by default, get the smaller version.

Our Circulation Director would tell anybody who listened that she could pick the products and the creative that would be most profitable. Three companies later I worked with her and she could get 95% of the sales on half of the pages. She was that good.

Modern Catalog Marketing is a wasteful enterprise. You can feature items online for free, or you can pay a dollar to push 10% of the recipients to the website knowing that 8% of the recipients would have visited the website without a catalog. In the 1990 example I gave, at least 100 pages were fully wasteful - generating no useful benefit whatsoever. In 2024 it's much a more extreme problem with far more profitable answers available at every turn.

This is where somebody usually says to me ... "Just Tell Me What To Do".

Vendors will tell you that Direct Mail and Search are like Peanut Butter and Jelly. Let's assume they are correct. Why would you spend $1.00 on print to drive a customer to Google where you pay another $0.50 to re-direct the customer to your website? Wouldn't it make more sense to spend $0.60 on print with something with far fewer pages, chocked full of only your best-selling items and best-performing creative?

Why would you waste $1.00 sending a catalog to a customer who purchased via email marketing in the past nine months when you already speak to that very same customer every single day using the medium the customer buys from? Better to spend $0.60. Even better to spend $0.00, but at least meet the customer halfway.

If you know you have a customer who visits your website via social media on a monthly basis, why would you waste $1.00 sending a catalog to a customer who is already interacting with your brand, for free? Why not spend $0.60 instead? Even better to spend $0.00, but at least meet the customer halfway.

If you know you have a customer who visits your website via YouTube, where your in-house experts produce videos watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers each week, why would you waste $1.00 sending a catalog to a customer who is already interacting with your brand at no additional variable marketing cost? Why not spend $0.60 instead? Even better to spend $0.00, but at least meet the customer halfway.

In the example I gave earlier, from November 1990, this is the relationship between pages and demand per catalog recipient.

The relationship is, at minimum, similar today, and is likely more extreme. In 2024, with so many other marketing actions tugging and pulling at the customer, you no longer need to feature your entire assortment, or even a fraction of your assortment. Given the cost of mailing something in 2024, you are honestly limited now to featuring the best performing items using the best performing creative you have - allowing your free and nearly free channels to do the heavy lifting.

A less costly and more productive mailing allows you to mail deeper than normal.

A less costly and more productive mailing allows you to increase frequency among better customers.

All of these truths were self-evident in 1990.

They're more relevant today than ever before.

That's what I'm telling you to do.

Send me an email (kevinh@minethatdata.com) telling me why this strategy won't work.