Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData

An Offer For You

I received a couple of emails from readers last week that were compelling. Both got me thinking about something. Here's a paraphrase of one of the email messages.

"I saw what 'brand x' does for email marketing, and I'm disappointed in their entire marketing team. You mentioned that your team personalized email marketing messages at Nordstrom ... in 2001. Why isn't anybody executing at that level in 2026?"

Good question!

Let's try a limited test. I'll do something ridiculously inexpensive for you, because you are a loyal blog reader.

I will score your email file using a headphones-style tier list ... S / A / B / C / D / F ... based on how likely each email subscriber is to buy from you in the near future.
I will add a "+/-" indicator to tell you if the email subscriber is a good customer for your brand or a lousy customer.
I will tell you the primary merchandise category and the secondary merchandise category the customer prefers so you can personalize the merchandise assortment for each customer.

You get two options.

$4,900 for a one-time run.
$7,900 and I'll score your file every month for the next twelve months.

You don't get the analysis I typically perform ... but you get the nuts and bolts necessary to personalize email campaigns to customers. When I've been asked to perform this work for clients, personalized campaigns perform about 20% better than batch-and-blast campaigns. If you are a $50,000,000 business generating $10,000,000 a year from email marketing, you could generate a couple million to the top-line and maybe a half-million to a million of incremental profit. For $4,900 / $7,900.

You have until the end of business on February 24 to take me up on this stupid-cheap offer. Fire away! (kevinh@minethatdata.com).

A Shift in Leadership

I've been floored by the change over the past fifteen years.

Early in my career (late 80s), I worked at a hybrid seed company. There were Leaders everywhere.

At Lands' End in the early 1990s, there were Leaders everywhere. Too many Leaders, in fact, causing rampant intellectual and philosophical arguments. You actually wanted to be in a meeting to hear the different points of view.

At Eddie Bauer in the late 1990s, there were fewer Leaders ... this was 90s Seattle, where Leaders and Grifters partnered to make millions in dot.com money, draining average companies of Leadership. I recall a really, really average manager calling me (I was a director at the time) offering me a job as a manager at Amazon, where I'd be a nobody but would earn more money. I wouldn't be writing to you today had I gone in that direction ... I'd either be dead or filthy rich. Being neither means I get to play pickleball.

At Nordstrom in the early-mid 2000s, there was a fabulous blend of Leaders and humble doers ... a kind of blend few companies could emulate. A competitive advantage that Neiman Marcus or Saks or Macy's could never possibly replicate.

And then?

Somewhere around 2010, "it" changed. It is Seth Godin's fault if you ask me. No, he didn't do anything wrong. He wrote so well. He spoke in public, and spoke well. He appeared on blogs, on podcasts. He commented on this very blog. He eschewed typical business models. He charted his own course. He's still writing (click here). He had ideas for how a modern business could relate to customers. His ideas were so simple that nobody, to this day, wants to implement them. Personalized communications? Why do that when you can mass broadcast a discount on Instagram ... the latter takes twelve seconds, the former requires a task force.

That's when "it" changed.

It is hard to come up with a thesis for how to run marketing at a modern business. You discount or you mass broadcast or you do all the hard work Seth Godin wanted you to do.

Virtually nobody in marketing wants to do hard work. Especially when understaffed, underappreciated, and under-paid ... which happens nearly everywhere.

The "it" that changed was the rise of the Thought Leader.

Few marketers could create their own thesis for how to execute marketing in a modern world.

Many marketers could point out missteps from "big brands". How hard is it to put Eddie Bauer on blast mode for bankrupting itself via merchandise strategy and store execution?

The Thought Leader uses seductive language to stop a marketer in his tracks.

"Saks didn't adapt to a modern reality of retailing. The modern consumer has zero tolerance for uninspiring merchandise assortments in a dingy department store that fails to embrace experiences or engagement. Tomorrow's customer demands an intimate relationship with trusted brands. Those who haven't laid this foundation risk obsolescence. Those who are actively pursuing this foundation will reap the rewards."

That is the kind of acid-reflux inducing advice offered by a modern Thought Leader. If you don't tamp it down with Pepcid you become a Lemonhead.

The Thought Leader did not solve a single problem that Saks possesses. He simply said flowery words that sell books, that result in 79 comments from Lemonheads on LinkedIn, that allow him to pay $20,000 to speak at conferences, that enable him to sign a contract to provide "Management Advice" at a competing brand that will never be implemented. He pays to write for Forbes. He criticizes everybody in an attractive manner. He uses terms he lacks the ability to understand or implement ("AI" comes to mind). He is the opposite of Seth Godin in every possible way.

These very traits are attractive to the Lemonhead. The Lemonhead is understaffed, underappreciated, and under-paid.

The Lemonhead lacks Leaders within his own company. With nobody to lead him, to guide him, to protect him, he's at the mercy of the Thought Leader. The Thought Leader gladly adds his subscriber counts, clicks, and otherwise empty engagement metrics to his collection. The Thought Leader needs the Lemonhead.

The Lemonhead needs somebody to respect him, to appreciate him.

Which brings me back to you.

Be a Leader.

Your employees need you. They're counting on you. You might not be able to pay them enough. You might not be able to provide them with the resources they need to be successful. You might not be able to staff your department appropriately. But you can respect your employees and appreciate your employees. Daily.

Your employees do not want to become Lemonheads. They need a real Leader to help them navigate five miles of marketing dreck coated in delicious frosting.

No Awareness

Modern prospecting and awareness are intertwined.

I decided to look at a brand called Potpourri. I visited the website, and was promptly interrupted.

Why did I visit the website? I wanted to find links to their social media presence.

There were no links.

As best I can tell, there's not much of a social media presence. Maybe I am missing it.

Honestly, Potpourri is part of a conglomerate, so they can prospect off of sister company lists. That helps ... a lot!!

Long-term, your organic social presence promotes events ... the events convert prospects into shoppers that become buyers that can be nudged toward loyalty yielding profit.

I mean, it's 2026. The best time to start the organic social stuff was in 2010. The second best time to start is tomorrow. But you have to have something to say. Create an event every three weeks, events that fuel the prospecting part of your universe, that seed the search/ai aspect of your business.

Every Three Weeks

Back to our playbook.

Every three weeks there needs to be an event. Again, not "40% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING", that's not an event, that's a bribe that devalues the customer relationship.

Events are important, because they fill your marketing ecosystem ... the kids call this stuff content and engagement ... it's so much more than that. You are giving the customer a reason to pay attention to you, and better you do that with merchandise that leads to content than to do it with content alone.

All this stuff helps you retain customers ... and based on your feedback, you much prefer retaining customers than acquiring customers (though most of you benefit more by acquiring customers than retaining customers).

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.