Vermont / New Hampshire Presentation: April 5, 2018

Four Choices For The
Modern Catalog Marketer
Kevin Hillstrom
President, MineThatData
Kevin Hillstrom, President, MineThatData
(http://blog.minethatdata.com)
1

2
The Future
Hard Work
Real Marketing

3
Philadelphia
Eagles
2010 = 10-6. 2014 = 10-6.
2011 = 8-8. 2015 = 7-9.
2012 = 4-12. 2016 = 7-9.
2013 = 10-6. 2017 = 13-3.

4
The Process
Fired Multiple Coaches
Rebuilt (Twice)
Drafted A Franchise Quarterback (Lucky)
Young, Fast Defense
Innovative Offensive Coaches
Adapted To Changes In League

5
“Adapted to
Changes”

6
Companies That
Started As
Catalog Brands
What is the process used by companies
that started as catalog brands to rebuild
and “win” in modern commerce?

7
Here’s A Quiz To
Help You Decide
If You Need To
Adapt/Change.

8
Question #1:
When you plan your email marketing
campaigns, do you make sure that the
campaigns integrate with the catalog that
mails near it, or do you merchandise your
email campaigns and personalize them in
a way that maximizes company sales
potential?

9
Question #2:
Are half or more of your new customers
acquired via Google, Facebook, and/or
Catalog Co-Ops?

10
Question #3:
Are you acquiring fewer customers today
than in 2013 on the same ad cost
investment?

11
Question #4:
Are you generating less demand today
from new items than you generated back
in 2013?

12
Question #5:
Do you generate more than 3% of your
annual sales from customers mailing an
order form and a check to your call
center?

13
Question #6:
Do you generate more than 15% of your
annual sales from customers calling your
call center and placing a catalog order
that is easily tied to a catalog key code /
source code?

14
Question #7:
Are catalog matchbacks your primary
vehicle for measuring catalog marketing
success?

15
Question #8:
Do you have a hard time selling
merchandise if the merchandise isn’t
featured in your catalog?

16
Question #9:
When you introduce new merchandise,
do you put a dot on your catalog calling
out new items and then quietly hope the
customer will buy the items while
unenthusiastically featuring the items on
an integrated omnichannel home page?

17
Question #10:
When you review marketing activities in a
quarterly meeting at your company, are
catalogs the primary focus of the review,
with all other marketing channels taking a
back seat?

18
Question #11:
When a Visiting Professional arrives at
your company, do you either provide
catalogs in the waiting area for the Visitor
to thumb through or hand the Visitor a
catalog before s/he leaves?

19
Question #12:
When an outsider has ideas to grow your
business, do you frequently think (aloud
or to yourself) “WE TRIED THAT, IT
WON’T WORK”???

20
Question #13:
Does your Executive Team demand that
you sell stuff today at the expense of
learning something that might be
valuable in the future?

21
Question #14:
Do you think you are competing against
Amazon?

22
Question #15:
Do you watch the struggles that JCP
had/has (reinvented the business, lost
30% of sales, went back to business as
usual, didn’t grow, and are now stumbling
again) and think to yourself … “THAT
DOESN’T APPLY TO US”??

23
Question #16:
Do you obtain more industry knowledge
from Vendor Sales Reps than you obtain
from Professionals at non-competitive
organizations that have similar business
models to your business model?

24
Question #17:
Do some of the Professionals at an
Executive Level at your company have
spirited discussions about whether an
upcoming catalog should be 64 pages or
68 pages?

25
Question #18:
Does every customer on your email
subscriber list get the exact same version
of a typical email marketing campaign?

26
Question #19:
Are fewer than half of your
desktop/laptop/mobile website visitors
from mobile devices and/or tablets?

27
Question #20:
Do you penalize online buyers because
they have a lower lifetime value than
catalog-sourced newbies have?

28
Question #21:
Do you have long-term winning items that
are adored by long-term high-value
catalog customers?

29
Question #22:
Does your catalog marketing program
account for more than 35% of annual
sales?

30
Question #23:
When asked if you are a catalog brand,
you respond by saying “Oh no, we’re not
a cataloger, we’re an omnichannel brand
who leverages catalog marketing in an
integrated manner. Catalogers are dead.
We’re fine!”

31
Question #24:
Are you skeptical of giving responsibility
to younger Professionals (those under
age 35)?

32
Question #25:
If you have retail stores, are you learning
that you lose more sales in stores than
you make up online (i.e. did you lose
$10,000,000 in stores in 2017 while your
online channel grew by $7,000,000 in
2017)??

