virginia.miracle | Virginia Miracle

The Costly Weight of Marketing Clutter

By virginia.miracle | January 9, 2008

Today, pastor Ben over at the Church of the Customer shared the weigh-in of his unwanted direct mail for the holiday season: a whopping 21.5 pounds. That’s for one household. Let’s pretend we’re being interviewed by a management consulting firm and do some “back of the envelope” estimation.

There are around 100 million households in the US, but based on household income, let’s assume 40 million of those wouldn’t be considered attractive enough to be targeted with this type of weighty marketing (the heavier the paper, the more it costs to mail, etc. A lot of high end modeling goes into whether you receive a catalog, how frequently you get mailed, and how many pages get mailed to different types of households). So that’s 60M mailed addresses.

Let’s also be conservative and assume that the Church is on the particularly high end of the spectrum and discount the weight they received by 25% to get a number that we feel more comfortable extrapolating over the rest of the population, so that would be a household poundage of 16.125 lbs.

Based on these above numbers our (conservative) estimate of the holiday direct mail that cluttered homes is just under 1 billion pounds (967,500,000) or 483750 tons.

I’ll also use a low-ball estimate of number of trees per ton of paper (7.68 trees) to offset the fact that while folks like Neiman’s are using close to 15 trees per ton of their catalogs, some marketers (including Dell, Patagonia, and Williams Sonoma) are using more and more recycled paper. This brings us to a grand total of 3,715,200 trees.

I have no idea how to estimate the brainpower used to create the catalogs, the gas burned to bring these gems to my mailbox, and the gas burned to take them from my recycling bin to a recycle center, I’m guessing that it would be enough to make starting a conversation with your customers not look quite so expensive after all.

(If you want to stop receiving unwanted catalogs, visit Catalog Choice. If you’d like to plant some trees to offset the onslaught, visit Plantit2020. If you’d like to know more about opening a dialogue with your customers, visit WOMMA.)

Resolution Loophole

By virginia.miracle | January 8, 2008

In my energetic attack of my super sporty New Year’s resolutions, I broke one of the bones my left foot. I am 31 and this is my first broken bone ever. Nothing like a stylish walking cast to accompany me on the first day of my new job in DC next week, eh?

Look for a thoughtful post pile on to Ben’s marketing clutter post tomorrow. For today, I’m going to kick back with some pain meds and Tivo.

Amazon’s Investment in Customer Experience

By virginia.miracle | January 7, 2008

There was a great case study shared by Jeffery Eisenberg yesterday in his post “Should You Cancel All Your Advertising?”. In 2003, Jeff Bezos pulled all of Amazon’s advertising and chose to reinvest those dollars in deferring shipping charges for customers. This shows insight into the top potential objection to shopping online and directly combats it – if I can get the same item for less on Amazon AND not pay shipping, the only remaining reason to shop retail would be if I absolutely had to have something today. By giving shipping back to the customer, Amazon used great customer experience to generate great word of mouth. But, this does not come without a pricetag. In a recent presentation from Amazon’s CFO, forgone shipping revenue was estimated at a whopping $600Million for a single year.

To answer the question Eisenberg poses of whether or not other businesses should cancel their advertising to focus on word of mouth marketing alone, there are a few considerations:

1) Current Customer Experience – Why are people opting for your competition (be it another business or another channel) instead of you? Is that something you could correct by reinvesting marketing dollars?

2) Quality of Customer Stories – When folks do select your business, what kind of conversational capital are you providing them? Is it the kind of story they will want to shout from the mountaintop, tell a select few, or never think about mentioning again.

3) Awareness & Urgency – Does anyone know who you are? If the answer is no, it could take a long time to launch your business with absolutely no advertising. You would be relying on your immediate personal and business connections to get the word out.

If you do have a solid customer base who would be willing to tell your story more often if only you provided them with a better one, the reinvestment of marketing dollars into your customer experience might payoff just as much as Amazon’s did.

