My name is Kevin Hillstrom, President of MineThatData. For the past 21 years, I have been helping CEOs understand the complex relationship between customers, advertising, products, brands, and channels. My clients include Online E-Commerce Brands, $30,000,000 Catalogers, Billon-Dollar Retail Chains, and International Direct Marketers. Prior to founding MineThatData, I was Vice President of Database Marketing at Nordstrom, Director of Circulation at Eddie Bauer, and Manager of Analytical Services at Lands' End.
The MineThatData Blog
The MineThatData Blog is a highly-read Database Marketing forum, focusing on the intersection between marketing and data.
Close to 200,000 visitors have reviewed content on the blog. This is the best source for Online Marketing Simulation and Multichannel Forensics content on the web.
Consulting Projects: Online Marketing Simulations
E-Commerce CEOs hire me to analyze how customers interact with e-commerce websites. In an Online Marketing Simulation, I determine which advertising micro-channels (e-mail, paid search, affiliates, offline ads) yield high-value customers, allowing the Marketing Executive to optimize the marketing budget for long-term company profitability. A typical project takes about four weeks to complete. Pricing is inexpensive for small brands, and is quite reasonable for large brands.
Consulting Projects: Multichannel Forensics
The Catalog CEO hires me to explain how catalog advertising fuels e-commerce sales. I explain how customers interact with advertising, helping the Catalog CEO optimize marketing expense associated with retaining existing customers and acquiring new customers. A typical
project focuses on catalog contact frequency and customer acquisition strategy. A typical $50,000,000 cataloger can expect to generate an additional $250,000 to $750,000 annual profit based on the outcome of a
$17,000 Multichannel Forensics project. Project costs are
based on the number of twelve-month buyers a brand has, varying
between $9,000 and $40,000.
Consulting Projects: Personas and Segmentation
E-Mail Marketers hire me to segment their customer file into 'Personas', segments of customers with similar behaviors. Based on the personas, e-mail marketers send productive targeted campaigns that increase profitability.
Consulting Projects: Statistical Modeling of Catalog and E-Mail Buyers
I am frequently hired to rank-order customers from best to worst for various marketing activities, based on logistic regression models, ordinary least squares regression models, CHAID models, and oragnic percentage modeling.
Consulting Projects: Contact Strategy Management
In these projects, I identify the optimal catalog marketing strategy (frequency, page count) and e-mail marketing strategy, using proprietary algorithms. This is another place where I can easily generate a six or seven figure annual profit increase.
Consulting Projects: Pricing Strategy
Brands hire me to understand the optimal price point to sell merchandise at, given prior selling trends, seasonality, gross margin / cost of goods considerations, promotional strategies, and product similarity. The outcome of this project is a spreadsheet with built-in pricing models for any item.
Consulting Projects: Database Marketing Audit
A typical Database Marketing Audit takes 1-2 days. During this on-site visit, I review all direct marketing and online marketing activities, especially as they relate to how data is used in the company. Given your current staffing levels, direct marketing activities, and database management strategy, I outline a path to Database Marketing Excellence.
Ad-Hoc Consulting
Many of my projects are one-day assigments, designed to solve a problem unique to a business at a given point in time, projects requiring rapid analytical turnaround of customer data. I charge a standard daily rate for these projects.
Speaking Engagements
I am a frequent speaker at E-Commerce, Catalog, and Direct Marketing conferences. Topics include Online Marketing Simulations, Future Data Integration Trends, and Evolutionary Catalog Strategies.
Board of Directors
I would be honored to participate on E-Commerce and Direct Marketing Boards and Advisory Boards.
