Top Four Articles, March

An odd month for the top-rated articles.

Number Four was "Nordstrom Integrates RSS Feeds and Search".

Number Three was an essay titled "Leaving Eddie Bauer".

Number Two was an article about "Free Shipping And Free Returns At Victoria's Secret".

Number One was an essay titled "Leaving Nordstrom".

Top Four Articles In February

Here are the four most popular articles from the month of February.

Number Four was the Neiman Marcus Fashion Week Blog. This received a lot of traffic. In fact, most times when I talk about how companies are using this style of communication, the post gets a lot of traffic.

Number Three was the Social Media Index for Apparel entry. This is something I may continue to update, given the popularity of the ranking system.

Number Two was Virtual CEO: Coldwater Creek and Inventory Management. You enjoyed reading this, but nobody left a comment as to how to solve the problem. The lack of solutions indicates jsut how tough it is to run inventory management at a multichannel business.

And finally, at Number One, we have The Grammys Of Mulitchannel Marketing. The most popular article of the month could have used more comments --- come on folks, use your chance to recognize somebody who does great work in the multichannel retailing environment!!!!!!

The Top Four Articles From January

Here's what you enjoyed reading the most in January.

Number Four was a brief post about "It's Not Personal, It's Business". Folks seemed to enjoy contemplating the simple questions raised in the article.

Number Three was "Measuring Loyal Customer Behavior Using Multichannel Forensics". As a whole, the Multichannel Forensics series has been well read, with a veritable plethora of downloads for the white paper.

Number Two was an article that Mr. Rubel at MicroPersuation linked to, called "Four In 150 Retailers Truly Leverage RSS Feeds". As you can see from the title, not many big online retailers are utilizing RSS feeds ... yet.

And the most-read article in January was The 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 Rule. This article was posted on Reddit by one of our loyal readers, and was ultimately viewed 12,700 times. When you average between 100 and 175 visitors a day, never more than 250 visits in a single day, your eyes pop out of your head when you see a visitor coming to your blog every three seconds.

Who Wants A Free Book? Submit Your Article By February 4

If you work for a company that sells merchandise to consumers via a catalog or a website, I have a homework assignment for you.

Between now and February 4, write a brief article about one of the topics listed below. After a review of the submissions, I will post your article on The MineThatData Blog on February 5. You get a little bit of recognition, and at least one of you will be chosen at random to receive a copy of my book, "Hillstrom's Database Marketing". Simply e-mail me your submission by February 4.

Valid topics include the following:

• Any discussion about the future of multichannel retailing.
  
• Creative ways that web analytics tools have been used to improve business performance.
• Interesting ways to leverage online advertising for sales growth.
  
• Any discussion of the pros and cons of using compiled lists (i.e. Abacus) verses rented lists for catalog prospecting purposes.
• Any discussion of the trends in catalog circulation to drive catalog + online sales.

Articles should be between 250 and 1,000 words in length.

Are you up to the challenge? E-mail me (kevinh@minethatdata.com) your submission no later than February 4.

Top Four Articles For December

Here's the content you enjoyed the most during the month of December. Not counting today, you participated in a twenty percent increase in traffic over November, so thank you!

Three sites tied for the fourth most popular post of December.

Fully Understanding The Traffic Your Site Truly Generates was written late in the month, yet is tied for fourth place. Readers enjoyed the comparison of traffic, links and RSS feeds. Surprisingly, tied for fourth was Kasey Casem's American Top 40. Readers apparently enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane. Finally, American Girl And Molly's Blog tied for fourth place. This was a discussion of the blog on the American Girl website.

Third place goes to our monthly review of Friends of MineThatData, a ranking of direct marketing, database marketing and analytics blogs.

Second place was a brief article that linked to LunaMetrics, titled Do You Like Your Web Analytics Software Package?

First place goes to Coldwater Creek, The Little Engine That Could, a discussion of the evolution of the Coldwater Creek business model from a catalog-centric business to a retail-centric business supported by a website.

The top four posts clearly represent the diversity of the audience. Multichannel topics, web analytics, blogging, peer sites, and an obscure reference to Casey Kasem generally reflect the mix of readers and topics on this blog.

Top Four Articles From November

November saw a 40% increase in traffic. Thank you! Here's what you enjoyed reading the most in November.

• Number Four was a tie. "Business Review: Overstock.com", a discussion about profit and loss at the low-cost, low-margin online pureplay. Tied for fourth was "Return on Investment Equation and Copywriting". Google helped this out (do a search on ROI Formula, and see what appears in the top 7 results).
• Number Three was "Mergers and Acquisitions", a discussion about Eddie Bauer being purchased.
  
• Number Two was "Williams Sonoma, Incremental Online Sales and Matchback Analysis". Our multichannel retailing audience enjoyed this post.
• And the Number One article was, in a landslide, "Please Help Our Industry Measure Advertising Effectiveness!". The spreadsheet, which needs to be solved by January 31, 2007 (all valid answers will be published here), has been downloaded by individuals in nearly a dozen different countries. My hope is that a good mix of data miners, and folks from industry leaders like Abacus, Merkle, Acxiom, Unica, Experian, SAS, SPSS and others genuinely try to do good for the multichannel retailing and online industry, and provide a solution to this problem.