Gliebers Dresses: Shop.org Edition

Welcome to the weekly Executive Meeting.

Glenn Glieber (Owner): "... you'd think you could trust Chip Cayman, given that he's worked with us so extensively, but no, you can't trust him anymore. I cannot believe he publicly mocked us at the Shop.org conference."

Meredith Thompson (Chief Merchandising Officer): "Kevin, is that you?"

Kevin: "Yup, it's me."

Meredith Thompson: "Did you hear about what happened at Shop.org yesterday, Kevin?"

Kevin: "No, I'm not at Shop.org this week."

Meredith Thompson: "Pepper used her phone to videotape Chip Cayman's presentation, titled 'Lousy Websites and Lousy Online Marketers'. He spent a disproportionate amount of time ripping our website."

Roger Morgan (Chief Operations Officer): "Idiot."

Kevin: "So what was his problem with Gliebers Dresses?"

Roger Morgan: "The audience just kept laughing at us, mocking us. And Chip had that stupid giggle going through the whole presentation. We don't have a problem, we have an 8% conversion rate!"

Kevin: "So what was his problem with Gliebers Dresses?"

Lois Gladstone (Chief Financial Officer): "He said our website looked like it was created by an old version of Microsoft Frontpage. The audience just roared."

Roger Morgan: "Again, if the website is so bad, then why do we have an 8% conversion rate?"

Kevin: "If you segment out all visits from catalog customers, what is the conversion rate?"

Roger Morgan: "About 1.5%"

Kevin: "What do you think about that?"

Roger Morgan: "You have to understand, Kevin, we're a multichannel brand. We drive traffic via offline and online marketing."

Kevin: "But do you think that a 1.5% conversion rate is acceptable for non-catalog shoppers?"

Meredith Thompson: "Kevin, we're a multichannel brand. We focus our efforts on print, on using the catalog to drive qualified shoppers online. Who cares if we have a 1.5% conversion rate among non-catalog customers? Our job is to use catalog marketing to encourage a customer to shop however she wants to shop. And we do that well, really, really well, or we wouldn't have an 8% conversion rate."

Roger Morgan: "Chip said we have no shopping cart abandonment marketing tools, that we only 'spray and pray' when we send out our e-mail marketing campaigns, that our catalogs have no online call to action, that our organic search is nothing short of pathetic, that our live chat functionality is awful. And yet, we have an 8% conversion rate."

Meredith Thompson: "Why would he hire a consultant, open our books to him, share our business model with him, and then let him use our information to mock us and make him look great in front of 600 conference attendees?"

Roger Morgan: "Do you know how easy it is to mock companies? I mean, these consultants, they pick on big companies like us to make themselves look good. And the audience laughs and laughs and laughs, yeah, Gliebers Dresses, those stupid lumbering fools. The conferences encourage this, they encourage consultants to rip regular companies like ours, because it encourages people to attend, and then they make a ton of money. I'd like to see all these vendor fools and consulting idiots go try to enact real change within real companies. There's a reason they don't work at real companies, they could never be effective within a real company. Never. It is so easy to pick on other people, it's like throwing a dart at an elephant from ten feet away. It is hard to enact change within a real company."

Meredith Thompson: "Really hard."

Lois Gladstone: "But let's address the elephant in the room without throwing a dart at it. Does Chip Cayman have a point?"

Roger Morgan: "Of course you'd take his side. No, he doesn't have a point. He's mocking us so that he looks impressive in front of the 600 people he's speaking with. He makes money by destroying people and companies. All of those consultants and vendors make their hay by destroying hard working people. He probably makes twenty times my annual salary, and he does it in sleazy way. I have no respect for him."

Lois Gladstone: "Could we do better than a 1.5% conversion rate among non-catalog shoppers?"

Meredith Thompson: "Lois, you haven't been in this industry very long, so you don't understand the subtleties of a multichannel brand like ours. If we do multichannel marketing well, then we're profitable. We don't look at conversion rates of individual activities. We are the multiplicative result of multichannel marketing activities."