33
Question #26:
Are you working harder to reactivate
lapsed buyers because you are having a
hard time finding new customers and
need to make up for the new customer
shortfall?

34
How Many “Yes”
Answers Did You
Have?

35
YES Answers
23+ = OMG!
14-22 = You Must Do Something
Different!
7-13 = Old School, You “Should” Do
Something Different!

36

37
What Changed?
Shifting Demographics
Remember Judy / Jennifer / Jasmine?

38
What Changed?

39
What Changed?

40
What Changed?

41
What Changed?

42
What Changed?

43
What Changed?

44
What Changed?

45
What Changed?
You can’t be a “digital” / “omnichannel”
brand if your core customer is 65 years
old and purchases merchandise
preferred by 65 year olds and lives in
rural areas where customers love
merchandise offered by catalog brands.

46
What Changed?
Co-Op Feedback Loop
The algorithms were quite good … so
good in fact that they over-optimized
catalogers into a merchandise
assortment for 65 year old customers.

47
What Changed?
The End of Customer Acquisition as we
know it. Ask E-Commerce Brands who
are selling themselves to large brands.
They wouldn’t do this if cheap customer
acquisition was still easy!

48
What Changed?
Gatekeepers
Google + Facebook + Catalog Co-Ops
own customer acquisition. Without a
credible low-cost / no-cost program, you
are at their mercy. Not good.

49
What Changed?
Expenses
Cash required to prop up a 30% ad-to-
sales ratio limits experimentation.

50
What Changed?
Expenses
We were told to be “omnichannel” and
leverage retail stores for success at the
very moment when fixed costs (and debt)
became a problem.

51
What Changed?
Partners / Expenses
Catalog Holding Companies operate with
lower fixed costs and cross-pollinate. It’s
happening in e-commerce too (Wal-Mart).

52
What They Do
Source = Stratchery Blog

53
What We Do
Source = Stratchery Blog

54
What Changed?
New Merchandise
New Merchandise is the lifeblood of a
catalog brand. New Merchandise that can
easily be sold on Amazon becomes
useless to the cataloger.

55
What Changed?
Channel Continuum
Mail  Phone  E-Commerce  Search
 Social  Mobile  AI / Machine
Learning. You can’t be on the Mail/Phone
end of the continuum anymore.

56
What Changed?
Vendors Own “The Conversation”

57
What Changed?
Over-Emphasis on Tactics
Who cares what your “emoji strategy” is?
Or personalization? Or “engagement”?
Or your “variable printing strategy”? We
went way too far down the rabbit hole.

58
What Changed?
Matchbacks
Matchbacks became dramatically
outdated in the past five years …
whereas mail/holdout groups became
more important than ever.

59
What Changed?
Wrong Metrics
We measure the engagement of a tweet
in real time but we don’t know how many
of last year’s customers we retain.

60
What Changed?
No Middle, Few Winners
You are either big and you “scale” or you
are small and unique and scrappy and
very different. The middle is now fully
owned by Amazon / Large Retail.

61
What Changed?
Boring Stinks
Boring is being replaced by convenient.
This battle is seldom won by small
companies … it’s the domain of “scale”.

62
What Changed?
Monetization
How we get paid is changing. We used to
write descriptive copy coupled with
images and customers paid us $.
Instagram killed this business model.

63
Others Are
Dealing With
This Problem.
We’re Not Alone.

64
Newspapers /
Cable News vs.
Facebook/Twitter
(and Fake News).

65
Television &
Declining Paid
Subscriber Base

66
Fewer People
Are Attending
College Football
Games

67
Fewer People
Are Visiting
Malls (i.e. the co-
op problem in
retail).

68
Facebook Is
Killing
Monetization of
Comedy.

69
NASCAR Racing
Attendance and
Viewership Are
At 10 Year Lows.

70
Landlines Are In
Fundamental,
Irreversible
Decline.

71
How Does
Garmin Compete
Against Google
Maps?

72
How Do Rolex /
Omega Compete
Against Fitbit /
Apple Watch?

73
How Does
Barnes & Noble
Compete Against
Amazon/Kindle?

74
How Does A
Musician
Compete Now
That CDs are
Dead?

75
Apparel?

76
PC Sales?

77
Food?

78
Hotels?

79
Multiple Brands

80
Pizza / Cars

81
New Stadiums
Luxury Boxes, Gourmet Food, 33-Degree Slope on Seats, A Standing Section, Covered
Grandstands that keep rain out and noise in, 500+ Wireless Access Points, Fewer Seats (to
create demand to buy tickets now), Great Locker Rooms & Peanut Butter Sandwiches (to
attract players).

