Another Question: Merchandise

Thank you for your questions and feedback ... a lot to keep track of in the inbox these days.

Question:  You suggest that catalogs cause different merchandise to sell. We've been taught for two decades to approach our merchandising strategy the same way across all marketing channels. We've been told this is a best practice. Why would you tell us otherwise?

I'm not suggesting catalogs cause different merchandise to sell. I'm tell you that ALL MARKETING CHANNELS align with a portion of your merchandise assortment. ALL CHANNELS have unique customers with unique merchandise preferences.

• The products that sell via email marketing are usually different (and less expensive).
• The products that sell via PLAs are usually different.
• The products that sell via search are usually different.
• The products that sell via paid social are usually different.
• The products that sell via print/catalogs are usually different.
• The products that sell in stores are often very different than those that sell online.
• The products that sell via direct load are different than the products selling via marketing.

You may not think this is a big deal, and sometimes you'd be right. It becomes a big deal when you want to end something.

Example:  Say you offer your best discounts via email marketing, and now you have a new CEO and the new CEO says "no more 60% off, the biggest discount is 30% off going forward". Well, that might sound good on the surface, but next week you offer 30% off and the 60% off customer who likes $200 items for $120 says "nope, won't buy" ... and later that week your merchandising team notices that $200 items aren't selling well, and two weeks later inventory is starting to pile up only on expensive items and they have no idea why, so they decide that they need to offer discounts on expensive items in all channels. Fun!

Example:  The Google-centric shopper buys inexpensive items. You decide that you are going to focus your remaining print efforts only on best-selling items to protect the productivity of print. This means the items the Google-centric shopper buys aren't featured in your 56 page mini-catalog. The handful of Google-centric shoppers you've acquired who like print won't respond now because you aren't featuring the stuff that the Google-centric customer likes. This makes catalog performance look bad, and causes Management to say "well, smaller page counts don't work".

Most of what you've been taught about channels and merchandise is wrong. Every channel has a unique product assortment ... some items that work great in all channels ... some items that work great in one channel. It's your job to tailor the product to channels based on prior performance and the customers who are likely to shop those channels going forward. If you're having problems with this concept, contact me (kevinh@minethatdata.com) and we'll get busy.