Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData

Subscriptions / Continuity Programs / Merchandise Categories

My Pickleball Mathlete subscription (click here) is an interesting way for me to practice being a marketer.

You can subscribe for free, or you can pay me $30 a year. I make sure free subscribers can see "some" of each article I send to subscribers. About 1/7th of my subscribers pay me. I'm sure some of you would see that as a failure. Who could blame you?

Those with real marketing chops go steps further than I do. They're managing Continuity Programs. These are the smart people. They know what one of their customers is likely to prefer "next". They enroll their customers in these programs ... if the customer doesn't like the program, the customer opts out and the brand moves on. Each purchase, each category purchased from, moves the customer into a different stream of content and commerce. Sure, the business model was popular in the 80s/90s (get twelve movies on VHS free, then buy one movie per month for a year). But the business model is completely applicable today.

Stitch Fix leveraged elements of continuity marketing ... they knew what you bought and what you'd likely prefer next. They called it a "subscription" because the Silicon Valley folks like modern terms for old ideas. Make no mistake ... at a simple level, they knew what you bought, they knew your purchase categories aligned with what you were likely to prefer next, then they sent that stuff to you ... that was a 2015 version of a continuity program.

The secret to ecommerce success is to identify like-minded cohorts, anticipate what they'd like "next", then give it to the customer before the customer knows the customer wants it next. Take a look at continuity program brands ... those who sell collectibles, or coins, or stamps, and think carefully about what they're doing and how it relates to you ... especially if your customer base shops infrequently.

Happy Birthday!

America turns 250 in a few hours!

Enjoy the long weekend!

The World Cup

It was fun for the first 2+ weeks. People taking over Times Square, Scots drinking Boston dry, somebody from Australia eating at a Waffle House, that kind of thing.

We're in the knockout stage now, and fans are going through the blender.

You are probably being told by somebody with a keyboard that your "brand" must capitalize on World Cup momentum.

Apparently AI thinks it is 37 degrees in Houston at the game The Lemonhead is attending.

All of the reasons the World Cup is special (and it isn't special if you are not a fan of soccer/football) work against your CFO's need to deliver a net sales increase of 5% this month AND when the World Cup is over. What does the CFO ask everybody to do next year to "comp" World Cup success?

You know you have something powerful if you can convince a family to spend $10,000 attending a World Cup match in a foreign country.

You might also have something powerful if a customer is willing to pay $49 for a widget. But it is a different kind of "special", and amazingly, it likely requires harder work to move the widget than to sell tickets to a World Cup game.

Buc-ee's Is Open

They expected 75,000 attendees the first few days - to get there, you had to drive 6.4 miles out of the way so that traffic was managed appropriately.

Fan Video.

There are a LOT of videos on the socials (click here).

P.S.: One of our intrepid readers told me that "nobody wants to work anymore" in response to store hiring challenges. Buc-ee's has no problem finding workers, and they openly publish what they pay people. Do you openly publish comparable salaries? Are your salaries competitive/better? Do you pay somebody $25/hour to clean your bathrooms?

P.P.S.: One of the new employees told me he has to park a mile away and take a shuttle to work. It funny how Retail Dive and/or other retail-centric trade organizations don't even bother to focus on this retail business model, much less point out how successful you have to be to force your employees to ride a shuttle a mile just to get to work.

Let's Insert a Bit of Reality

Yeah, I'm a little tired of reading about the neuroscience of print and emotional engagement.

Let's think about the actual / quantifiable ways that many of you have seen your catalog-centric efforts work. My ecommerce readers can take the day off - enjoy!

Average Order Value: If you run a business with an AOV north of $500, you can make catalog marketing work. Try doing that with a $55 AOV. That doesn't work, and it doesn't matter how many Gen-Z recipients have "digital fatigue" as the print folks say. I had a B2B client with a $700 AOV. That AOV covered "ALL" catalog marketing sins. The future of catalog marketing is gigantic AOVs or ...

