Pressure

Whether it is NFL Football or Beat Bobby Flay or this guy recreating the music for Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" without ever having heard the actual music, a clock ticking toward zero creates pressure and drama.

Clocks ticking toward zero have to mean something, of course. You cannot lie. Cyber Monday, for instance, is a clock ticking toward zero, creating pressure. If you play the discount game (and strong hint, unless your brand is all about the best offers or lowest prices every day of the year, you should never play the discount game), Cyber Monday is the clock running down to zero ... you cannot have equal/better discounts AFTER Cyber Monday or the clock/pressure game you're playing is not valid ... it's a lie. When you are at 60% off on Cyber Monday and say HURRY, ENDS AT 11:59PM and then the next morning you say CYBER WEEK CONTINUES with the same discounts ... you've lied, and you invalidated the pressure/clock situation created by Cyber Monday. Which, of course, too many of you do. Well, you can do that, but there is a price to pay ... and the price you pay is elimination of all subsequent pressure/clock-count-down situations, because the customer knows you lie, and there's nothing worse for a brand than having to convince customers you won't lie after you lie.

Most of us have natural built-in-clocks in our businesses, creating pressure. If you are a gardening brand, Spring is a built-in-clock creating pressure. Valentine's Day is a natural built-in-clock scenario that creates pressure. If you are a grocery store, the Super Bowl is a natural built-in-clock scenario that creates pressure ... get your food for your Super Bowl party.

The best marketers amplify pressure, and they create their own built-in-clock scenarios. The Nordstrom Anniversary Sale is a perfect example ... who else does Christmas-level business in apparel in late July - early August? What is the example of pressure/clock situations you leverage in your business to generate disproportionate volume? Don't say any man-made holiday (i.e. Cyber Monday or Thanksgiving or Christmas). What is the example of a situation you created for your customers, independent of the competition, that creates a pressure/clock situation where the customer must act or miss out?

Innovation

Send me an email (kevinh@minethatdata.com) with the name of an e-commerce company doing something innovative, and describe the tactic that you believe is innovative.

I issued the same request on LinkedIn. I will publish your comments (anonymous or fully attributed - your choice) later this week.

So let's have a discussion ... share with al of us the tactics an e-commerce brand is using that you perceive to be innovative.

Thanks,

Kevin

Two Articles For You To Think About

First, translate everything in this article about AI and Media to "AI and E-Commerce". Then you'll be interested in the topic.

Second, you should see the blank stares I get when I ask you "who" the person is that represents your brand publicly, the person and/or employee that your customers implicitly trust, leading to increased sales/profit? This article neatly summarizes why I ask the question. If you cannot answer this question, you are five to ten years behind brands who have answered it.

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy readers! Take full advantage of this multi-week period of celebration.

Top 5 Christmas Movies

Here we go. This list is non-negotiable.

Number 5 = A Charlie Brown Christmas

• According to the IMDB Link offered by Google, it is listed as a TV Movie, and therefore, it qualifies for this list. I know, I know, many of you think The Year Without A Santa Clause is the more worthy feature, where Heat Miser turns in a Tony-Award winning performance. Poor old Charlie Brown kick-started the animated tradition that all others emulated. It has an appropriate mix of Capitalism, Christianity, and Social Commentary. And it has Vince Guaraldi piano music.

Number 4 = A Christmas Story

• I'll concede that the "classic-ness" of this feature has been diminished thanks to endless runs of the movie on Turner-hosted cable television stations. Regardless, you'll shoot your eye out enjoying the premise. Also - we have a neighbor who proudly displays his leg lamp in the window.

Number 3 = Less Than Zero

• You are probably wondering why I didn't rate this classic 80s Christmas hit a bit higher? It's a tossup at this point between 1/2/3. We get to spend a few hours watching Clay (Andrew McCarthy) fly home for Christmas (from college out east) to try to save his friend Julian (Robert Downey Jr). James Spader turns in an under-appreciated performance as Rip, the drug-dealing power broker. Michael Bowen's "Hop" is a good "bad guy" as well. Spoiler alert ... not all Christmas movies have happy endings.

