Borders, Debt, Multichannel Marketing

Borders sought Chapter 11 protection earlier this week.


To blame bankruptcy on being behind the curve in the adoption of books as a digital enterprise represents a fundamental misunderstanding of multichannel marketing.


Let's start with the concept of debt.


You have a brand like Bed Bath and Beyond.  They don't have any debt.  Now, this prevents them from expanding and growing at an unfettered pace.  But they have a level of flexibility that allows them to ride out economic highs and lows.


Consider the financial situation of two individuals.

• Individual #1 earns $100,000 per year, taking home $6,000 per month.  Individual #1 makes a $2,000 monthly mortgage payment (debt), and has financial commitments for $3,500 per month in expenses, yielding $500 each month that can be "saved".
• Individual #2 earns $90,000 per year, taking home $5,400 per month.  Individual #2 does not have a mortgage payment (no debt), and has financial commitments for $3,700 per month in expenses, yielding $1,700 each month that can be "saved".

What happens if each individual has a health problem, requiring each individual to pay, say, $1,000 a month in insurance co-pays?


What happens if each individual is required to take a 10% pay cut?


This is what debt does to a retailer.  Or to anybody.  It cripples a person, family, or brand.


The multichannel vision was a simple one ... built on the premise that customers loved to shop, they loved to shop offline or online, and they loved online and offline advertising.  This required businesses to "do everything".  It's really hard to "do everything".  If you want to do everything, you almost have to borrow money.  And when you borrow money, you have no margin for error.


Multichannel marketing requires "margin for error".  Channels grow, and channels die ... heck, look at the music industry.  Flexibility is of the utmost importance.  Retail, unfortunately, is fixed, inflexible, and often debt-laden.


The retail channel limits innovation ... you simply cannot take a risk in retail that would cost you sales, or you'll need to borrow more money.  This is what causes a business to not be able to invest in digital books in the same way that a more solvent business, or a single-channel business (Amazon) can invest.


You cannot tell me that all Executives at Borders were so blind to digital innovation that they completely missed the Kindle/Nook revolution.  And let's not blame them for partnering with Amazon ... heck, half the pundits in 2000 thought it was pointless to have an e-commerce website when one could achieve "scale" by partnering with Amazon.  It's ok to make bets that are wrong.


The real issue is debt.


Wall St. wants retailers to take on debt.


Some vendors want retailers to take on debt, because that means that retailers will spend money with said vendors.


Focus, instead, on doing what is right for the customer.

And stay away from debt, if at all possible.  Multichannel marketing requires flexibility, debt takes flexibility away.

Forecast Forensics: Are Channels Complimentary?

Let me ask you a question:

• "For every dollar you increase the amount of demand you generate in Search, how much additional demand do you generate in all of your other advertising/physical channels?'

Can you answer that question?

If not, why not?  I mean, that's about as basic a question as you're ever going to run across, right?

The Forecast Forensics framework can be used to answer these questions.  After all, all of this multichannel stuff says that channels work together in a multiplicative way to grow our businesses exponentially, right?

So, I ran the framework for data I have.  I ran four simulations, across five years.

• Simulation #1 = Base Case.
• Simulation #2 = Grow Telephone Volume by $1.5 Million in Year Five.
• Simulation #3 = Grow Search Volume by $1.5 Million in Year Five.
• Simulation #4 = Grow Mobile Volume by $1.5 Million in Year Five.

Let's look at how other channels grow, when these channels grow.

Grow Telephone Demand By $1.5 Million In Year Five:

• Telephone = Increase of $1.5 Million.
• Online = Increase of $0.2 Million.
• E-Mail = Increase of < $0.1 Million.
• Search = Increase of < $0.1 Million.
• Social = Increase of < $0.1 Million.
• Mobile = Increase of < $0.1 Million.

Grow Search Demand By $1.5 Million In Year Five:

• Telephone = Increase of $0.2 Million.
• Online = Increase of $1.0 Million.
• E-Mail = Increase of $0.5 Million.
• Search = Increase of $1.5 Million.
• Social = Increase of $0.1 Million.
• Mobile = Increase of $0.1 Million.

Grow Mobile Demand By $1.5 Million In Year Five:

• Telephone = Increase of $0.3 Million.
• Online = Increase of $1.0 Million.
• E-Mail = Increase of $0.7 Million.
• Search = Increase of $0.3 Million.
• Social = Increase of $0.1 Million.
• Mobile = Increase of $1.5 Million.

