Co-Ops And Long-Term Value

You may have heard me be critical of the co-ops.

One place where co-ops deserve praise is in the targeting and modeling they've done over the past two years. Long-term value of customers acquired via co-ops have consistently been above-average, after seeing very different results in the past. Whether competition or better algorithms or better data capture, the result is highly positive.

Often, subsequent merchandise purchased by co-op customers is different, and subsequent channels purchased from by the customer are different than the merchandise/channels purchased by online customers using algorithms like Google.

Also pay attention to Zip Code Forensics --- a few of the larger co-ops skew heavily toward Catalog Crazies & Catalog Fans, not good, not bad, just means they are going after the rural catalog customer, directly or indirectly. Conversely --- Google --- those customers skew to the Online Bliss and Online Spend segments in Zip Code Forensics.