We believe that there is a big fallacy buried in the strategy of companies that use direct mail. Most direct mailers, especially catalogers, have a ‘house list’ of customers to whom they mail. This list is scored by one methodology or another, for example recency or RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value). These companies usually… Read More
This week, when I asked a new customer what kinds of insights her company was expecting from using Longbow, I had to restrain myself from an offensive, too sharp reply. She said she wanted our analytics to identify her best customers. We get that request often, and sometimes it can drive me up the wall…. Read More
Sometimes I show some resolve and actually carry out my resolutions. Yesterday was one such day—I cleaned out my wallet, which was too light on money and too thick with cards from various loyalty programs. Pruning those loyalty cards made me look at each program and decide whether participation was worth it, whether there was… Read More
As word spread of my teleconference for Marketing 2.0, an interesting contrarian opinion appeared in my mailbox. Evidently there was something in the meeting notice to cause a reader to suspect that using mathematics to describe behavior could have negative consequences. He wrote “Is it just me, or do others also wonder where this mathematization… Read More