In other words, each channel yields a different result.

• Growing Telephone orders (i.e. sending catalogs to rural customers) results in a simple increase in the Telephone channel, without helping other channels.  Each Telephone dollar adds $0.20 across other channels. Catalog orders over the phone are not complementary to other channels, in this case.
• Growing Search orders results in $1.5 million in Search and $1.9 million in other channels.  Each Search dollar you add results in $1.27 being added to other channels, as well.  Search is complementary to other channels, in this case.
• Growing Mobile orders results in $1.5 million in Mobile and $2.4 million in other channels.  Each Mobile dollar you add results in $1.60 being added to other channels, as well.  Mobile is complementary to other channels, in this case.

As a marketer, you probably want to know this fact, right?  I mean, knowing this helps you allocate marketing dollars appropriately ... your attribution models aren't going to tell you this, so it is a pretty important fact to know, right?

Give the Forensics Forecast methodology a try ... you're going to be fascinated by what you learn about how customers interact with the channels you support!

Marketing Campaign Performance: Kevin, Are You An Idiot?

After talking about different analytics "systems" on Sunday, I received a common question:

• "How is what you do different than what we do?"

In other words, the real question is this?

• "What, exactly, is your "system"?

Good question!

The Multichannel Forensics "system" (a derivation of the Forecasting system I described on Sunday) ignores campaign performance ... that's how it is different than what you do.

Huh?  How can you ignore campaign performance?  Are you an idiot?  Have you ever looked at a funnel report?  Don't you know how important subject lines are in e-mail performance?  Have you ever measured the response rate of a postcard?  Have you ever used Klout to measure your online influence?  Are you an idiot?

That's the kind of response I sometimes get.


The best thing that can ever happen to a marketing/analytics professional is to work at a company that is failing, or to work for a channel that is failing.  For me, Lands' End 1995, Eddie Bauer 1998, Nordstrom 2001, or consulting work for 70% of current catalog brands qualifies.  Online marketers cannot relate to failure, for even during the Great Recession, online sales generally grew as online cannibalized existing channels.  Other marketers, however, are well-versed in failure.  Failure changes everything.

When you are failing, you evaluate every campaign, looking to unearth the reason why a business is failing.  When you do this, you learn critical truths about customer behavior.

• Customers exhibit roughly the same loyalty on a year-over-year basis.
• Customers purchase roughly the same number of times, per year, every year.
• Customers increase spend, on a year-over-year basis, at roughly the rate of inflation.

In other words, marketing campaigns are little more than a big game of "whack-a-mole".

Look at this grid.  Each hole represents a marketing campaign.  Each mole represents success.  In total, you see six "successes".


When your business is failing, you notice that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you're going to be stuck with six successes, total.  That's it.  Two things make the problem worse ... the six successes aren't necessarily predictable/repeatable, year-over-year, and overall, every campaign is 5% or 10% worse than last year.


In other words, it's very, VERY hard to fix a business by fixing campaign performance.


Catalogers know this.


In 1995, the cataloger mailed 20 catalogs a year ... that's it.


In 2011, the cataloger mails 26 catalogs a year, delivers 110 e-mail campaigns per year, manages 67,000 keyword combinations, partners with 22,000 affiliates, has 38,000 fans on Facebook, and 11,000 followers on Twitter.


In 1995, the cataloger exhibited the following loyalty metrics:

• 45% annual retention rate among 12-month buyers.
• 2.3 purchases per retained buyer.
• $100 per order.

In 2011, the cataloger exhibits the following loyalty metrics:

• 45% annual retention rate among 12-month buyers.
• 2.3 purchases per retained buyer.
• $135 per order.

The only thing that fundamentally changed, over sixteen years, is the average order value ... this grew at an inflationary rate.


In other words, marketing campaigns "don't matter".  Marketing campaigns don't change customer behavior.  Marketing campaigns simply follow a "whack a mole" style of speaking to a customer ... you are constantly trying to find which hole the mole (customer) will pop out of, and you're always a step behind the mole.


The Multichannel Forensics "system", if you will, ignores individual campaign performance, because history demonstrates that, for 95% of us, individual campaign performance does not lead to annual changes in customer behavior, rendering individual campaign performance meaningless.