82
Fan Experience

83
We’re Heading
Toward Events /
Activities That
Do Not Compete
Against Amazon.

84
But That Isn’t
The Only Path To
Success For
Traditional
Brands.

85

86
SCALE =
AMAZON,
WAL-MART

87
BUY!!

88
BUY!!

89
BUY!!

90
BUY
Alps & Meters

91
Want To Be
Unique?

92
Want To Be Unique?

93
Pundits + Unique

94
Simple and Unique

95
Gliebers Dresses
I’ve analyzed 50ish catalog
brands in the past year.
The following Gliebers Dresses example is
an average of what I see across 70% of my
catalog client base when performing my
“FIX IT” analysis framework.

96
Gliebers Dresses
Executive Team
Glenn Glieber (Owner, CEO, 40+ Years).
Meredith Thompson (Chief Merchandising Officer, 40+ Years).
Roger Morgan (Chief Operating Officer, 10 Years).
Lois Gladstone (Chief Financial Officer, 9 Years).
Pepper Morgan-Pressley (Chief Marketing Officer, 8 Years).

97
Gliebers Dresses
If you want change to happen, you can’t just tell
people what to do.
You have to convince an Executive Team to do
things that are in the best long-term interest of the
company … stuff that they may not be employed
to see come to fruition. What is their motivation to
make change happen?

98
Gliebers Dresses: Rebuy Rate
2017 Rebuy Rate = 37.7%.
2016 Rebuy Rate = 36.8%.
2015 Rebuy Rate = 37.5%.
2014 Rebuy Rate = 38.1%.
2013 Rebuy Rate = 37.4%.

99
If your annual repurchase rates are < 40%,
then you have no choice but to focus the
majority of your marketing efforts on
Customer Acquisition.
This is the opposite of how most of our
marketing teams are calibrated, and helps
explain why growth is so hard to achieve.

100
Meredith Thompson, Chief Merchandising
Officer:
“Obviously Pepper has no idea what she is
doing. Either she is mailing the wrong
customers or is acquiring the wrong
customers. If she found the right customers,
our rebuy rates would be fantastic.
Customers love my merchandise!!”

101
Gliebers Dresses: Migration
Among 2016 Mail Customers, 93% will buy again via
mail next year.
Among 2016 Phone Customers, 91% will buy again via
Phone next year.
Among 2016 E-Commerce Customers, 24% purchased
next year via Mobile/Tablet.
Among 2016 Mobile/Tablet Customers, 77% purchased
next year via E-Commerce.

102
Gliebers Dresses customers are mostly “fossilized”.
They are stuck. They like the channel they buy from, and
they’re not willing to move along the Mail  Phone  E-
Commerce  Search  Email  Social  Mobile
timeline.
This is a classic symptom of a company with an older
customer base that does not want to change. You may
want to change, but your customer base won’t let you
change. 70% of my catalog client base is in this
situation.

103
Lois Gladstone, Chief Financial Officer
“Have you ever engaged with us on an iPhone? It looks
like you’re playing Space Invaders on an Atari machine
from 1986. Roger needs to get his nose out of Woodside
Research reports and actually put competent developers
on the task of creating a credible mobile presence. And
then we need to stop selling dresses that 65 year olds
like and actually have a credible Instagram presence.
Pepper and Roger are killing this company.”

104
Roger Morgan, Chief Operations Officer
“How do you have a credible mobile experience when
your pay grades won’t accommodate a thirty year old
employee who deserves to be paid $175,000 a year and
wants stock options that we can’t offer.
And honestly it doesn’t matter, because the 74 year old
mailing orders with a check isn’t going to start buying on
a iPhone 8.”

105
Gliebers Dresses: Profit

106
Gliebers Dresses: Profit
Meredith Thompson, Chief Merchandising Officer
“We just had the most profitable year in the past five
years. Retail is imploding and we had a really solid year.
Everybody just needs to shup up and support my efforts
to grow the business. Find the right customers. Deliver
the right merchandise quickly. This isn’t a merchandising
issue, and the p&l demonstrates that I am right. I mean,
Glenn Glieber put a million dollars of after tax cheddar in
his bank account. He’ll tell you it was a good year.”