Lois Gladstone: "Didn't you rip Candi Layton for using the same type of lizard logic?"

Meredith Thompson: "No, Candi is talking about Social Media, an unproven marketing channel that nobody is able to use to drive more than 1% or 2% of total sales. We're talking about a proven marketing strategy that has worked for fifteen years."

Lois Gladstone: "Could we do better than a 1.5% conversion rate? Roger, could we do better?"

Roger Morgan: "Yes, if I had the money to make improvements to the website, we could potentially do better."

Kevin: "Maybe as a team, we should stay away from talking about improvements or money or conversion rates. Might we instead focus on the customer? If non-catalog shoppers have a 1.5% conversion rate, it suggests that we aren't meeting the needs of the non-catalog shopper, right? Sure, the website could be fundamentally broken, but by the same token, some of the ugliest websites in the world have the best conversion rates. So the issue isn't about the conversion rate, the issue is about meeting the needs of the non-catalog customer. Does Gliebers Dresses meet or exceed the needs of the non-catalog customer? And if Gliebers Dresses is not meeting or exceeding the needs of the non-catalog customer, then what should Gliebers Dresses do to meet the needs of the non-catalog customer? Or do you even want to meet the needs of the non-catalog customer? Many catalogers don't want to do that, they want to focus on their core catalog customer, so if that is the case, who cares if your website doesn't convert non-catalog traffic? Strategically, it is the responsibility of the management team to assign the reason why you do catalog marketing, customer acquisition, customer loyalty, paid search, e-mail marketing, organic search, affiliate marketing, website design and functionality. Every micro-channel has a reason, and your website has a reason for being. You have to decide if your website is there to take orders from catalog customers, or if it is there to do that as well as convert other shoppers. What is your business model, define it?!! The Executive team sets the strategic direction for the company."

Glenn Glieber: "Well, that was an interesting discussion. Now on to more pressing matters. Roger, I want for you to make sure that when we meet with Pulse Marketing (an online advertising agency) next week, we have those really good sandwiches from Mary's Box Lunches, ok?"

Call For Data, And Do You Want To See A Simple OMS Spreadsheet?

Two things for you, the loyal reader.

First, I have a 10mb Online Marketing Spreadsheet I'd be willing to share with you. Everything has been dummied in the spreadsheet (channels, merchandise divisions, segments, sales performance, rebuy rates). The spreadsheet is purposely messy and undocumented, and I chose not to include any of the advertising effectiveness components of the spreadsheet (i.e. increase pay-per-click budget by 20%, increase total sales by 8%). If you'd like to see the spreadsheet, send me an e-mail message. Your e-mail client will need to be able to accept a large, Microsoft Office 2007 Excel format file (.xlsl).

Second, I am looking for a volunteer dataset. For obvious reasons, I cannot share client data with you, so I'm looking for one of two potential datasets that I could share the results of with you.

I'm looking for an e-commerce brand willing to send me summarized clickstream/visit data and purchase data for a multi-year period of time, a brand wanting to demonstrate the long-term value of actions that happened yesterday (shopping cart abandonment, visit certain pages but do not put items in a shopping cart, click-through an e-mail campaign but do not purchase, that kind of thing).

I'd also consider a social media dataset, one where we could demonstrate how short-term actions change the long-term trajectory/value of a user.

I would never give away your trade secrets, share proprietary information, or in any other way harm your business. I would, however, publish how customers interact with your business via the Online Marketing Simulation, similar to the way I've shared OMS concepts over the past few months. In return, you get free OMS project work. I'm asking about data because many of you are suggesting that you want to see the Online Marketing Simulation "come to life". You want to see concrete examples. This is one way to accomplish this.

If you have an interest in this type of project, please send me an e-mail message describing your business and the data you'd be willing to share.

Gliebers Dresses: Order Attribution And Retention Attribution

Welcome to the weekly Executive Meeting at Gliebers Dresses!