The Multichannel Forensics "system" instead seeks to identify changes in customer behavior over time, using rolling twelve month metrics, annual repurchase rates, annual orders per buyer, annual spend per order, migration probabilities across channels, and five-year sales projections to identify "what customers are really doing", to identify "what is really working and what is not really working", across channels, across merchandise divisions, across brands.


In the Multichannel Forensics framework, you learn five critically important things:

1. Merchandise REALLY matters.  Changes in the ratio of new/existing product, or changes in the mix of the assortment, result in changes in customer loyalty that manifest themselves in marketing campaign performance.
2. New customers REALLY matter.  For 80% of my clients, success/failure is highly dependent upon a steady and ever-increasing diet of new customers that are subsequently managed in a profitable manner, after acquisition.
3. Economic headwinds SOMEWHAT matter.  I've analyzed businesses that were barely impacted by the Great Recession.  I've analyzed businesses that were crushed by the Great Recession.
4. Pricing/Promotions SOMEWHAT matter.  I'm not saying you should or should not be running free shipping promotions, that's a marketing campaign issue, once again.  What I am saying is if you have standard $14.95 shipping, and an online competitor offers free shipping 24/7/365 and delivers product to the customer faster than you, then you've got a big problem that cannot be solved via marketing promotions or new customer acquisition.
5. Human beings REALLY matter.  In every analysis I've ever done, if a human being touches a customer, the customer spends more, both short-term, and long-term.  In many projects, when an algorithm touches a customer, the customer spends less long-term.

So, that's what's behind the Multichannel Forensics "system".  Actual customer data shows that, on an annual basis, marketing campaigns generally fail to yield incremental sales increases, instead, they shift demand between individual marketing campaigns, resulting in an endless and fruitless game of whack a mole.  The Multichannel Forensics system steps outside of the madness, seeking to understand and maximize the dynamics that truly drive increases in sales and profit,


Ok, it's time for your thoughts.  Leave a comment.  What "system" has worked best for you, over time?

Multichannel Forensics & E-Mail Marketing

I stumbled across this article about two months too late ... "E-Mail's Big Demographic Split".

The brief history of the internet illustrates a common trend among channels.

• Newness.
• Hype.
• Monetization.
• Outflow.
• Maturity.

Somebody invents something (E-Mail, AOL, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Foresquare, Quora), the early adopters hype the living daylights out of it to attract an audience, the audience hypes the living daylights out of it to attract the mainstream, the mainstream attracts monetization, monetization drives the early adopters out, resulting in a mature channel.

In catalog marketing, this happened over more than a century.

In e-mail marketing, this is happening over the course of two decades.

For MySpace, this happened over the course of maybe eight years.

Facebook?  Twitter?  Get ready.

When I run my Multichannel Forensics methodology against company data, the trends are often similar to what we observe in the article illustrated at the start of this post, from the NY Times.  Mature channels exhibit outflow among a younger audience, while exhibiting increased participation among an older audience.

This is the reason you can read two articles with completely opposite points of view ... e-mail is dead ... and "don't ask is e-mail dead".  Both parties can be "right", with outflow happening among one audience and adoption among another ... age isn't the differentiator here, rather, lifestyle is.

If I were working at a brand like Nordstrom or Lands' End today, I'd score every customer on a technological continuum ... catalog marketing and e-mail marketing on the left, search/affiliates in the center, social media right-of-center, mobile on the far right.  In my Catalog PhD projects, this is essentially the same as the "organic percentage".

If you don't have age data appended to your file, you can run a classic Multichannel Forensics project against your channels ... pay attention to what e-mail customers do next.  Customers will eventually migrate out of a channel, and you'll have plenty of warning if you run the appropriate analytics against the data.

Dear Catalog CEOs: 3+3=4

Dear Catalog CEOs:

Back in the early 1990s, we knew that cannibalization existed.  If we mailed a title twelve times a year, and then we added a second title and mailed it twelve times a year to the same circulation quality/depth, we didn't get a two-fold increase in sales, did we?


And then the internet came along.

Today, catalog frequency and page counts are a highly sensitive topic.

I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in during the past four years, where the discussion goes something like this:

Merchant:  "The catalog is 144 pages, and I only have 24 pages to show my product.  I need 36 pages.  Please add 12 pages, make the catalog 156 pages.  Thank you." 

Kevin:  "The catalog will be less profitable at 156 pages.  In fact, the catalog shouldn't even be 144 pages, it should be 64 pages with call-outs to key landing pages."


