Making Good Decisions

Those of you deciding to save money in upcoming months ... especially those of you in the print world ... will need to make good decisions. Really good decisions. Like not killing customer acquisition efforts. Like finding ways to keep customers buying whatever is available without spending a lot of money telling customers to buy stuff.

A good decision? Not mailing email buyers. Not mailing digital buyers. Not mailing 25+ month buyers. I've been telling many of you this for nearly twenty years. A fair number of you listened, hiring me to cut back on wasteful variable marketing dollars.

Now the rest of you are going to be forced down this path. Or not. Who knows?

But if you are forced down this path, score every darn customer in your database for propensity to purchase from different marketing channels.

Example:

• Print Customers ... top 5% = "A", 6% - 15% = "B", 16% - 35% = "C", 36% - 60% = "D", 61% to bottom of file = "F".
  
• Apply Same Modeling Logic to "Omnichannel" Customers (respond to print online), Website Customers, Email Customers, "Digital Marketing" Customers, and Social Customers.

You likely mail a TON of "D" and "F" customers. Don't do that!

Here's a great example of an individual customer from a large dataset:

• "F" for Print.
• "D" for Omnichannel (Print via the Website).
• "C" for Website.
• "B" for Email.
• "B" for Digital Marketing.

Catalog brands likely mail this customer 2-8 times per year. Stop it! The customer is in the top 15% for email marketing. You're already speaking to this customer 7-21 times per week.

If you want to conserve marketing dollars without putting the top-line at risk, here's the place where you can make a good decision ... so do it!