Number 2 = Christmas Vacation

• There's no amount of punishment that Clark W. Griswold can't endure! Anybody who ever decorated their yard knows what it is like when a strand isn't working. By the way, Julia Louis-Dreyfus parlayed a stunning performance as neighbor "Margo Chester" into a memorable role on Seinfeld. As Cousin Eddie proudly said, "Save the neck for me, Clark".

Number 1 = Scrooged

• Bill Murray is better remembered for Groundhog Day, but this adaptation of A Christmas Carol from 1988 touches all of the bases. It's the undisputed leader of Christmas features. Turns out it is fun to watch Bill Murray get hit in the face with a toaster.

Honorable Mention

• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Any story about a youth being kicked out of a community for being different, landing on an island of misfit toys, then re-imagined as the savior of Christmas for having an unusual physical affliction that can be exploited for the benefit of capitalism deserves (at minimum) honorable mention.
• You've Got Mail. A classic treatise about retail failure at the birth of the internet. Based on an old Christmas movie called "The Shop Around The Corner" starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, it's a must-see for the omnichannel marketing-loving professional.
• There's another classic animated feature where the central character had his heart grow three sizes ... that one isn't bad either.

Accountability

Part of the system I advocate is a process that leads to Merchant Accountability.

This can happen in many different ways.

At Nordstrom, Blake Nordstrom published monthly sales comps, year-over-year. Email. At Executive/Leadership meetings. If you were in charge of Accessories, your name and department (Accessories) was on a dashboard for tens of thousands to see ... they saw that you were +9% vs. last year. The Men's Tailored executive might have been at -4%. That simple act ... a dashboard with every Merchant Executive pitted against each other, rank-ordered from best performance to worst performance ... that led to a whole lotta Accountability.  When merchants were let go or "retired" ... it wasn't hard to see why. Their name was at the bottom of the dashboard.

When I worked at Lands' End, there was an elaborate post-mortem process performed on all monthly core catalogs (you've heard me talk about this previously). Every spread in the catalog was posted on the wall. The tagboard color told everybody how profitable the spread was ... Gold = 30%+ Variable Profit, Green = 20% - 29%, Blue = 10% - 19%, Red = Below 10%. It was really, really easy to see the spreads that worked, and the spreads that didn't work. It was in those post mortem meetings that I learned about the importance of new merchandise. It was in those post mortem meetings that I learned about the importance of "selling creative" vs. the fecklessness of "branding creative".

But make no mistake ... when our Circulation Director would start criticizing the merchants and creative folks for butchering the first twenty pages of the catalog (which we learned were critically important), the merchants and creative folks did not take kindly to the feedback ... and for good reason ... they were being held Accountable for their decisions. Those folks would punch back ... "you are idiots, you mailed the wrong customers", to which our Circulation Director would retort "we mail the same 4,000,000 best customers every month, now let's get back to the decisions you made." 

Those were spirited meetings.

In most of my projects, I run Comp Segment analytics and Comp New/Reactivated Buyer analytics. Remember - for the Comp Segment framework, we select all customers who bought twice in a twelve month period, and then calculate average spend in the next month ($100, $0, $0, $0, $0 = $20 average). The data is run for the past thirty-six months, giving me twenty-four months of Comp Segment results to analyze. Similarly, I count the number of new/reactivated customers on a monthly basis.

As mentioned previously:

• Comp Segment results reflect strongly on merchant talent/results, especially when measured at a category level.
• Comp New/Reactivated results reflect strongly on marketing talent/results/spend.

In my system, it's pretty easy to see who needs to be held Accountable. Here's a case where the merchants are Accountable for poor performance.

• Comp Segment Results = -9%.
• Comp New/Reactivated Customer Counts = -6%.
• Merchant-Adjusted Comp New/Reactivated Counts = -6% - -9% = +3%.

In this example, the merchandising team is struggling, while marketing is performing reasonably well. In my system, I'd drill down into the -9% comp at a category level, then I'd run some "Class Of" reports, and within a few minutes I'd know what is going on.

Here is an example where marketing needs to be held Accountable. This example is happening all over the catalog marketing world right now as the catalog co-ops die a painful death.

