Almost two years ago, L.L. Bean began to move investments from infrastructure and staffing to prospecting and advertising. The results are just now coming in

By Reported Donna Loyle

Fuller: We’re always testing. Really, always. We’ve tested offers, channel interactions, product purchasing history, e-mail marketing, affiliate programs, search engine marketing, you name it.

Our challenge, however, is to make it all work better, to figure out how a customer’s behavior seen in one channel can impact that customer’s lifetime value to Bean. For example, how should we treat people who live around one of our retail stores? We track demand by channel, but we roll it up into household data.