Glenn Glieber (Owner): "... so there I am, sitting in the audience, waiting to see who Multichannel Merchandiser is going to name as the top fashion cataloger for 2009. There was some stiff competition, I'm telling you! And then he makes the announcement, 'Glenn Glieber wins the award for the top fashion cataloger of 2009!' Well, I just about fell out of my chair. I walked up to the stage, absolutely bursting with pride. The audience applauds. I really wanted to thank my customers for all of their support, because without them, none of this is possible. And then out of the corner of my eye, I see Sarah Wheldon coming toward me, and I'm thinking, 'I really like what she's done with her hair'. Then I'm thinking, 'why is she taking the microphone out of my hand?' And she turns to the audience and says 'I think you did a good job, Mr. Glieber, but I cannot believe that Anna Carter did not win this award, Anna Carter's catalogs might be the best fashion catalogs of all time.' She hands the microphone back to me, storms off the stage while the audience buzzes, and there I stand, absolutely at a loss for words."

Roger Morgan (Chief Operations Officer): "What did you say?"

Glenn Glieber: "I just sort of ducked-off the stage. I had to go back on in five minutes and give a talk about how to drive e-commerce sales through the use of print, because as we all know, print isn't dead. So I just had to regroup, go back out there, and perform."

Meredith Thompson (Chief Merchandising Officer): "Kevin, is that you?"

Kevin (Me): "Yup, it's me."

Lois Gladstone (Chief Financial Officer): "Did Sarah Wheldon apologize to you?"

Glenn Glieber: "Well, she did an interview over on ResponseShop's blog, and apologized for the incident. But she hasn't contacted me personally to offer an apology."

Lois Gladstone: "What has happened to civility in this country? Everybody has a megaphone, and is busy shouting at everybody else. Our parents didn't raise us to act like this, did they? I had to address adults with a Mr. or Mrs. prefix. Now people can scream out loud at the President, or steal the stage from an owner who built the best fashion dress brand in all of New England, and beyond. What happened to manners?"

Roger Morgan: "Seriously!"

Meredith Thompson: "My parents would never have allowed for us to step all over other people when they are talking. There's just a certain level of respect you should have for others."

Pepper Morgan: "Kevin, did you bring your analysis with you on how our Retention Rates break down by the marketing activities that drive them?"

Kevin: "Yes I did. Now that Pepper is in her new job, she asked me to use a new tool that I've developed, called the 'Online Marketing Simulation', to decompose how retention rates are impacted by marketing activities. You see, ..."

Roger Morgan: "Aren't you just copying what Lucid Commerce has done? I read a Neptune Research report about them, that's some cool stuff."

Kevin: "Yes, what they are doing is neat, especially in the online space. Anyway, I was saying, if you ..."

Lois Gladstone: "How the heck would you ever decompose marketing activities? We send a catalog on Monday, we send an e-mail campaign on Tuesday. Both activities cause a customer to purchase online. How would anybody ever be able to split that order accurately between catalog marketing and e-mail marketing? I'd give e-mail marketing credit, it's free, and the customer probably wouldn't buy unless we gave her a discount or a promotion in the e-mail marketing message."

Kevin: "That's a interesting point. Online marketing folks call what you are talking about 'order attribution', and in catalog marketing, it is called 'matchback'. Anyway, that's not really what I'm talking about here. Pepper asked me to do something different. You see, Pepper ..."

Roger Morgan: "Last week I read a Woodside Research report about order attribution. They said that the debate isn't about first click or last click getting credit for an order, that these days, we need to focus our efforts on what they call 'holistic attribution', giving all channels credit. I mean, it's all about being multichannel, all of the time. Then you throw social media and mobile marketing in the mix, and my goodness, what a powerful toolkit, huh?"

Kevin: "Well, there might be some truth to that. Still, I think that ..."