• Comp Segment Results = +4%.
• Comp New/Reactivated Customer Counts = -24%.
• Merchant-Adjusted Comp New/Reactivated Counts = -24% - 4% = -28%.

The Merchant-Adjusted Comp New/Reactivated outcome of -28% is a catastrophe, and it's happening everywhere in catalog marketing. Too many catalog brands aligned with their "trusted partners" (agencies, paper reps, printers, USPS, catalog co-ops, list exchanges) ... and once the customer aged into his/her 70s everything collapsed. Without a strong digital marketing presence, the bottom is falling out. Catalogers are dying due to structural issues, and it is the marketing team that is to blame ... the marketing folks have had 25 years to figure out how to become strong digital marketers and instead adhered to the omnichannel thesis. Ooops.

Regardless, in my system it's important to determine who is Accountable for business challenges. In e-commerce it's frequently the merchandising team. In catalogs, it's the marketing team. In retail, it's a structural challenge (stores are dying).

Does that make sense to you?

Spending $4,000 to Grow a Community

Here's an example from my hobby (headphones ... click here).

• Time-Limited.
• Showing Number of Entries to Demonstrate Authority.
• YouTube / Instagram / Discord Integration.
• 20 Entries per $100 Spent (they're rewarding buying something a minimum of 20x as much as list generation activities).
• 3 Entries per Referral (they're rewarding spreading the word 3x as much as normal list generation activities).

They're giving away three iems for a total of about $4,000.

They're adding about 10,000 entries per day.

There are so many ways to build out your "prospect list", to use an old-school term, to avoid collapsing print response as well as troubles via Google/Facebook.

So many ways.

If Discounts Aren't Part Of The System, What Replaces It?

You might remember this presentation from May 2024 (click here).

Last week I visited their community forum, and on the website I looked at an item I saw mentioned in the community forum. Yes, I was logged in. So yes, they sent me an SMS message two hours later following up on product I looked at. You don't have to look at the item, either. They send SMS messages based on your community comments and interests, triggered by a visit to the community.

• They have a half-million registered community users. How many do you have?
• When a member of their community reads a post, they record the activity and act upon the activity. Do you do that?
• They are able to generate eight figure annual sales in a world where Amazon can deliver the same item at the same price immediately. That's an important test ... if a customer chooses you and your slower-than-Amazon delivery over Amazon at the same price for the same item, your "system" is working.

Now, I get it. You don't believe in communities, though many of you have thousands of people watching your videos (so you do have a community, you just don't call it one).

There are two additional things that are an important part of my "system".

• When a customer is inactive or lapses, record every possible interaction you have with that customer, because often the customer isn't inactive ... the customer is just not purchasing. You want a customer who has not purchased in 18 months if the customer is still interacting with your brand monthly.
• When an inactive customer decides to interact with you, ACT UPON IT!! This is where merchandise personalization is so darn important. Merchandise personalization adds 20% to 50% to your response/conversion metrics. You can double/triple response/conversion by acting upon an 18 month buyer who decides to interact with your community and you then personalize the merchandising experience for the customer.

Mass Discounts Have No Place in My System

Can I tell you a story about a brand many of you are familiar with?

• October = 40% Off.
• November = 50% Off.
• Black Friday = 60% Off.
• Saturday After Black Friday = 60% Off ... Hurry, Ends Tomorrow.
• Sunday After Black Friday = 60% Off ... Hurry, Ends at Midnight.
• Cyber Monday = 60% Off Plus Free Shipping, Hurry, Ends at Midnight.
• Tuesday After Cyber Monday = Cyber Monday Extended!! 60% Off Plus Free Shipping.
• Wednesday After Cyber Monday = Cyber Monday Extended!! 60% Off Plus Free Shipping.
• Thursday After Cyber Monday = Cyber Week Continues!! 60% Off + Free Shipping $50+.

When I clicked through the Thursday email campaign to test their tactics, one hour later they sent me an email with 60% Off + Free Shipping No Hurdle ... I get a "perk" because I clicked through their email campaign.

