Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData

The Playbook: A Missing Element

Here's our playbook.

You, of course, are a play caller. You make decisions. You have a playbook with all sorts of "plays".

Those of you in old-school cataloging ask a common question.

"If we didn't have a catalog, we wouldn't have anything to say. How do we close that gap?"

Yeah, there's a missing element for those folks ... an element that (some) ecommerce brands possess.

The missing element?

Events.

You just watched the Super Bowl a few days ago. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an "event". The entire football calendar is built around events.

Events can be sales, but they should be more than sales. Customers don't care about your MARCH SALE - HURRY, 50% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING when the customer knows that a month later there will be an APRIL SALE - HURRY, 50% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING. Those are events by definition only.

The old-school cataloger essentially had monthly events ... a catalog delivered to a mailbox. Take the catalog away and there is a void.

The void must be filled ... with events.

Here's Olive and Cocoa (click here). That's a business based on events ... they don't have to create events because the entire business model is based on events.

You remember Amazon? Prime Days? Yes, there is a price component to that ... but not all prices are cut, and it isn't a sale with a blanket 30% off everything.

Williams Sonoma has virtual events (click here) to complement in-store events. How hard is it to create virtual events?

The catalog is going to go away (for my catalog-centric readers) - your partners are going to increase costs to unmanageable levels ... it has already happened and will continue to happen. You will replace catalogs with events. You have no choice.

The Playbook

A rudimentary drawing of what you are dealing with.

Print the image.

Review all of the "connectors" in the image ... this isn't perfect information so I'm not looking for an email that says "you don't have display ads in here, so the whole framework collapses" ... this is designed to get you to think, not criticize.

Prospects align with the channels below them.

Shoppers align with the channels below them.

Buyers / Loyalists frequently align with the channels west/southwest of them.

We're trying to push prospects to loyalists, right?

The Play Caller

That's what you are. You are a playcaller. Your job is to call plays to score points (i.e. profit) for your company. It isn't necessarily an easy job.

Readers ask "what do you look to for inspiration?" ... well, it sure isn't marketing literature ... six miles of unimaginable dreck coated in sugary frosting".

One of my daily reads is called "One Play A Day" ... you can subscribe here if you are a football fan. The coach sends one play design per day, showing how a play caller baffles the defense.

You just watched the Super Bowl. Did the play caller run the same play over and over and over and over? No! The play caller mixes things up, deceives the defense, runs a play in the first quarter then runs a completely different play out of the same formation in the third quarter.

The play caller adjusts to the strengths of his/her team.

The play caller uses analytics ... sometimes agreeing with analytics, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes simply leveraging gut feel and instinct.

The play caller knows that yards (net sales) are kind of irrelevant ... the play caller knows that points (profit) are highly relevant. The play caller knows that chunk plays (rushes of 12+ yards or passes of 16+ yards) make a big difference ... they are like events in marketing.

The play caller adjusts when his players aren't capable of performing at a high level ... no different than the marketer adjusting when customers don't embrace merchandise. Players in football are comparable to individual items in a merchandise assortment. Everything needs to work in harmony.

In upcoming posts, we're going to talk about retention and acquisition in terms of a play caller. You are no different than an NFL or College play caller. Which means, of course, that you have an important job that requires creativity, imagination, flexibility, and raw skills/knowledge.

P.S.: You can't always trust AI to produce an accurate image ... look at the flaws in this one.

Two Tidbits for Friday

You are going to have to have a handful of key items that you build your customer acquisition strategy around. It's virtually non-negotiable in a world that is transitioning search from Google-centric algorithms to discovery via AI.

We briefly veer off-topic for a moment. Here is a comment from former football coach Mike Martz ... about going for it on 4th down and the relation of the tactic to "analytics" in football.

"When somebody says 'analytics' on TV, I just run to the bathroom to vomit".

Do you think I'd align with a pure analytics view, or would I have empathy for this comment?

I have empathy for this comment.

There's a newsletter I receive from an agency. It's pure analytics wonkery. "For our clients, sales were up 2.49% on an ad expense increase of 4.11% leading to a ROAS of 2.88, proving that Facebook is struggling to deliver new customers."

Anytime you make decisions based on somebody else's success or failure, you are sub-optimizing the very decision you seek to optimize. If somebody told you that diners enjoyed eating meatballs just 41% of the time, would that dissuade you from making meatballs? Or would diners enjoy your meatballs 89% of the time?

Business should be FUN ... and you have the knowledge to make your own decisions independent of data. You know what works for your industry, you know what works for your own customers (often the tactics are different), and you make decisions independent of the industry narrative. That's the best use of analytics.

Small Details

In pickleball, if you score on 47% of your serves instead of 44% of your serves, your probability of winning a game goes from 50% to 64%. Small details matter, they're the difference between being successful or average.

The same thing happens in your business. Especially in email marketing. Back in the stone ages (2001 - 2007) at Nordstrom we personalized the merchandise that each customer observed in an email message. You're not doing this today, and that says something.

Why did we do this?

Email might have accounted for 15% of ecommerce sales, annually, maybe $45,000,000 per year. By personalizing the merchandise the customer observed, the $45,000,000 number became $54,000,000 ... the additional $9,000,000 of ecommerce sales resulted in about $2,600,000 in additional profit. All for the cost of about $150,000 in salary/benefits.

Sounds like a good tradeoff, doesn't it?

It's 2026 ... almost none of you reach out to me and tell me you do anything more clever than an old-fashioned "batch-and-blast" tactic. Easy? Yes. Profitable? Yes! Leaving all sorts of profit laying on the ground, unable to be picked up? Yup. By skipping the small details, you harm the business you work for.

Let's assume you are a $50,000,000 ecommerce brand. Email accounts for 20% of sales (if it doesn't account for at least 20% of sales, you are failing as a retention marketer). Let's assume you aren't doing any merchandise personalization, thereby missing out on a 20% sales opportunity. Let's assume that 40% of gross demand flows-through to profit. What are you missing out on?

$50,000,000 * 0.20 = $10,000,000 as your email marketing base.
Personalization = 0.20 * $10,000,000 = $2,000,000 additional gross sales.
Profit? $2,000,000 * 0.40 = $800,000.

If your business is wildly profitable, you likely generate 10% EBIT ... $50,000,000 * 0.10 = $5,000,000 profit. Would you like profit to increase by 16% (from $5,000,000 to $5,800,000)?

Hint - your CFO wants you to do this.

If your business has tepid ... just $2,500,000 ... the increase of $800,000 is more than a 30% increase in corporate profit ... from just paying attention to a small detail.

Those small details also translate to your personalized website, which you have ... right?

Lands' End in the early 90s was the only company I ever worked for that cared deeply about small details. I recall our Circulation Director sending her Circulation Managers back to the drawing board if gross margins were projected to increase by 0.2% ... they had to spend a week re-working an entire spring/summer season to account for the fact that we were every-so-marginally more profitable.

Small Details = Big Profit Swings.