Highly Loyal Buyers: If you don't have a $700 AOV and want to continue your craft for the next decade, your catalogs will avoid low-response customers/prospects ... the math does not work. If you have a customer with a 70% chance of repurchasing with 6+ purchases per year ... that's a situation that works.

High Frequency Contact Strategy: Every one of my contact strategy optimization projects suggests that the most loyal customers are being UNDER-CONTACTED. If you want to practice your craft, you'll figure out how to contact your most loyal customers WEEKLY. Yes, you'll have to do that. I know you don't want to do that.

Winning Items Only: Enough "sharing our assortment with the customer". That's what you did in 1996. It's 2026. You will only be able to afford to put the absolute best-selling stuff in front of the customer (this applies to email marketing too).

Targeting: Gen-Z DOES NOT CARE about your 56 page Summer Sale catalog. At all. Millennials don't care. Gen-X mostly does not care. Catalog marketing is a Baby Boomer discipline. I'll catch heck on LinkedIn for saying this (#hedoesntunderstand #digitalfatigue #neuroscience). Just look at your response data by age cohort. Seriously. Go do it. Don't look at a survey of 277 likely ecommerce shoppers ... look at your own data by age cohort. You'll need to mail your very best customers, you'll need to filter out most customers < age 60 unless they purchase only in the in-home week when you send catalogs, you'll need to focus on customers who call your contact center. You'll need to filter out customers who buy items that reduce the likelihood of a future purchase. You'll need high AOV customers or high response customers. You don't need AI (other ecommerce brands are going to need it). You need common sense.

Nostalgia and Fox News: That's what you are competing against, and you are likely better at nostalgia when it comes to resonating with Baby Boomers. You are not competing against Amazon. You are not competing against Macy's. You are not competing against Buc-ee's. You are competing against Fox News, and your version of nostalgia has to be better than their version of it. Your ability to garner attention in short bursts needs to be better than their ability to garner attention six hours per day.

Incrementality: So many of you choose to ignore the results of your mail/holdout tests. "I JUST DON'T BELIEVE IT!!" Of course you don't believe it. If you believed it, you'd have to do something drastically different, and you don't want to do that, do you? Believe your incrementality tests. Please! Not believing your mail/holdout test results is comparable to not believing that our planet is an oblate spheroid ... you're just ignoring evidence for ... well, for preservation of your profession I suppose.

Cost Increases: To overcome the immense damage caused by your paper friends, your printer, and the USPS (they all want you to transfer money from your profit line to their net sales line, for varying reasons), you are not going to be able to be a sloppy marketer. I've been amazed that the paper folks have come after you, criticizing your marketing efforts as not being sufficient to drive response. Your efforts are sufficient, their cost increases break trust. I've analyzed many of your businesses in my Elite Program - your comp segment performance is up 50% in the past decade for some and probably averaging a 20% increase across all catalogers analyzed. You aren't the problem. You'll always be able to figure out how to be more productive. But you'll act accordingly as the paper / printing / postage folks continue to disrespect your loyalty.

Orvis: Those who email me seem to have contempt for Orvis, as if they betrayed the trust of the entire marketing community in New England. Readers, have you looked around? Do you have comparable contempt for Lillian Vernon? Do you have contempt for Universal Screen Arts going bankrupt a few years ago ... because they no longer mail catalogs either?!! How about the Newport News catalog? It's gone, they aren't mailing either. As best I can tell, a whopping 80% of catalog printed pages have been removed from the mail since 2001. This isn't the fault of Orvis. They're doing what they have to do to not become the Newport News catalog. Your mileage will vary, no need to be resentful. Maybe your business applies to the positives above ... if so, keep doing what you're doing. But you aren't obligated to keep doing what you are doing. Wells Fargo didn't keep selling gold dust via express shipping, they changed as times changed.

You are a smart professional, and you know what you need to do to maximize the productivity of your business. Go make good things happen!