Yeah, if you ordered Sunday because 60% off was about to end, you'd be upset to know that had you waited until Monday you'd have also received free shipping. Nice. 

I realize you're going to have to discount from time to time.

It should not be your reason for existing.

And you should never, ever ... ever ... mislead or lie to your customers. The above-mentioned cadence misleads customers. Explain to me, those of you who love discounts, why it is acceptable to mislead your customers? I await your response (kevinh@minethatdata.com).

In A Dying Industry, The Gatekeepers Consume Their Own Customers

Yeah, I got an email message a few days ago.

As linear television dies a slow, painful death, those still using linear television will pay more and more to offset what is being lost ... until the customers that are left say "enough" and move on.

It's no different for my catalog industry readers. I've told many of you privately that the end game for catalog marketing is Amazon paying tens of billions of dollars to mail infrequent catalogs in October.

In many recent video conferences, it's common for the business leader to suggest that "more juice needs to be squeezed from the lemon". That's code for "it's become really hard to acquire new customers". It's a trap ... honestly, it's a bridge ... you generate more from your existing customers to pay for what you are losing in customer acquisition, but the bridge you take maroons you on an island with few choices but to keep getting more from existing customers. What do you do when you can no longer squeeze more out of your existing customers and cannot acquire customers?

I've told you previously about the issue with so many of you accidentally sending me email messages not meant for me ... emails outlining your corporate strategies. It happened again last week. One of my favorites came two years ago.

• An email was mistakenly sent to me from a leading brand in the paper industry.
• The email had an attachment ... a presentation summarizing the past decade and the future as the paper brand saw it.
• The paper brand outlined that demand for "catalog paper" was down between sixty percent and eighty percent in the past twenty years.
• In response, the paper brand consolidated supply, closing plants.
• The presentation outlined how this "strategy" created false demand, allowing them to charge higher prices ... all of which benefitted the paper brand in 2021 when there simply wasn't paper available and demand increased modestly due to the "COVID-bump".

And then these people lie to all of you on LinkedIn ... #PRINTISBACK as they say. It is not back. I have the presentation. I have the receipts. But it is a great example of a dying industry where the gatekeepers consume their own customers.

Man, the stories you've told me about in the past year ... where the gatekeepers treat you the same way that cable tv networks and their service providers treat their customers.

2025 is going to be a wild year, as it becomes even harder to acquire new customers should Google/Facebook continue to perform worse.

P.S.:  We're talking about my "system" here as we wind down the year. There's a reason why you have to have your own system, one independent of the gatekeepers. You are like a 401k manager, diversifying your portfolio. You can't color-by-numbers according to industry best practices. You need your own system, your own way of doing things, one that is not highly reliant upon a small number of partners.

My Business Is Failing: Has To Be The Marketer's Fault, Right?

Maybe. 

But probably not.

In my system, I can immediately diagnose whether the marketer is failing or there is a merchandising problem.

• Hint: There is usually a merchandising problem when business does not meet expectations.

As you've repeatedly heard me say over nearly twenty (20) years, I use my Comp Segment framework to diagnose if there is a marketing/merchandising problem. A weak marketer / modern marketer is likely criticized by Management when business is bad, then performs a "deep dive" of traffic driven to the website, which is a mostly feckless exercise. A strong marketer using my "system" has a dashboard with comp segment metrics.

Let's say the metrics reveal this outcome for November.

• Comp Segment Performance = -11%.
• Comp New/Reactivated Buyer Counts = -9%.
• Net Marketing Impact = -9% - -11% = +2%.

The marketer immediately knows that there is a merchandise problem. The marketer goes to a comp segment dashboard to look at the -11% comp, understanding if it is across all merchandise categories or just within a couple of large categories. The marketer evaluates the metric for new items and existing items, discounted items and full-priced items.

Here is another example that happens, less frequently.

• Comp Segment Performance = -4%.
• Comp New/Reactivated Buyer Counts = -17%.
• Net Marketing Impact = -17% - -4% = -13%.

Comp segment performance isn't great, but the marketing team is the problem here. Marketing problems reveal themselves via new/reactivated buyer counts.