St. John Knit Cont. – Why I’m a Fan

By virginia.miracle | January 6, 2008

5 years ago, I decided that I wanted to look at little different when I got married. This largely stemmed from the fact I am 6 feet tall and sturdy and I knew that wearing any variation on the typical strapless meringue princess dress was not going to work. I grew up in Richmond, Virginia where St. John Knit was spoken of in hushed, reverent tones and worn by some of the most elegant women I knew. I somehow got it into my head that a St. John evening gown would be a distinctive choice.

Of course, this was some years ago and I didn’t have funds to pay full retail, so I bought a white and gold gown on eBay (never worn, with tags). It was perfect, except for plunging neckline which was decidedly un-bridelike. I went to a St. John Outlet, where I had purchased some other items, and asked them how and where I should get it altered. They pinned the dress and sent it to St. John HQ in California for the alterations to be done. It was returned unchanged with a note explaining that they refused to do the alterations because they would ruin the integrity of the design.

I was shocked and crushed. I loved this brand so much that I wanted to be wearing one of their gowns on my wedding day and they wouldn’t alter it so I could? I wrote a very upset letter to CEO Kelly Gray, mailed it, and forgot about it as I started brainstorming what I was going to do for Plan B.

I didn’t have to think long because less than 48 hours later, I received a phone call at work from the Vice President of Customer Service. She apologized profusely, gave me her personal mailing address and proceeded to walk the dress through the alterations studio at the St. John mothership and FedExed it immediately back to me. Like so many loyalty making moves, this cost the company nothing beyond care and effort. This act of listening and engaging has increased my lifetime customer value to the company by many multiples. Pay attention to the squeaky wheels – the people who make the effort to tell you when something is wrong have the potential to become your most active evangelists.

How St. John Knit Creates Loyalists

By virginia.miracle | January 5, 2008

Note: This is the first of the “Brands Worthy of a Weekend” series. These are, quite simply, brands that some find inspiring enough that they would make the personal sacrifice of a weekend to spend time learning about the company and meeting other enthusiasts. St. John Knit is one of my selections – today I’ll cover how they create enthusiasts and tomorrow I’ll share my personal story of fan creation. Please go to the Contact or comment her to share brands that you would deem worthy of a weekend.

This year, St. John Knit is celebrating its 45^th anniversary. Kelly Gray, daughter of the founders, former face of the St. John ad campaign (before being replaced by Angelina Jolie), and former CEO of the company, was at Neiman Marcus in Houston greeting the faithful this week. One of the women waiting in line to meet her confessed to owning 200 outfits from various St. John lines. That is a fan. And, potentially, someone with a shopping addiction, but a fan nonetheless. St. John Knit has proven itself as a company that can inspire loyalists. But how do they do it?

Product – Despite the wild meanderings of fashion since its founding in 1962, you can identify a St. John item no matter its age because of its basic silhouettes and completely unique fabric. St John is not just a design house, but a manufacturer who spins, dyes and weaves its own blend of materials to make their signature knit. The advantages of the fabric include the way the garments hold their shape for decades, are completely wrinkle-free, and rarely show signs of wear. Another unique element of the cloth is that a qualified dry cleaner can use a product called “blocking” to redistribute the knit in such a way to size them up or down – thus allowing them to grow or shrink with your figure through the years.

Ownership Experience – While St. John does produce certain more “editorial” pieces with each collection, their bread and butter remains classic silhouettes of their signature fabric, accented with their elegant enamel buttons. Because of the easily recognizable looks, fans can easily spot each other and know they share certain values and taste. I think the recognizability of the garments is a key component in the ownership experience. One doesn’t need to wear logoed items (a la Coach or LV) for others to recognize that they are a part of the St. John brand promise and who wouldn’t want to live the promise of beauty and success promised by Angelina Jolie in this shot?

St. John is also known for its remarkable customer service, but I’ll expound on that when I share why I’m a fan tomorrow.