Must Read Classic Articles
These articles are keepers for customer retention
oriented, Data-Driven marketers; they are selected primarily because they
provide very short-in-supply case studies, metrics, or process models for
relationship marketing, customer retention, or customer loyalty marketing on the
Web. This is an archive; for the latest check out the blog.
*** The Secret Sauce
December 27, 2005 Internet Retailer
This is a pretty well organized article on the different facets of
conversion. Nothing earthshaking, but if you're having problems
putting everything you have heard about optimizing conversion in
context, it's for you.
*** Courting Clicks
November 21, 2005 Internet Retailer
I've never really embraced the comparison shopping engines, as either a user or
a web marketer. An environment designed to attract price shoppers is a
retailer's worst nightmare, IMHO - unless you compete specifically on price, a
nightmare all by itself. Plus, they all show stock pay-per-click ads
anyway, so what's the benefit? I guess it's working for some people...
**** Best of Friends
November 11, 2005
Here's a shocker - there are companies where marketing and IT try to work
together. Really. Amazing, isn't it? Seriously, more companies
should be implementing these "translator" positions that help IT and
marketing to understand each other. We used them at HSN when I was there
in the early 90's (called IT outreach managers), and the money / time you save
from doing projects right the first time far outstrips the staff costs.
****Slice of Life
October 24, 2005 CMO Magazine
Inside the guts of the customer segmentation practice at RBC Royal Bank.
This is the latest segmentation success story making the rounds for good reason
- it's easy to understand and chock full of numbers, including lift and ROI
calculations. Nice work, RBC!
**** Customer Value Models
October
7, 2005 DM Review
A great overview of the reasoning behind building customer value models,
suitable to send "upstairs". These models don't have to be
complex, at least in the beginning; use a simple Current
Value / Potential Value matrix.
*** Red
Alert! All Hands Battle Stations!
September 29, 2005 DM Review
Nice overview of the different types of alerts (analytic, sales, service).
Alerts tied to specific KPI's are a great way to manage a business. By the way,
"alerts" don't have to be pagers going off, they can be monthly
reports. Scale alert timing to the opportunity; if it's going to
take 30 days to act in an economically viable way, you don't need a daily alert.
*** Making
Paid Search Pay Off
September 13, 2005 Internet Retailer
This may be old hat to those of you who have been with me for a while, but it's
a great review of the basics and includes some new conversion data on each
search engine.
**** Web
Analytics Special Report: Various
August 31, 2005 DM News
When the "bible" of the Direct Marketing industry finally does a
Special Report on Web Analytics you have to take notice. Guess we're legit
now! Clicking this link should execute a search of the DM News site and
present you with all the articles which tend to be short and contain concrete
numbers - like mini case studies. If the link doesn't work for you, go to
the DM News site and search "Web
Analytics".
*** Loyalty
programs on upswing among online retailers, study finds
August 19, 2005 Internet Retailer
Jupiter says a lot of loyalty programs are going to be launched in the next
year. I'd guess most of them will be a big mistake; you can really damage
your business if you don't know what you are
doing. Above all, make sure your program isn't constructed in a way
that will drive subsidy costs among best
customers.
**** How
to Raise Ecommerce Sales By Refusing Orders (When to Tell Customers You Don't
Want Their Money)
August 8, 2005 MarketingSherpa.com
This is a perfect example of "optimizing" the online retail back
office. Often, people spend so much time worrying about search engine
pennies that they let the operational dollars walk out the door. Read this
article and think about what is really happening here; what do you think the
cost savings / increase in repeat purchase rate is worth? It's huge money.
*** To Spam or Not to
Spam -That's a Dumb Question
August 1, 2005 CMO Magazine
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. There is a real hard cost to e-mail
blasting untargeted messages, as I have said
before. Delivering the wrong messages at the wrong times has measurable
direct costs but there are indirect costs as well.
*** Repeat After Me
July 15, 2005 CMO Magazine
This is a well-written article and case on a topic often talked about but never
really explored - customer touchpoint measurement and management. It's
time to bring the the "sales funnel" concept into the offline world.
*** Another
Look at KPI's
July 1, 2005 DM Review
Some bumps in the road in KPI land. Apparently, some executive teams are
choosing KPI's that are outcomes rather than causes, results rather than drivers
of success. In other words, a lot of stuff they get from other reports
already. If possible, KPI's should really be
predictive, not reactive.
**** The
Secret to BI Success
June 14, 2005 SearchCRM.com
Back in the old days we called it the "Research and Analysis
department"; looks like today's name is "BI competency
center". No matter, it's the same idea - get analytics out of the
silos and into a single, powerful group reporting directly to C-level operations
or finance. Highly
profitable problem-solving is cross-functional; the power to find new ideas
and solutions is magnified many fold when all the analysts work together. Six
Sigma Everything, baby.
***Seven
Rules for Increasing Customer Value
June 1, 2005 InsightExec
Don Peppers expounds a bit on the Peppers and Rodgers Return on Customer (ROC)
model. Same old stuff from a databased marketing perspective, but I have
to give them credit, they do have a knack for inventing new, more understandable
ways to tell the story!
**** Pervasive Business
Intelligence -
Enhancing Key Performance Indicators
April 24, 2005 DM Review
What is it with people inventing acronyms? The latest is PBI (Pervasive
Business Intelligence) which is essentially "always on KPI monitoring and
alerting for all levels of the company". Sounds a lot like Six
Sigma Everything to me. The article mentions the need for a cultural
shift under PBI (they are right) but doesn't get into the details. If you
want to understand how disruptive something like PBI can be and what to do about
it, I'm speaking about this at the eMetrics
Summit.
**** The Brain
Behind The Big, Bad Burger
And Other Tales Of Business Intelligence
April 10, 2005 CIO Magazine
Instead of droning on and on about why analytics should be producing
better returns, the restaurant industry (of all places!) is actually doing
something with analytics. Up next is Six
Sigma Everything.
**** The
Dawn of the BI Director
March 20, 2005 DM Review
Yep, it's Six Sigma
Everything rearing it's head. When you are a master of the numbers and
driving productivity enhancement, you can haul down the big bucks. But, as
analytics grow in importance, you have to make sure you make changes to company
culture, e.g. failure is a learning experience and tying compensation to
provable profit increases.
*** Order
management: The new DNA of retailers` multi-channel strategies
March 10, 2005 Internet Retailer
No kidding - good order management is absolutely critical; the cost savings in
time and service issues are huge. If you're a small to midsize online
retailer, I can vouch for the Stone
Edge Order Manager mentioned at the end of the article - it is one sweet app
and has saved us countless hours in the "lab store".
*** No-Tech
CRM
March 1, 2005 destinationcrm.com
People talk about CRM failure in terms of not getting buy-in and lacking the
right culture, but I'm not sure they really know what that culture is. I
am, because I've seen this movie before; it's the analytical
culture and this
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