In my "system", a Comp Segment Dashboard quickly tells all employees "who" is causing the problem. It's usually the merchandising team, but it can be failures in marketing spend (i.e. reducing the marketing budget by 20%) or structural failures in new customer acquisition (i.e. catalog brands using failed catalog co-ops) that generate business issues.

The Mix of New/Reactivated Customers and Annual Repurchase Rate

Their annual repurchase rate was 31%.

• "Is that good?"
• "How do we benchmark against the competition? Can you be specific?"

These are the "wrong" questions. They are mainstream questions, the questions of thought leaders.

In my system, your annual repurchase rate is a function of two issues.

• Competent Marketing.
• Your Merchandise Assortment.

For instance, if you were incompetent, you wouldn't have an email marketing program, and your annual repurchase rate would be 20% lower. But you aren't incompetent, are you?

Your Merchandise Assortment determines your annual repurchase rate.

If you sell 100 skus, your annual repurchase rate will be lower than if you sell 1,000 skus, and your annual repurchase rate will be lower if you sell 1,000 skus than if you sell 10,000 skus.

• 20% Annual Rebuy Rate with 100 skus.
• 30% Annual Rebuy Rate with 1,000 skus.
• 35% Annual Rebuy Rate with 10,000 skus.

The 20% / 30% / 35% rates are driven by your merchandise assortment, they aren't driven by marketing strategy. Marketing has no control over 20% vs. 35%, that's dictated by your merchandising team.

Marketing has much more control over new/reactivated customers.

If your merchandising team only has 100 skus, yielding a 20% annual repurchase rate, your marketing team needs to be almost entirely focused on new/reactivated customers. And it will be harder for your marketing team to find new customers because you only have 100 skus.

If your merchandising team has 10,000 skus, yielding a 35% annual repurchase rate, your marketing team can actually start to focus on loyalty efforts, because there will be more loyal buyers because there are more items that the customer can purchase, year-round. Also, it will be easier for your marketing team to find new customers because you have 10,000 skus!

In my "system", the merchant is in charge. The merchant dictates everything. The marketer "reacts" to what the merchant does.

• If you are a modern marketer, you likely fail if you don't accept that the merchant dictates everything.
• If you are operating within my system, the merchant dictates everything for you. Your strategy is a response. This is a good thing ... your job is well defined.

Is it any wonder almost all modern marketing fails? How could it possibly succeed when the marketer has no idea what constraints the merchandising team placed upon the marketer?

Let's Discuss The System

Last Thursday the Packers and the Lions played a highly entertaining game, won by Detroit 34-31 on the last play of the game.

The "easy discussions" surrounded Detroit going for it on 4th down five (5) times, succeeding four times. That's something that any muttonhead can talk about ... "I WOULDN'T HAVE DONE THAT".

Nuanced discussions focused on other topics. On Thursday both Detroit and Green Bay leveraged elements of an offensive philosophy from the 1930s - 1950s (and high school football in the 1990s) called the Wing-T.

• Detroit using elements of the Wing-T offense (click here).

Many teams are running variants of the Wing-T or Single Wing ... Green Bay won two games with a backup quarterback by turning the clock back seventy years ... Arizona uses Kyler Murray in variants of the Single Wing ... and of course San Francisco / Los Angeles Rams / Miami (and even Kansas City) heavily leverage these concepts.

These teams have an offensive philosophy ... they are running a specific offensive "system" (in general, Green Bay / Miami / San Francisco / LA Rams all come out of the Shanahan "tree"). They're generally good at running the football, and they use a lot of window dressing / motion to deceive the defense.

Yeah, this brings me back to you.

In the NFL, offenses look to target weaknesses in the defense.

In your business, the marketer is looking to take advantage of the strengths and weaknesses in his/her merchandising assortment. This is opposite of mainstream thinking, where you are trying to take "market share" from competitors.

• Example:  Mainstream thinking applies deep discounts to increase open rates / click-through rates in email marketing. In my system, the marketer identifies winning items (i.e. best sellers) that align with the purchase history of individual customers (i.e. there are different winning items that work with different customers), crafting a personalized email campaign to each customer that yields increased open rates, click-through rates, and purchases.