Merchants:  "You can't sell product unless you show the customer the product.  I need an additional 12 pages.  Please add the pages to the assortment.  Thanks."


Kevin:  "What about e-mail?"


Merchant:  "What about e-mail?"


Kevin:  "Why don't you feature your products in e-mail campaigns.  Your e-mail campaigns go to over a million subscribers, three times a week."


Merchant:  "Real customers use catalogs, hardly anybody shops from e-mail campaigns.  Our catalogs generate $3.00 per book, we're luck to get $0.15 per e-mail, and that only happens when we offer 20% off and free shipping."


Kevin:  "What about your website?  Only 4.8% of your customers convert when they visit the website.  Why don't you spend time getting that rate up to 6.0% for your customers, you'll increase demand by twenty-five percent."


Merchant:  "Our IT team won't let us touch the website."


Kevin:  "What about search?  Why not partner with your vendor to maximize the search performance of your division?"


Merchant:  "Is that where we have to do all of that fancy bidding?  I don't even know what that's all about.  Just let me add the pages to the catalog."


Kevin:  "What about social media?  Have you built a deep, emotional connection with your fans?"


Merchant:  "Do you know how much work that requires?  And at the end of the day, I have fans, but I don't necessarily have sales. Just let me add the pages to the catalog."


Eventually, the merchant beats people down, getting his/her way ... sales increase, profit decreases, page counts increase, circulation depth decreases, prospecting decreases, the customer file erodes, and the business slowly sinks into a murky pool of warm tar.


In the post-internet era, page counts are death.  

Here's a typical relationship, one that I see over and over and over again:

Pages	Demand	Profit
0	0.00	0.00
12	1.46	0.48
24	1.89	0.56
36	2.19	0.60
48	2.44	0.61
60	2.65	0.62
72	2.83	0.61
84	3.00	0.59
96	3.15	0.57
108	3.29	0.55
120	3.42	0.52
132	3.55	0.49
144	3.66	0.46
156	3.77	0.42
168	3.88	0.38
180	3.98	0.34

As pages increase, demand increases at a ever-decreasing rate, yielding less and less incremental profit.  The problem, of course, is that the Circulation Manager sees 132 pages and $0.49 of profit and says, "yup, that works!"


It doesn't work.  It's simply wasteful.  These days, 3+3=4.  It's a relationship that subtly destroys the profitability of a catalog business in the internet era.


Testing indicates that the future of catalog marketing is all about small catalogs with a highly targeted assortment to a rural, older audience.

• Contact me now to help you solve the page/frequency problem.
• Purchase Hillstrom's Catalog PhD in Print, $7.95.
• Purchase Hillstrom's Catalog PhD via Kindle, $2.99.

Penney / Search Fluff-Up: Is Marketing Bankrupt?

By now, you're read all about JCP and their little organic search fluff-up, as reported by the New York Times. 

In essence, JCP's search vendor participated in an epic series of black hat practices.  The NY Times article clearly states that JCP is distancing itself from the practices of the search vendor, SearchDex, firing the vendor last week, placing accountability squarely upon the vendor.

Allow me to draw a parallel.  Last night, I entered tasty treats in a dessert competition.  Folks paid $5 to sample treats, then were given the opportunity to vote for the treats they liked best.  The entry with the most votes would be declared the winner.

There were three ways to win the contest.  

• One way was to have the best merchandise, to create something so delicious that voters had to vote for your product.
• A second way was to present the merchandise in such a way that people were compelled to try the product ... fancy wrappers, spectacular containers, colorful toppings, that kind of thing.
• A third way was to invite your friends and family at a cost of $5 per person, then ask friends and family to vote for the treats you made.

Guess which method won the contest?

The winner invited friends, friends voted as expected, and the entire team celebrated their victory while fifty other participants quietly left the building.

As business leaders, we're constantly being sold a seductive message.

• Winning is easy.
• You can win, now.
• Nobody remembers losers.
• Follow a simple set of best practices that anybody could employ.
• Push the boundaries of "what is right".
• Ask for forgiveness if you're caught.
• Find ways to blame others when you are caught.

What's sad is that Penney didn't catch this, nor did Google.  An outsider caught the problem.

 
This story really isn't about JCP.  It's about us.  What the heck are we doing? 

Is Marketing Bankrupt?

Analytics Sunday: Which System Do You Run?

Do you know which "system" you run?

