The Iron Rule of RFM

And the only way to get that kind of information is to start coding your mailings.

Specifically, you need to devise a mailing code system that encodes each customer’s individual RFM values into their mailing code (see Figure 1 on p. 62). That mailing code should be applied to each catalog you mail, often in a yellow or pink box (which is where we as catalogers have trained our customers to look for it.) Then, as orders arrive, your operators should ask each customer for this code and enter it into each order, along with the customer’s name and address. Then, at season’s end, you should produce a sales report with a separate row for each code, so you can see individual response rates and sales for each mailing code (see Figure 2 on p. 62).