Do you see the difference?

A weak marketer applies a discount (hurry, 60% off will end soon ... yeah, same message for the past three weeks, thanks).

A strong marketer with a "system" uses merchandise, avoiding weaknesses in the assortment, attacking strengths at a customer level. Customer response increases (like yards per play increase in a football game). Your odds of winning (i.e. 10% pre-tax profit on an annual basis) increase.

More on the topic of a marketing "system" tomorrow.

Veblen Goods

You probably already know what a Veblen Good is, right? If not, read about it here. 

There are few things more destructive to overall marketing/merchandising strategy than Black Friday / Cyber Monday. It's a complete abomination perpetuated by low-functioning marketers who do not understand customer behavior. If you are angry right now, I'm talking about you.

There's a company most of you know ... they were 40% off before Black Friday / Cyber Monday, they were around 50% off on Black Friday, they were around 60% off on Cyber Monday (sorry you idiots who bought a few days earlier, jokes on you), and then they broke their promise by staying at around 60% off for most of the week following Cyber Monday.

This brand could care less about their customers ... they'd rather gamify some of the customers into a purchase that does not remotely optimize profit ... because ... well, it has to be because they could care less about customers and know nothing about marketing strategy or merchandising strategy.

It's at least 30 years ago now, but I distinctly remember a merchant at Lands' End communicating "assortment strategy" to me. Maybe you have somebody at your current company that cares about you and does something similar? He told me how his core assortment was around $40, stretched up to $80, and then he had items around $100 or $125 that served two purposes.

1. They anchored the rest of the assortment ... in the same way Safeway gladly puts a bottle of Caymus wine in the top row of their assortment for $89, hoping you'll think that $19 is a bargain.
2. Those items were "aspirational" ... meaning that "some" of his customers wanted the status of the $125 item and would gladly pay the money to gain emotional benefits. "I'm wearing a $125 shirt, and you aren't". As a result, he sold more of the $125 items than the math suggested you could sell.

Yea, that's the definition of Veblen Goods.

I recall my first year at Nordstrom ... locked into a conference room at 7:00pm as a new Vice President, while two Merchandising Executives battled each other in front of the Nordstrom family. One argued the importance of a $400 handbag (Veblen Goods), the other argued the importance of a $40 option. Both were ultimately right, neither understood the importance of a merchandising assortment that communicated a story.

I read your email marketing campaigns, folks. Almost all of you care about the cheap half of your assortment, and you are willing to make it cheaper via incomprehensible discounts and promotions. 

Too few of you understand the importance of a Veblen Good.

And maybe that's why you struggle to acquire new customers.

The Hillstrom System

For whatever the reason, this topic has come up many times in the past month.

• "We want to implement your system, the 'Hillstrom System' of analyzing customer performance and then integrate your work with our marketing efforts. Unfortunately, my Marketing Executive and our Analytics Director disagree with your system, so we never make progress. How can I get my team to embrace your system?"

Every Marketing Executive has her own Marketing System, her way for growing a business. You're not going to cause this person to change. It would be like asking Bill Walsh to embrace something other than the West Coast offense - he invented it, why would he go in a different direction? He wouldn't do that.

Analytics professionals dig their heels in much harder. Whereas the Marketing Executive almost always has "a system" unique to her history and skills, the Analytics professional generally cannot define what her system is ... she's never had to think about it ... she simply knows that other people are doing things the wrong way or in a sub-optimal way and has become very good at pointing out that fact. Some analysts possess empathy ... a combination of empathy and smarts is what you are looking for. But by and large, it's hard to find an Analytics professional who has a clear and generally easy to understand "system" to grow your business.

This is where Executives ask me for advice ... "is there an agency who thinks like you think, one we could work with to bypass our internal marketing/analytics challenges?"

There's one that seems to liberally copy many of my concepts ... they either copy them and understand them and bring the concepts of the system into the modern world, or they fully invented something on their own that so completely aligns with my worldview that there is a serendipitous outcome.

Take a look at this (click here) ... it's as close to my worldview as anybody has come to embracing it. Tell me what you think (kevinh@minethatdata.com).

