Jim Fulton, Principal, Customer Metrics on "Geeks"

Jim Fulton was a long-time Lands' End guru, and is now one of the preeminent thought leaders in the field of customer understanding and Multichannel Forensics. Like me, he uses sophisticated programming code to derive consumer insights that most web analytics and business intelligence tools fail to identify.

Mr. Fulton also understands the importance of the foot soldier, the computer geek, the individual who harvests the insights that help increase bonus levels for the multichannel executive.

Though this article was written several years ago, it is still relevant today. Why not give "Thoughts on the Selection, Care, and Feeding of Direct Marketing Geeks" a try, a presentation Mr. Fulton once gave to the Seattle Direct Marketing Association.



Hillstrom's Multichannel Forensics and Hillstrom's Database Marketing are both available at For Better Books or Amazon.com.

Hillstrom's Multichannel Secrets is available at Lulu.com!

Bill Walsh, The Coaching Tree, And Multichannel Marketing

Former San Francisco 49er football coach Bill Walsh passed away today.

I've always been fascinated by his "coaching tree'. He had a group of assistant coaches in San Francisco who went on to become head coaches elsewhere. Many had tremendous success, like Mike Holmgren (being part-owner of the Green Bay Packers, I have a soft spot for Coach Holmgren). Holmgren's tree includes Mike Sherman, Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, Marty Mornhinweg and Brad Childress.

In multichannel marketing (catalog + online, online + retail, catalog + online + retail), who are the leaders, and who are the disciples who carry multichannel marketing to new levels? Who are the folks who are doing genuinely innovative work, the folks who build upon what innovators have done, and create something new, interesting, successful, profitable?

Tell us about the folks you've worked with who have had an impact on multichannel marketing in the comments section.

I can honestly say that I've borrowed from the strengths of many different folks who I've worked with or followed over the years (and the company I worked with these individuals at):

• Ron Mowers, Garst Seed Company: Patience.
• Lori Liddle, Lands' End: Unparalleled passion for creating a 'perfect' circulation plan.
• Dave Johnson, Lands' End: People skills. I haven't worked with another individual who valued people as much as he did.
• Jim Fulton, Lands' End: His consulting practice is thriving because he figured out how to generate useful information from computer programs, information that shows how the future of a business is likely to evolve. This spurred my interest in what I now call "Multichannel Forensics".
• Bill End, Lands' End: It was great to work with a President/CEO that would take time to teach an arrogant, garden-variety analyst like myself how the world worked.
• Harry Egler, Eddie Bauer: Harry lets you do your job without micromanaging the details.
• Rick Fersch, Eddie Bauer: The President/CEO had one phrase that told you what you needed to do ... "Drive Sales Profitably". In other words, increase sales AND increase profit. The other phrase that proved prophetic was "Grow or Die".
• Brian McAndrews, aQuantive: I only spoke the President/CEO of aQuantive twice. The second time was when I resigned to become VP of Database Marketing at Nordstrom. He only had two questions for me. One was "... but do you still believe in our business model?". He stuck with the company from $78 a share to $1 a share to selling to Microsoft at $65 a share. How many other online leaders "sold out" when the going got tough?
• Blake Nordstrom, Nordstrom: He stayed away from gaudy, confusing, high-flung strategies. Most interesting --- in February 2005, I wanted to apply for the President of Nordstrom Direct position. Blake told me in plain, simple language that I did not have the skills he believed were needed for the position. He wasn't mean. He was simply matter-of-fact about it. The conversation fundamentally changed the direction of my career --- I knew it the moment I the conversation ended. Who knows what might have happened had he danced around the subject, or worse, been dishonest?
• Jim Bromley, Nordstrom: He was the President of Nordstrom Direct, and like Dave Johnson, accomplished a heck of a lot by believing in people over marketing gimmicks or high-flung strategies.
• Frank Buettner, Nordstrom: He cared about the $11/hour call center and distribution center individual. 'Nuff said.
• Brooke White, Nordstrom: The PR Executive who did things opposite of every other PR person I've met. Never heard her name before? There's a reason for that. She would do anything to protect the Nordstrom family, or the Nordstrom culture.
  
• Linda Finn, Nordstrom: The EVP of Marketing rescued me from a lousy situation. She also valued people over marketing gimmicks or technology.
• Don Libey, Guru: How many people would publish two books from an absolute nobody? These books kick-started my new endeavor. Who knows how many other kinds words he's spread about me that have helped me get this thing going?
  

Simplicity

Please read the following quote, from a recent article about database marketing:

"… a visual analysis of dynamic site interaction that applies multiple interrelated business dimensions and online customer behavior simultaneously to decipher and arrange raw data will move companies toward making decisions that will create a more positive customer experience."

Then read this quote that Jim Fulton forwarded to me today, from Charles Mingus: "Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple."

We Database Marketers and Multichannel Retailers need to focus more on being simple. All too often, we scare the living daylights out of people with our geeky terminology, or we offend folks by using flashy words that convey almost nothing of substance.

Vonage: No New Customers

If you believe the phrase "It is 'x' times cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new customer", you'll have a wonderful lab experiment to monitor, courtesy of the plight of Vonage (thanks, Jim Fulton).

Earlier this month, Vonage was barred from acquiring any new customers as part of their ongoing dispute with Verizon. Vonage attorney Roger Warin said it best:

"It's the difference of cutting off oxygen as opposed to the bullet in the head," Warin reportedly said. Urging the judge to reconsider, he added that the decision would "in effect slowly strangle Vonage."