Meredith Thompson: "Roger, why would we focus on clicks? The catalogs drive the majority of online sales anyway, so focusing on clicks to online ads is seriously misleading. If Pepper does a great job with creative in the catalog, causing somebody to go to Google and click on a paid search ad, then you are saying that Woodside Research wants us to focus on the click? That's foolish."

Kevin: "That's a good point, too. In the Online Marketing Simulation, we focus on ..."

Lois Gladstone: "Wait a minute, are you hawking a new product, is that what this is about? I haven't heard about this new product. If what you're doing is so innovative, wouldn't somebody at ResponseShop be selling this product to us? Or wouldn't somebody at ResponseShop have licensed the product from you, if it is so great? I'm just saying, you know?"

Kevin: "Technically, no, I'm not hawking a new product, because you aren't paying for it and because Pepper asked me to do this analysis for you. If Pepper hadn't asked me to do this, I wouldn't have brought it up. Now, let's review slide number one, a slide that shows ..."

Roger Morgan: "Let's just get to the point, here, folks! I have a conference call with Neptune Research at 10:00am to go over contact center cross-sell and up-sell best practices."

Kevin: "Basically, the analysis indicates the following. We have a 54% annual retention rate, as of last month ..."

Lois Gladstone: "It's going up because of our loyalty program, isn't it?"

Kevin: "The 54% annual retention rate is decomposed as follows: 20 points will happen no matter what. If you don't advertise, 20 of the 54 percentage points happen, because customers have developed a reasonable level of brand loyalty."

Pepper Morgan: "Not many companies know that rate, do they, Kevin? That means 37% of our business (20/54) happens without any advertising, that's our 'organic percentage', right Kevin?"

Kevin: "Yes, that's right. 20 points are organic. Another 12 points are because of catalog marketing. 8 points happen because of discounts, promotions, and free shipping. 4 points happen because of paid search marketing, 3 points happen because of e-mail marketing, 2 points happen because of natural search, 2 point happens because of affiliate marketing, 1 point from call center cross-sell and up-sell programs, 1 point from e-commerce cross-sell and up-sell programs, and 1 point from our loyalty program."

Lois Gladstone: "And you came up with this by allocating orders to the advertising channel that drove the order?"

Roger Morgan: "That is the current industry best practice".

Kevin: "No, I did this the opposite way. I used the Online Marketing Simulation to estimate what would happen in the future if you took each of these marketing activities away. If you remove an activity like affiliate marketing, then I simulate how those customers will behave in the future. Or if you remove the catalog, then I can simulate how those customers will behave in the future. Interestingly, if you take away a marketing activity, then orders that used to be credited to the old marketing activity are re-allocated to other marketing activities. It's a very interesting and new way to ..."

Roger Morgan: "If ResponseShop isn't doing this, then I'm not sure I buy into this program yet. I think it is really important to not be on the bleeding edge of something."

Pepper Morgan: "Folks, we're going to take marketing in a new direction here at Gliebers Dresses. We're going to finally understand what it is that drives our business, and incorporate it into our marketing decisions. Do all of you want for this business to be more profitable? Well if your answer is yes, and I think it is a 'yes', then we need to start acting upon marketing decisions that not only give us a return on investment today, but promise a return on investment tomorrow. We are going to begin to use a new set of tools to hold us to a new set of accountability. This is going to ..."

Glenn Glieber: "Ok folks, that's enough for today. Great meeting! Ok, on to our next topic. I'd like to ..."

Lois Gladstone: "I still cannot believe that Sarah Wheldon cut you off, Glenn, during your big moment in the sun."

Roger Morgan: "It's completely unacceptable."

Meredith Thompson: "It's like our world has lost all semblance of civility."

Gliebers Dresses: The New Chief Marketing Officer

A press release from Gliebers Dresses:

Gliebers Dresses Announces The Appointment Of Pepper Morgan To The Position Of Chief Marketing Officer

September 15, 2009: Gliebers Dresses, the premiere purveyor of dresses in all of New England, and beyond, is proud to announce that Pepper Morgan has been named Chief Marketing Officer.

