This article will give you a basic understanding of how housefile statistical models work. Additionally, it will show the various ways a marketer unfamiliar with statistical models can provide input to the development process to optimize model performance. It seems there’s a word for every type of phobia known, including “triskaidekaphobia,” which is a fear of the number 13. Yet I was surprised I couldn’t find a word for the fear of statistics — indeed, “statisticaphobia” is a word that really should exist. From experience, I know that catalog marketers without backgrounds in statistics often are ill at ease when participating in model-development
Keith Pietsch
Personalization and one-to-one marketing have become hot customer relationship management (CRM) topics in recent years. Indeed, glowing case studies from the direct marketing industry abound. Yet the core concept of personalizing print promotions has been slow to gain acceptance by catalog marketers in particular. Why? Their reluctance may be due to past experiences in the traditional print catalog world, where the incremental cost to vary the offer can be prohibitive. As a result, most print catalog promotions deliver a product-centric message. To be sure, that can work for some catalogers, but it still doesn’t tap into the notion of true one-to-one marketing.
You invest a significant amount of time and effort to maintain your customer marketing database. Indeed, you have tightly monitored procedures to be sure all new activity is applied correctly, customer summations are accurate, and the names and addresses are kept current. In time, your database has grown in both size and scope as your business has evolved. But are you getting the most out of what you’re putting into it? As you consider the wealth of information you now maintain on each customer, have you taken the necessary steps to leverage all available data elements to optimize your customer mailing selects?
