Small Details

In pickleball, if you score on 47% of your serves instead of 44% of your serves, your probability of winning a game goes from 50% to 64%. Small details matter, they're the difference between being successful or average.

The same thing happens in your business. Especially in email marketing. Back in the stone ages (2001 - 2007) at Nordstrom we personalized the merchandise that each customer observed in an email message. You're not doing this today, and that says something.

Why did we do this?

Email might have accounted for 15% of ecommerce sales, annually, maybe $45,000,000 per year. By personalizing the merchandise the customer observed, the $45,000,000 number became $54,000,000 ... the additional $9,000,000 of ecommerce sales resulted in about $2,600,000 in additional profit. All for the cost of about $150,000 in salary/benefits.

Sounds like a good tradeoff, doesn't it?

It's 2026 ... almost none of you reach out to me and tell me you do anything more clever than an old-fashioned "batch-and-blast" tactic. Easy? Yes. Profitable? Yes! Leaving all sorts of profit laying on the ground, unable to be picked up? Yup. By skipping the small details, you harm the business you work for.

Let's assume you are a $50,000,000 ecommerce brand. Email accounts for 20% of sales (if it doesn't account for at least 20% of sales, you are failing as a retention marketer). Let's assume you aren't doing any merchandise personalization, thereby missing out on a 20% sales opportunity. Let's assume that 40% of gross demand flows-through to profit. What are you missing out on?

• $50,000,000 * 0.20 = $10,000,000 as your email marketing base.
• Personalization = 0.20 * $10,000,000 = $2,000,000 additional gross sales.
• Profit?  $2,000,000 * 0.40 = $800,000.

If your business is wildly profitable, you likely generate 10% EBIT ... $50,000,000 * 0.10 = $5,000,000 profit. Would you like profit to increase by 16% (from $5,000,000 to $5,800,000)?

Hint - your CFO wants you to do this.

If your business has tepid ... just $2,500,000 ... the increase of $800,000 is more than a 30% increase in corporate profit ... from just paying attention to a small detail.

Those small details also translate to your personalized website, which you have ... right?

Lands' End in the early 90s was the only company I ever worked for that cared deeply about small details. I recall our Circulation Director sending her Circulation Managers back to the drawing board if gross margins were projected to increase by 0.2% ... they had to spend a week re-working an entire spring/summer season to account for the fact that we were every-so-marginally more profitable.

Small Details = Big Profit Swings.