Won / Lost Record

I've told you this story several times, but it really speaks to the importance of "how" you communicate.

More than a decade ago, I had a client that performed terribly. Sales were in decline, profit was tepid. And yet, you'd visit their campus and "all was good". Nobody, and I mean "nobody" cared.

So, I converted their high-level financial data into an NFL Won/Lost record. I created an equation based on financials for publicly traded retailers - then plugged their data into the equation. It looked something like this.

In this case, the business contracted by 6.7%, and posted a 4% pre-tax profit rate. This translates to an NFL team going 6-11.

Well, I compared their brand to the home town NFL team, a team that had a comparable record the year prior, firing the coach in the process.

This DID ... NOT ... GO ... OVER ... WELL!

"We aren't that bad!"

"Are you suggesting we should be fired?! Really? You think WE should be fired? We're paying you for your advice, and you do this?"

Within a few days, the brand converted a conference room into a "War Room". Within a few weeks, the CEO fired the Chief Marketing Officer. Problem solved! (Narrator:  The problem was not solved).

One of the areas I catch grief for these days is email marketing. I'll state that 20% of e-commerce sales should come from email marketing. Clients HOWL at that suggestion.

• "You obviously don't know about attribution ... email is a bottom-of-the-funnel channel, you're wrong."
• "You don't understand, our ESP said if we mail too often we lose customer trust and we'll be penalized and be placed in junk mail folders."

And yet ... regardless of attribution solution or ESP "guidance" ... clients with a high fraction of sales from email marketing are generally highly profitable.

So instead of arguing ... maybe look at your metrics and then look in the mirror, ok?