P.S.:  Often, the Executive who wants to implement the "Hillstrom System" is actually looking to implement dashboards. In upcoming posts, I'll tell you more about the "Hillstrom System", but the marketer is often looking for dashboard reporting that the analyst won't provide, and the analyst upon seeing dashboards refuses to program them. Happens all the time. It's why I stay away from "dashboard reporting requests" and "can you help us execute campaigns" requests. Both are symptoms of marketer/analyst disfunction.

This Statement is Accurate, and it is Inaccurate

Here's the link for all of you who love print and think #printisback, which most obviously ... is ... not ... back.

https://www.paperage.com/2024news/11-21-2024afpa-printing-writing-paper-report.html

Back out the impact of the election, and what do the numbers look like? You already know the answer.

#printisnotback

P.S. Ask yourself why the author of the article did two things to tell you that #printisback.

1. Why did the author not send this to you via print, if print is so viable?
2. Why is the author forcing you to PAY for access to the information? If print is so valuable, wouldn't you want every human being to know about it? Why demand that people PAY for it?

P.P.S.:  Some of you are going to argue that you perform matchbacks that prove that #printisback. My condolences to you. There is nothing in marketing more misleading than a matchback analysis among housefile customers. Nothing. It's completely corrupt. It's a confection of vendors in the print industry who want you to think that EVERY order generated by customers is linked to customers who received print. Look at your mail/holdout results, project those findings, then compare to your housefile matchback results. You'll find that you are overstating the impact of #printisback by between 100% and 500%. Yes, that much. You've been lied to that much. Ask yourself why you've been lied to, ok?

Enough Said Yes

Enough of you said yes to an offer to host a Happy Hour in January that I'll give it a try!

Amazingly, I had unsubs from this ... which is interesting ... why would that be the thing that causes somebody to say "ENOUGH OF THIS IDIOT!"?????

Your Thoughts: A Happy Hour?

Ok, tell me if you think you'd want to try this?

I follow sportswriter Molly Knight (https://bsky.app/profile/mollyknight.bsky.social), and from time to time during the baseball season she has chats and meetings for her subscribers. Well, I'm not a guy who'd make you pay for that kind of thing, but I thought it might be fun to test a video conference Happy Hour.

If you are interested, send me an email message (kevinh@minethatdata.com) and even suggest a topic that we could use to kick off Happy Hour. If there is enough interest, I'll pick a day in January to try the concept out.

Sound ok?

No Marketers

Oh, I get all sorts of "pitch emails" ... people who are confident they have the next big thing (which is usually not the next thing, and is usually not big).

I look for trends. If I see common themes repeated, yeah, I pay more attention.

A common theme you should think about?

• "My name is Bill, and my company AISource (not the real name) is going to revolutionize marketing. Seriously. We're going to eliminate all marketing employees in the future. Our AI-based solution will do all work - no marketers. An executive will set goals, then AI will adapt and change strategy based on market costs, targeted customers, and company goals."

It is easy enough to dismiss this message ... the odds of "AISource" being around in ten years are close to zero. The odds of "AI" greatly reducing marketing employee costs? Kind of high, don't you think?

If you are sixty years old, so what?

If you are thirty-three years old?

Technology comes for all of us. I recall being shown a distribution center a decade ago ... the Operations Executive was thrilled that he reduced expenses via technology - virtually no employees, virtually no mistakes. He was right, there wasn't a person to be seen anywhere. Today you drive on Loop 303 across the West Valley here in Arizona and it is an endless array of distribution centers and not many cars in the parking lot.

With technology, something is gained and something is lost. There's a reasonable chance that repetitive marketing jobs are going to be lost. All of us will be required to demonstrate the unique value we provide.

Rivalry Weekend

One of the few interesting things about retail / e-commerce is the fact that, at times, commerce becomes an awful lot like College Football (do not lecture me about the fact that College Football has become an awful lot like commerce ... that's a topic that everybody else gets to discuss).

There's so much fun in College Football, mostly in the last weekend of the season (mostly, because those who allegedly run college football took Washington - Washington State, Oregon - Oregon State, Iowa - Iowa State among others and shoved them into September).