In football, there are many offensive and defensive systems.  Defenses run a 4-3 or a 3-4 scheme.  Offenses run a west coast offense, spread offense, spread option, option, wishbone, veer, run & shoot, I-formation, wing-T, on and on and on.

The system you run dictates the talent you need.  The system you run dictates your worldview, it dictates how you approach problems.

The same issues apply to the analytics community.  You may not know it, but you "run a system".  And your system, whether you know it or not, defines your relationship between your co-workers, your Executive team, and your public persona.

The most important part of defining your system is understanding what your primary area of concern is.  You can only align yourself with one of the following two statements.

1. Your primary concern is to understand how marketing campaigns perform.
2. Your primary concern is to understand how customers behave.

You do not measure marketing campaigns to understand customer behavior ... that is fool's gold.  Either you are trying to optimize marketing campaign performance, or you are trying to optimize customer spend.

And mind you, every analyst worth her salt uses pieces of every system.  But her first instinct, when any question arises, is to fall back on her primary system.


If your primary concern is to understand how marketing campaigns perform, then you are likely to run one of the following systems.




Segmentation:  The primary goal of the Segmentation system is to categorize customers into homogeneous groups, for the purpose of optimizing marketing performance.  Segmentation was popularized by the RFM, or "Recency - Frequency - Monetary" system.  RFM is seldom used to understand customer behavior ... you don't ever know what is in the mind of a customer when the customer is a 4-6 month, 2x+, $100 AOV buyer.  You don't know what is in the mind of a customer who is an "Existing Visitor" in Coremetrics.  You simply categorize people in like groups for the purposes of understanding the effectiveness of your marketing activities.  Segmentation has many cousins.  CRM blends automation with segmentation.  PRIZM clusters classify customers into similar lifestyle profiles.  Web Analytics is a modern fusion of segmentation in an OLAP environment.  If the primary goal of your analytics department is to classify customers for the purposes of measuring marketing activities, then you run a Segmentation system.

Optimization:  The primary goal of Optimization system is to use testing to significantly improve marketing performance.  The Optimization system is fundamentally different than the Segmentation system in approach.  The Segmentation system presumes that various segments outperform other segments, allowing the marketer to target a customer with a message.  The Optimization system presumes that testing strategies yield the optimal strategy to pursue within a customer segment.  Instead of believing that marketing is right, the Optimization system believes that testing methodology reveals truth.  If, when asked a question, you immediately think about "testing" the question against another strategy, then you run an Optimization system.  Optimization systems are highly popular among the online marketing community, as well as many in the database marketing community.


Prediction:  The primary goal of the Prediction system is to create statistical models to explain customer response to marketing, or to target individual customers for marketing efforts.  This system is different, in that it believes in one-to-one communications automated by mathematical equations.  Database Marketing, by and large, is a fusion of Segmentation and Prediction, with a skew toward Prediction.  Online Personalization is an outgrowth of Prediction.  E-Mail "relevancy" requires a strong "Prediction" system.  If you build statistical models to rank-order customers for catalogs, you might run a Prediction system.  If you create statistical models to measure online influence, you run a Prediction system.  If you build statistical models to identify customers for telemarketing campaigns, you run a Prediction system.  If you build statistical models to identify the impact of a loyalty program, you might run a Prediction system.  The key is your "first instinct" when approached with a marketing problem ... if you immediately think about models, you run a Prediction system.




If the primary purpose of your marketing activities is to understand the impact of customer behavior on a business, independent of marketing activities, then you are a bit different.  You run a Forecasting system.


Forecasting:  The primary goal of the Forecasting system is to holistically understand how customers evolve and change over time.  Those who run a Forecasting system move outside of marketing campaigns, instead seeking to link macro-level customer habits to current and future events.  The style of database queries is different ... using pre/post periods to understand customer behavior, coupled with forecasts/projections for future customer activity given prior trends.


Now, obviously, you use all four systems in your analytics work.  You skew toward one system, using elements of all systems.

That being said, why does any of this matter?


Well, it turns out that the system you run needs to be in harmony with the system that your Executive team believes in.


For instance, how would you approach answering the following question:

• Conversion rates on your website are down eleven percent in 2011.  What is causing this problem, and what should be done to fix it?

Each analytics system approaches the question from a different perspective.