What would you do if your company were not allowed to market for new customers anymore? What levers would you pull to prop-up sales as long as you possible, before your business imploded?

Boxing Day and Customer Service

Welcome to the Boxing Day edition of The MineThatData Blog! Today, in Boxing Day tradition, we switch roles. Readers Jim Fulton, Jeff Larche, Michael Gamma and Don Libey contribute content. Please read their columns, and comment on their topics. Thank you Jim, Jeff, Michael and Don.

As you may know, Boxing Day is about switching roles. A recent post from Seth Godin illustrates an employee at CVS talking on a cell phone, standing in front of a grease board that says "We cannot provide service if you are on your cell phone."

It is so, so easy to find an example of a customer service associate making a mistake. Maybe today, on Boxing Day, we switch roles, and consider what it is like to be a customer service associate. We assume that this employee is talking to a friend about an evening activity or a party. What if the associate is talking to her doctor about her biopsy? Do you feel differently about her if that is the case?

What would happen if somebody walked around our offices, snapping photos of our daily activities? Would the photographer ever find us reading blogs during the workday when we should be working? Would the photographer find us sending e-mails to friends, or find us using the phone for non-work-related calls? What would the photographer find if she walked through our offices?

For one day, can we switch roles, and try to have a little empathy for the folks who provide customer service for all of us? Can we try to understand what it is like to make $8.00 an hour working the counter at CVS, working without breaks, while the reader of this blog earns four or five times as much sitting in front of a computer on the day after Christmas? Can we, as business leaders, try to provide a work environment that is rewarding and enjoyable, paying a living wage with benefits, so that the these photos do not need to be snapped?

Jim Fulton: Mr. Krabs Is A Database Marketer

Jim Fulton is Principal of Customer Metrics, Inc. His contribution to the Boxing Day edition of The MineThatData Blog is entitled "Mr. Krabs Is A Database Marketer".


If you have

a) a newer vehicle with a built-in DVD entertainment system, and;

b) children under the age of 8

then you will

c) spend a lot of time listening to – but not watching – Sponge Bob DVDs.

And if – like me – you have worked in database marketing for twenty something years, then you will probably start wondering which, if any, of the Sponge Bob characters could be industry colleagues.

Having pondered this question for more time than I would care to admit, I write to present a case that Mr. Krabs – Sponge Bob’s boss and owner/manager of The Krusty Krab – shares many personality/intellectual traits with people in the database marketing world.

“Nay,” you say? “Where is his end-to-end CRM solution?” you ask? Consider the following, gentle reader:

1) Mr. Krabs is cheap

I have noticed that good database marketers and finance types tend to get along rather well. Obviously, there can be some tension on particular tactical decisions – and a little bit of honest skepticism can be useful for all involved -- but on the whole, good database marketers and good finance people both inhabit a world of real numbers, and their personalities tend to veer to the cheap side of the spectrum. DMers obsess about managing tenths of a cent in per-unit postage expense, will push the e-envelope in managing and limiting search engine optimization and affiliate expenses and will generally obsess about incrementality in a way that baffles many in the organization.

Database marketing tends not to be the part of the organization that sends staff members off on “multiweek journeys” to “develop a more holistic appreciation of the customer experience” and spends many hundreds of man hours clipping out photos from magazines and assembling them in montages on conference room walls to try to gain insight into customer behavior.

2) Mr. Krabs is tone-deaf on the “atmospherics” of the brand

Direct marketers are not without their faults (and cheapness can be something other than a virtue), and in our immersion in the heavy quant details, we do sometimes lose sight of the intangible “atmospherics” of the brand. (And I suppose some of those magazine photo montages can provide some insight on this point).

In one episode, “Patty Hype,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hype) Mr. Krabs belittles the idea that a customer would come to the Krusty Krab for “atmosphere.” “They come here for food!” he declares with a certain crustacean curmudgeonliness.

Let’s face it, Howard Schultz’s genius was using Starbucks’ “atmospherics” to successfully charge people $4 for caffeinated water. (And I for one think that’s generally a fair exchange). Victoria’s Secret’s genius was to elevate lingerie purchasing from the schlocky to the sensual. A Motorola RAZR’s atmospherics…well, you get the idea. Suffice it to say that a successful direct business needs database marketers, but not just database marketers.

3) Mr. Krabs does not fully grasp the economics of cannibalization

In “Sponge Bob: The Movie,” Mr. Krabs opens the second Krusty Krab right next door to the first one. When asked why by Bikini Bottom news reporter Perch Perkins, he replies “Money!”

The idea of putting more investment in the areas that you’re making the most money is well-intentioned and superficially somewhat plausible, but unless one speaks the language of incrementality, it is ridiculously easy to over-invest in segments that do not provide adequate incremental return.

The idea of the Krusty Krab II next door to Krusty Krab I is funny because even an eight year old can recognize that it’s silly. Is it really THAT different, however, from a decision to do an expensive catalog remail to an audience that just got the original catalog six days before?

4) Business = customer base.

Perhaps the greatest evidence that, down deep, Mr. Krabs is a direct marketer is the fact that in episode after episode, Mr. Krabs repeatedly – almost obsessively – notes the criticality of “all me paying customers!” At a strategic level, database marketing establishes strategic equivalence between the business and its customer/prospect base. And Mr. Krabs understands this from claw to tail.

Are ya ready, kids?