Ms. Morgan brings fifteen years of marketing experience to the CMO position. Ms. Morgan began her career as a copywriter at Anna Carter, and was eventually promoted to Creative Director, before leaving Anna Carter for the tradition-rich environment at Gliebers Dresses. As Creative Director, Ms. Morgan was responsible for many of the innovations that fueled the e-commerce website's prolific growth. As of today, 75% of all sales come in via the e-commerce website.

"Pepper Morgan exemplifies all of the qualities that embody the Gliebers Dresses brand. She's a perfect fit within the Gliebers Dresses culture, and our employees have a comfortable working relationship with her. We anticipate that Pepper will combine her artistic skills, e-commerce knowledge, and a budding desire to learn catalog marketing, fueling the future profitability of our brand." stated Glenn Glieber, Owner of Gliebers Dresses.

Pepper will be supported by a trio of leaders responsible for growing the Gliebers Dresses brand. Boris Feldman has been named Manager of Analytics, Jill Jackson has been named Manager of Circulation and Online Marketing, and Candi Layton has been named to the newly created position of Director of Emerging Media and Public Relations.

Media inquiries should be directed to Candi Layton, Director of Emerging Media and Public Relations.

OMS vs. Multichannel Forensics

One of our loyal readers says ... "I don't understand how OMS represents the logical evolution of Multichannel Forensics."

We've been talking about Multichannel Forensics for almost four years. The metrics (MPT) and the modes (Retention Mode, Hybrid Mode, Acquisition Mode, Isolation Mode, Equilibrium Mode, Transfer Mode, Oscillation Mode) are unique to Multichannel Forensics. We use the metrics and modes to describe how customers migrate through our channels, we learn the role that each of our channels play in our total business.

It has been my experience that Analysts/Managers are very interested in this aspect of Multichannel Forensics.

It has been my experience that CEOs/CFOs/CMOs are very interested in having me predict what sales will look like, by marketing channel (catalog, e-mail, pay-per-click, affiliates, natural search, organic demand), for each of the next five years. They want to understand how e-mail marketing will be impacted by paid search, how affiliates influence future off-price purchase activity. They want to know if they should invest more/less in e-commerce. They want to know what impact their website has on retail sales. They want to know why certain merchandise divisions aren't growing online anymore. They want to be able to understand if shopping cart abandonment truly impacts long-term customer behavior, or if it is a psuedo-metric that isn't truly correlated with long-term customer value, sales, and profit.

In other words, the needs of business leaders changed in the past two years. The focus dramatically shifted ... reduce offline marketing expense, find ways to understand online customers beyond segmentation and conversion rates and optimization.

CEOs/CFOs/CMOs were increasingly asking me to fold online activity into the Multichannel Forecasts I was running. This really picked up after the economy crumbled last fall. E-commerce no longer represented an unfettered growth channel. Boards and Owners are now challenging CEOs to present an accurate picture of long-term e-commerce growth, in order to make long-term investment decisions.

After receiving several similar requests from Management teams across a diverse set of companies, requests that shifted focus from high-level channels (retail, online, catalog) to online channels (e-mail, pay-per-click, affiliates) and their impact on the total business, it became obvious that we needed to evolve the forecasting component of Multichannel Forensics projects.

This is why you now see the intense focus on the Online Marketing Simulation on this blog. This is what business leaders are now asking me to do for them.

And this is why I am imploring you, the Web Analytics expert, to read this content carefully, and to adopt this information in your daily activities. Your business leaders are looking for you to do this type of work for them.

Gilt Group, Rue La La, And A Different Shopping Model

Have you read this article about luxury apparel companies? If there's only time for one article this week, read this article.

Just look at Gilt Group's home page. Is this the well merchandised home page the experts taught us to build? If you're a first time visitor without the luxury of knowing somebody who shops Gilt Group, what do you think your conversion rate will be (conversion = purchase)?