• Segmentation folks look at conversion rates among buyers, existing visitors, new visitors ... they analyze conversion performance by traffic sources, trying to identify the underlying problem.
• Optimization folks attempt to solve the problem first, looking to test different strategies that might resonate with the customer ... why look to the past when one can fix the problem by influencing the future?
• Prediction folks attempt to solve the problem first, by targeting those who are visiting the site with relevant content.  Or, this system might "equalize" customers using a statistical model, in order to understand underlying problems in past marketing campaigns.
• Forecasting folks combine macro trends with changes in customer behavior across channels, looking to identify trends (i.e. Mobile) that influence the future trajectory of website performance, forecasting the impact of lower conversion rates going forward.

Say your team runs the Prediction system.  Say your Executive team responds to the Segmentation system.  Well, you've got a disconnect, don't you?  Your Executive team wants to understand marketing performance, and you're out there promoting a personalization plan to boost conversion rates.  Ooops.  Or worse, say you promote a Forecasting system ... you are constantly talking about the impact that changes in long-term customer behavior caused by search/social/mobile will have on the business, while your Executive team craves campaign-based KPIs and Dashboard results of marketing campaigns.


Take a moment, and answer each of the following two questions:

1. When deciding who should receive a marketing promotion, do you like to segment customers into like groups (1), or do you like to create models that predict how likely customers are to respond to marketing messages (9)?
2. When considering a new marketing strategy, do you like to run a series of simulations that predict how customers might behave in the future (1), or do you like to run a series of tests that reveal an optimal marketing strategy to employ against your customer base (9)?

Plot the answer to the first question on the following chart ... (1) on the left, (5) in the center, (9) on the right ... then for the second question, plot a (1) on the bottom, (5) in the center, (9) on the top.


Repeat this exercise for the perceived answers your Executive team would provide you.

If you and your Executive team plot out in a similar manner, there's a good chance that you are aligned, that your Executive team understands what you are trying to accomplish.


If you and your Executive team are far apart on this graph, well, that doesn't mean you aren't going to be successful ... but it does mean that you come at problems from different perspectives, and that can lead to challenges and disagreements.  It can, by the way, also lead to spectacular breakthroughs, especially when each side respects the other.




P.S.:  Where do I (Kevin) stand, on this continuum?


I skew significantly toward Forecasting.  This is why my message is so different than what you hear in the Vendor community, is why my message is so different than those shared by leading analytics experts, and is why my message is not always welcome at leading conferences.


You really have to look back at the influences that shape each analyst, over time.  In my case, I was trained as a Statistician, which pushed me toward Optimization/Prediction.  Then I entered the Direct Marketing world, and noticed that Executives are not fans of Optimization/Prediction ... they tend to gravitate toward a Segmentation/Forecasting quadrant that was opposite of my training.  

In other words, I had to change my approach.


I borrowed heavily from things that were done at Fingerhut in the 1980s ... where they used a Segmentation/Forecasting bridge known as the rolling twelve-month file to demonstrate the health of the business independent of marketing campaigns.  I borrowed heavily from Jim Fulton, a former Lands' End co-worker who is now a Database Marketing consultant (Customer Metrics) ... he heavily leveraged the Forecasting system to demonstrate that new customers, not customer loyalty, lead to a healthy, growing business.  I borrowed from Lands' End, who skewed heavily toward a Segmentation/Optimization platform.  I borrowed heavily from Spiegel, a company that used a clever Segmentation/Forecasting bridge (I'll cover this in a future post) to measure file health.  I borrowed from Eddie Bauer, where pure Segmentation systems failed to improve the health of the customer file, pushing me toward channel interactions (Forecasting).  I borrowed from Nordstrom, a heavy Segmentation/Forecasting culture that "ripped the band aid off" on strategies without the need for Optimization.  I borrowed heavily from some of the early Forecasting/Prediction work done at the Santa Fe Institute in the mid 1990s, and borrowed heavily from Mathematical Biology (Forecasting/Prediction).


Notice that the word "Forecasting" keeps coming up in the activities that shaped my consulting focus.  I skewed farther and farther away from a focus on marketing campaigns over time, skewing more and more toward holistic customer migration patterns independent of marketing campaigns.


My experiences skewed me dramatically toward the Forecasting system.  I'm an enthusiastic advocate of moving beyond analysis of marketing campaigns.  I realize not many agree with me.  No worries!


Your experiences skew you to one system, or to a combination of systems.  No skew is right or wrong, all are appropriate.  You simply have to align your system with your core beliefs, and hope that your system is in alignment with those who are tasked with implementing your beliefs.