107
Gliebers Dresses: Newbies

108
New Customers: Co-Ops = 329,443.
New Customers: Google = 45,983.
New Customers: Facebook = 15,004.
New Customers: Other Marketing = 43,832.
New Customers: Not Tracked = 62,473.

109
This is the classic signature of a brand that
has no credible low-cost / no-cost customer
acquisition program in place.
More than 85% of customers are acquired via
marketing. That’s a problem.
UNIQUE brands obtain 50%+ of new
customers via word-of-mouth.

110
Pepper Morgan-Pressley, Chief Marketing Officer
“I am in an impossible situation. If I cut the co-ops off,
our business is eighteen months away from failing. If I
keep investing in them my metrics look awful and I
acquire fewer customers. The customers I acquire from
co-ops are 65 years old and they only want to shop from
a catalog, they don’t want to make the move to digital.
And digital customers don’t want to buy dresses that
attract 65 year old catalog customers. Tell me exactly
what I should do to solve this problem?”

111
“I empathize with Pepper. There’s no way she can sell
dresses tailored to a 60-70 year old audience to a digital
customer who spends her time on Instagram. And yet,
that’s exactly what we have to do in order to move into
the future. How do you do that without throwing the core
brand under the bus? How do you do that when you
don’t have cash to start a new business unit that caters
to a 30-40 year old digital Mom?”

112
Roger Morgan, Chief Operating Officer
“Woodside Research demands that brands become
digitally native, offering an engaging experience that
spans all channels in a relevant manner. They
recommend leveraging machine learning and artificial
intelligence to capture the heart of today’s digitally native
Millennial audience. They make it sound easy, and it
probably is easy. But then I wonder to myself, if it were
so easy, why isn’t Woodside Research doing it? They
must have a good reason.”

113
Gliebers Dresses: Comps

114
Gliebers Dresses: Comps
“Nobody uses the Comp Segment framework to
measure business effectiveness. Nobody. I don’t trust
stuff that isn’t used widely within my industry. Show me a
square inch analysis and I’ll show you a Consultant I
trust. Maybe the Comp Segment framework is effective
in e-commerce, but our business is unique and special
and requires a nuanced analysis leveraging best
practices from experienced industry consultants … folks
I know and have worked with previously.”

115
Gliebers Dresses: New Merch

116
Gliebers Dresses: Exi. Merch

117
Gliebers Dresses: Merch
“I keep trying to tell people that this isn’t a
merchandising issue. I really think Pepper has lost the
ability to engage the audience. There was a time, about
a decade ago, when we rotated through Marketing
leaders on an annual basis. It might be time for us to put
some fresh marketing ideas on selling new and existing
merchandise effectively.”

118
Gliebers Dresses: Class Of

119
“Yes, we cut back on a large number of existing items
that were not trend-right. It was the right thing to do to
protect the brand. But I think Lois deserves some blame
here as well. She required us to cut back from an
average of 84 pages per catalog to an average of 80
pages per catalog. That killed my ability to tell a
compelling story – I mean, we lost two spreads fifteen
times last year. That has to be what is driving some of
the negatives. At least that’s what our paper rep said.”

120
“We spent $800,000 less on marketing last year, that
one is on Lois. Did we have the best year in the past five
years? Yes. But at what cost? Leading companies invest
in marketing. We need to invest more, especially in
omnichannel initiatives, because Woodside Research
says that forward-thinking brands no longer view the
world in terms of channels, but in terms of one brand /
one customer. Does that make sense? It’s advanced
stuff, I know.”

121

122
What Quadrant
Is Gliebers
Dresses In?

123
Gliebers Dresses: SELL!
Issues leading to a SELL designation:
Profit is tepid. Unique = 10%+ EBITDA.
Repurchase Rates < 40%.
New Customer Counts are Failing.
Marketing Covers Up Problem With Lapsed Buyers.
Channel Crossover is “Fossilized”.
New Merchandise Comps Are Inconsistent.
Existing Merchandise Comps Are Inconsistent.
Merchandise Classes Are “Killed Off” Too Soon.
Co-Ops + Google + Facebook

124
How Do You
Communicate
Facts To
Gliebers Dresses
Management?

125
Gliebers Dresses: Facts
“Woodside Research says we are in the age of ‘data-
driven’ decisions. I think you just let the data speak for
itself. I’ll have my team produce a series of reports and
I’ll bounce the reports off of our sales rep at Woodside
Research and we’ll just go from there. It will be a series
of unbiased reports because my team isn’t in marketing
and therefore doesn’t bring pre-conceived notions to the
table. Let the Information Technology folks who report to
me make solid recommendations. We can fix this!”

