March 26, 2024

Best Marketers

Alright peeps, send me an email and tell me which vertical does the best job of marketing, causing you to spend more than you'd normally spend. Tell me what it is about the marketing that inspires you to purchase more often.

I'll summarize your results and share them next week if I get sufficient responses.


P.S.: I ask because, as you know, I'm deep in the headphones rabbit hole and those folks know how to market to weak-walleted individuals like me. The wine industry does a pretty good job as well.

March 25, 2024

What They Say ... What You Need

They say stuff like this:




And yet, your top three emails to me are about the following topics.
  1. Merchandise - is there a merchandise problem?
  2. New Customers - there IS a new customer problem.
  3. Shutting Down a Catalog Division (because the paper/print/postage folks are running some of you out of business).
We go through waves ... when what you read aligns well with what you need ... and in 2024, where what you read is fundamentally disconnected from your actual problems.

Focus on your actual problems.

March 24, 2024

Great Moments in Omnichannel History

And here you are trying to conceive magical Cyber Monday discounts (see text above underlined area in orange).



March 21, 2024

Are You Proud Of What You Sell?

Drop.com just plain tells you how many pair of HD6XX cans they've sold. They know this is possibly the most popular audiophile headphone ever sold, and has been for twenty years. It's no secret. So why keep the number of units sold secret?


I mean, if 188,600 sell through drop.com, how many sell through Amazon and Crutchfield.

If you have a popular item and you're trying to close the deal, tell the darn customer that the item is embraced by your community. Signal to your customer that the customer has to own that item, ok?



March 19, 2024

Paid Search Usage by Life Stage

We can look at merchandise, we can also look at Marketing Channels. Here is the percentage of demand spent via Paid Search by customer life stage.

  • 1x Buyers = 25% via Paid Search.
  • 2x Buyers = 21% via Paid Search.
  • 3x Buyers = 21% via Paid Search.
  • 4x Buyers = 21% via Paid Search.
  • 5x Buyers = 21% via Paid Search.
  • 6x - 7x Buyers = 20% via Paid Search.
  • 8x - 10x Buyers = 20% via Paid Search.
  • 11x - 15x Buyers = 18% via Paid Search.
  • 16x+ Buyers = 17% via Paid Search.

What this brand sees is not what I am used to seeing. It is common for the paid search (or PLA) rate to go from 25% in a first order to 3% among loyal buyers. This brand, however, has problems. The most loyal buyers are still comparison shopping. You'd think that by the time the customer got to a 16th order the customer wouldn't need to get to a 17th order with the help of Google.

But here we are, regardless.

This usually represents a marketing strategy issue. The customer doesn't necessarily trust the brand ... why else would the customer be comparison shopping / searching?

March 18, 2024

Items That Appear In Multi-Item Orders

In a typical Life Stage Analysis within a Merchandise Dynamics project, it is common to see exaggerated trends when comparing first-time buyers to loyal buyers.

I code every order in the database to see whether the order had multiple items (I call this MUL or "multiple lines") and/or had multiple categories (I call this MUC) in the order.

Let's look at MUC, or multiple categories, by life stage.

  • 1x Buyers = 18% of spend tied to orders with multiple categories in the order.
  • 2x Buyers = 26%.
  • 3x Buyers = 29%.
  • 4x Buyers = 32%.
  • 5x Buyers = 32%.
  • 6x - 7x Buyers = 32%.
  • 8x - 10x Buyers = 34%.
  • 11x - 15x Buyers = 38%.
  • 16x+ Buyers = 39%.


Interestingly, 1x buyers purchase 1.95 items in a first order ... 16x+ buyers purchase 2.53 items per order. So there is some difference. Also interesting? 1x buyers purchase $54.60 items in a first order, 16x+ buyers purchase $44.69 items in their loyalty-based orders.

In other words, first-time buyers are focused on what they are looking for ... loyal buyers are grazing from a larger assortment.

Use those facts in your marketing efforts, peeps. 

Best Marketers

Alright peeps, send me an email and tell me which vertical does the best job of marketing, causing you to spend more than you'd normally...