Mining Your Customer Files

A further study of the database may give you further hints at the distribution of the monetary level of buyers with only one purchase. A customized message is critical to these people to improve their monetary level on their next purchase.

Identify cells that should receive additional mailings. My experience has been that most catalogers under-mail their customers. It makes a great deal of sense to re-mail those cells that have the highest RFM values. A good industry rule of thumb is that re-mailing the same catalog or one with minor cover changes will pull 50 percent to 60 percent of the original mailing. If your breakeven is $3.00 revenue per catalog, it is possible to find a great number of cells that are expected to generate more than $6.00 sales per book.