126
Pepper Morgan-Pressley, Chief Marketing Officer
“Samantha is our Data Scientist. She has produced a
thousand reports based on a hundred different models,
some leveraging machine learning and artificial
intelligence. We’ve been down this path every month for
the past five years. Nobody listens to us. Nobody. So we
just stopped talking to people. We do the ‘right thing’
behind the scenes, making the company money. When
we do the right thing, Meredith gets credit. It’s a simple
process, to be honest.”

127
“Samantha says she stores her analytics in the cloud.
I’m telling you that her HEAD is in the cloud! I don’t need
some snobby Professional with a Master’s Degree in
Computer Science telling me that her ideas have a 96%
chance of succeeding. She’s never been a merchant.
And cripes, the last thing I need is Roger Morgan
shoving reports down my throat authored by third
parties. What do outsiders know about a business I’ve
worked in for more than forty years?”

128
“I’ll trust any report that ties out to the financial reports
my team produces.
I can count on one hand the number of times marketing
tied out their web analytics data to anything meaningful.
And catalog matchbacks, geez, those things can be
rigged to say whatever you want them to say. So maybe
marketing can do the hard work for once and tie things
out and then I’ll pursue a data-driven approach.”

129
How Do You Get
Gliebers Dresses
To ACT Given
What They
Already Know?

130
Tell The Room
What You Would
Do If You Led
Gliebers
Dresses?

131
Leadership.
Shared Goals.
Shared Bonus.
Rebuild.
Reward.
Experiment NOW.

132
Shared Bonuses
Objective #1: Increase annual new customers to
575,000 at a total profit-per-new-customer of > $0.00
total.
Exceeds (2 points) = 625,000 or more new buyers in
2018 and a PPNC > $0.00.
Meets (1 point) = 575,000 – 624,999 new buyers in 2018
and a PPNC > $0.00.
Missed = 0 to 574,999 new buyers in 2018 or a PPNC <
$0.00.

133
Shared Bonuses
Objective #2: Increase annual demand to $65,500,000
with 53% of annual demand from new merchandise.
Exceeds (2 points) = $70,000,000+ with 55%+ from new
merch.
Meets (1 point) = $65,500,000 - $69,999,999 with 53%+
from new merchandise.
Missed = Failure to hit $65,500,000 annual demand or
failure to generate 53%+ from new merchandise.

134
Shared Bonuses
C-Level Executive Payout = 100% of Salary.
Vice President Payout = 70% of Salary.
Director Payout = 40% of Salary.
Manager Payout = 25% of Salary.
Analyst Payout = 15% of Salary.

135
Shared Bonuses
4 Points Earned = 100% of Bonus Level.
1 Point Earned = 25% of Bonus Level.

136
Shared Bonuses
All employees are forced to collaborate to make the two
objectives happen.
You will tell the entire industry you are looking for the
best talent – talent willing to work hard and be rewarded
with a highly credible compensation structure.
No growth – No reward.
Big growth – Big reward.

137
Shared Bonuses
Management must post a dashboard on LED Televisions
all across the building, communicating how the company
is progressing toward each objective.
Call it Gliebers TV.
Have employees host shows communicating how key
merchandising, marketing, creative, IT, website ops
projects are generating new winning items and new
customers above-and-beyond objective levels.

138
Why Is Gliebers
Dresses Willing To
Pay Marketing
Vendors $15,000,000
A Year But Not Pay
Employee Bonuses?

139
Fix The Existing
Business In The
Short-Term.

140
Buy Yourself 2
Years To
Experiment With
New Ideas,
Merch, Mktg.

141
I Know, You Don’t
Want To Do This …
“This Idea Won’t
Work, Give Us
Something That
Works.”

142
Do You Want To Be
Trapped In The SELL
Quadrant?

143
Rudolph Was
Banished Before He
Was Deemed Valuable

144

145
Questions?

Vermont / New Hampshire Presentation: April 5, 2018

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Semelhante a Vermont / New Hampshire Presentation: April 5, 2018

Semelhante a Vermont / New Hampshire Presentation: April 5, 2018 (20)

Último

Último (20)

Vermont / New Hampshire Presentation: April 5, 2018