Sites like Rue La La encourage you to join a waiting list, a waiting list!!?? Weren't we taught to make it easy for a first time visitor to find what they want, followed by a discount/promo e-mail when the customer leaves the site after putting something in the shopping cart? These sites are experiencing exponential growth doing the opposite of what industry experts tell us to do.

While we're busy wondering if homepage text should be salmon-colored or periwinkle-colored, Gilt Group is busy going from $0 to $150,000,000 in two years, heading to $400,000,000 by this time next year. Please take one moment and think about what that kind of growth means.

Question: Ignore your core business for a moment, because ninety five out of one-hundred of us are unwilling to make significant changes to the core business. Would you be willing to try the type of innovation that Gilt Group / Rue La La are doing for a brand new business unit within your brand? If not, please use the comments section to explain why, and if your point of view is "... that wouldn't work in our industry", explain how you know it wouldn't work if you haven't tried it yet.

Gliebers Dresses: Q&A With Meredith Thompson

We get a lot of questions, on Twitter, via comments on the blog, or via e-mail. So today we're going to do something different. We'll let the fictional Chief Merchandising Officer at Gliebers Dresses, Meredith Thompson, address real questions from real readers about our fictional case study.

Kevin: "Meredith, are you ready for a handful of questions from our audience?"

Meredith Thompson (Chief Merchandising Officer): "Absolutely!"

Kevin: "The first question comes from a reader on Twitter --- the individual wants to know if you want to punch Candi Layton in the face for not taking accountability for driving sales and profit via social media?"

Meredith Thompson: "Oh heavens no! We can agree to disagree. My problem isn't with Candi as a person, my problem is with social media as a marketing channel. It offends me that I have be held accountable for getting customers to buy something today --- if the customer doesn't buy my merchandise, I lose my job, and many employees in many departments lose jobs. Sarah Wheldon lost her job because she failed to use marketing channels to drive sales. But these social media people, they seem to have different rules. They get to have a job because of the profit I generate, then they suggest that they shouldn't be measured on the basis of sales and profit, they suggest that the sales and profit will appear in the future if they have honest conversations with customers and fans today. I have no interest in subsidizing extroverted conversations. It is Candi's job to be an advocate of her channel. But as a member of the Executive Team, it is her job to be accountable for generating sales and profit. So I want to know what the metrics are that help all of us quantify her impact on the company. I think that is a fair question. I have no interest in funding 'play time' for other employees."

Kevin: "We received many comments about who should be the next Chief Marketing Officer. The catalog audience is fervent about Stan Klepsky. What are your thoughts?"

Meredith Thompson: "I interviewed each candidate individually, and participated in each group interview. I'm not sure the right candidate exists. We need a person who knows something about catalog marketing, because that is our heritage, we'll destroy that channel if we hire a person with no catalog marketing experience. But by the same token, we need a person with a vision for how to use online and social media channels. And finally, we need a person who fits within our culture. Nobody ever talks about corporate culture. I can assure you that fitting in a corporate culture is more important than having the right skills. So I think that Pepper is the person who should become the Chief Marketing Officer. She has experience at a major competitor, she knows something about catalog marketing, and she knows our culture."

Kevin: "We received an e-mail from an individual who was 'broken hearted' when Sarah Wheldon was fired. How did you feel about that decision?"

Meredith Thompson: "I think 'broken hearted' is a reasonable way to describe how a lot of us felt. The hardest thing to acknowledge is that there is a need for a new set of skills. We don't need an online marketing expert, and we don't need a catalog marketing expert. We need something unique, and there aren't many people with the unique set of skills we need. It isn't like Sarah did anything wrong, it was her job to maximize catalog productivity, and then, oh, by the way, she is supposed to acquire true online marketing skills without the resources necessary to get them. I think we all miss her. I hate seeing all the people I used to work with being let go, one by one. We're running out of true 'catalogers' around here."

Kevin: "One of our readers asked me to ask you if it isn't your job, as Chief Marketing Officer, to tell the story of your brand?"