• Ohio State and Michigan play a game that, for the first time, resulted in a flag being planted firmly in the home field of the losing team. Interestingly, a half-dozen games had similar outcomes.
• In the Midwest there is Farmageddon (Iowa State - Kansas State).
• Two teams play for an Old Oaken Bucket (Indiana - Purdue).
• UTEP and New Mexico State play for a Shovel!
• Auburn - Alabama sure don't like each other.
• Minnesota - Wisconsin play for Paul Bunyan's Axe.
• Georgia and Georgia Tech decided to determine their outcome after eight (8) overtimes.
• Here in Arizona ASU clobbered the Wildcats, though Arizona fans erupted in a loud and singular roar when ASU missed a kick that clanked off the upright, making the loudest sound in football history. DOINK.
• There are three dozen or more other rivalries being played out at the end of the season.

In retail / e-commerce, it should be duly noted that our version of Rivalry Week is held around the same time. It's called Black Friday - Cyber Monday.

Oh, it used to be better in the old days. In the spirit of Wicked, I once had a Department Director who called her counterpart at a competitor the "Wicked Witch of the West". At Eddie Bauer we had a "competitive analyst" working in the marketing department routinely get chased out of Gap stores while taking pictures of the merchandise layouts.

Those rivalries are now moved into the Black Friday - Cyber Monday window, and they're fought with p&l busting discounts and promotions ... mutual self-destruction.

I sat in a meeting on Cyber Monday (I've told you this story) where somebody walked into the Executive Boardroom with a piece of paper ... the CEO read the contents on the piece of paper, then immediately demanded an additional 10% off in the emails sent that day in an effort to "remain competitive". What, exactly, was the CEO "competing with/against"? Who could lose the most money and feel good about it?

I watched a brand spend Monday going from 50% off to 55% off to 60% off as the day progressed. Shame on you for purchasing at 9:00am, for you were a fool. You lost, the brand "won", and I'm not sure what the brand won giving away nearly every penny of gross margin.

I watched a brand who claims to have "promotional integrity" scream about 60% off clearance from the highest rooftops. An NFL Team offered "25% off Nike" ... Nike loves that stuff. Another company offered free shipping with a $50 hurdle on three consecutive email campaigns on Monday morning only to offer free shipping no hurdle at 7:15pm. To heck with the customer who paid for shipping at 6:46pm, there's Cyber Monday that needs to be "won".

On online auction site offered to discount items 25% and cover the difference for the seller. Just a big 'ole bonfire fueled with money going on there.

On LinkedIn a fuming poster commented that Amazon was ripping customers off by charging $40 for something they charged the customer $29 for a month ago. A quick check of the website showed that Amazon was selling the item for $29. But the angry outrage, how much fun is it to scream at injustices ... real or perceived ... on LinkedIn? Thought Leadership is fun!!

A headphone brand decided to mislead customers by sending an email offering 29% off a set of their headphones if you bought the headphones via their website ... which is generous ... but you could save an additional $10 buying them at Best Buy and an additional $50 buying them on Amazon. Omnichannel!! Just think about that ... only the loyal customer who subscribes to emails is misled. It's Cyber Monday, now support us by clicking through our email campaign and pay more for our merchandise you idiot!!

Walleye Direct offered free Walleye Strips, which, actually, is quite a good deal ... a good deal for everybody because you still have to order $200 of delicious perch, walleye, crappies, bluegills, pike, and whatever else to get free shipping.

Trade journalists will dissect the winners and losers of Black Friday - Cyber Monday, not realizing that nobody (outside of Walleye Direct) is a winner, everybody is a loser, customers included. Customers repeatedly overpaid by acting early, brands repeatedly torched the p&l by giving away more and more and more.

The theme shifts tomorrow to "will I get my package in time for Christmas?". I spoke with an Amazon delivery driver on Friday ... he's retired and is wintering in Arizona to help his daughter who has terrible health issues. And because she doesn't have good health care, he's doing the Amazon delivery job to help pay for her bills. Keep both of them in your thoughts, ok?