Meredith Thompson: "That's not easy to do. Pepper owns how the merchandise is presented. Pepper owns who receives catalog and e-mail campaigns. Pepper owns copy writing. So technically, no, I shouldn't own the story of the brand, technically, Pepper and Glenn own that story. That being said, if I ever got the opportunity, you better believe I'd be the one telling the story!"

Kevin: "One of our readers labeled the Executive team as being 'dumb and dysfunctional'. How would you respond to that statement?"

Meredith Thompson: "I'd take offense with that comment. I doubt that any person who ever worked on an Executive Team would say that. If any person could read the minutes from any Executive meeting at any company, I think they'd be stunned by what they would read. There are interpersonal dynamics that cannot be easily understood until you've worked with other powerful leaders. Roger thinks he can do marketing, even though that's not his job, so he's going to throw out a bunch of ideas, good and bad. Pepper thinks she can do social media, so she's going to question Candi. Candi thinks her audience has merchandising ideas, so she wants their ideas implemented. Lois is the CFO, so she micro-manages all of our activities in an effort to control expenses. Heck, I think I can do all of their jobs. All of us know that none of us can be CEO, so we have a different set of motivating factors --- at other companies, people are competing to be the next CEO, so they end up being a bit more 'politically correct', if you will. And if you don't agree with our behavior, go sit in the lunch room with our entry-level employees, and listen to what they talk about, all of the gossip and speculation and pontification. Odd things happen when diverse people interact."

Kevin: "Here's a self-serving question. One of our readers wants to know why Gliebers Dresses ignores so many of my recommendations?"

Meredith Thompson: "I don't think we ignore them. You're not always right, some of your ideas don't fit with the direction we want to take, sometimes we don't fully understand what you are recommending, and we sometimes make mistakes by not listening to your recommendations."

Kevin: "One of our readers wants to know why your business is fueled by gut instinct, opinion, and emotion, when it could be fueled by metrics and key performance indicators?"

Meredith Thompson: "Maybe the quickest route to obscurity is to run your business on the basis of metrics and key performance indicators. Metrics and key performance indicators have a place, don't get me wrong. I need to know if my return rate increases from 30% to 37%. I need to know if conversion rates dropped from 8% to 7%. But the fuel that drives a business is merchandise passion. None of the key performance metrics make any difference if I don't have a passion for creating compelling merchandise. I don't need Bow-Tie Guy to tell me that we have 4% fewer great customers, therefore, the potential of our business is not being met. I can look at the merchandise that is selling, and the merchandise that is not selling, and make my own decisions. When I make good decisions, we have an increase great customers. I drive the metrics, the metrics don't drive me."

Kevin: "I think the reader was wondering why, as an Executive team, decisions are sometimes based on irrational arguments rather than facts?"

Meredith Thompson: "Like having a loyalty program based on four or more dresses purchased in the past twelve months? I think every Executive wants to think that they have all the answers. Nobody wants to make decisions because some report tells you to make decisions, that's not fun. It is a complete adrenaline rush to take a shot, to develop a loyalty program with arbitrary criteria, and then to see it work! You're the reason it worked, you're accountable, you get recognized! Any trained monkey can read a report filled with metrics, and then do what the report tells you to do. You become an Executive by taking risks that turn out to be profitable."

Kevin: "This reader left a comment and said that 'Gliebers Dresses deserves to fail'. Does Gliebers Dresses deserve to fail?"

Meredith Thompson: "The customer will decide whether we deserve to fail. It is our job to do the best we can at Merchandising, Creative, Marketing, Operations, and Finance. After that, the customer decides. The easiest thing to do is to criticize a group of individuals when you are not part of that group of individuals. The hardest thing to do is to move a group of individuals with diverse job roles, experience levels, and differing motivations in a common and profitable direction."

Kevin: "Meredith, thank you for taking the time to chat with our readers."

Meredith Thompson: "Kevin, thank you!"