Behavioral Targeting vs. Demographics

22 Jan 08 - Mark Klein

In the current post on Metrics Insider, Josh Chasin argues that behavioral targeting is not the be-all and end-all, that demographics is alive and well. He calls demographics “the targeting concept that wouldn’t die.” He says further that “more than half of U.S. ad dollars are placed against traditional demographic targets.”

Old School vs. New School Testing

10 Jan 08 - Mark Klein

David Baker has a good column in Email Insider this week, What Really Makes An Email Program Click. In it, he writes "Remember one thing: You test to prove or disprove your hypothesis, not just for the exercise."

To me, that sounds like old school testing, where one ‘thing’, one hypothesis, is tested. Formally, that is called split-run or A/B testing. There is only one variable, and two variations of it. It works, but it is time consuming and (if there is more than one hypothesis) needs lots of test subjects and money. Consequently many companies just don’t do it, relying instead on their intuition.

Can one metric do the job for ranking customers?

05 Jan 08 - Mark Klein

I am admittedly biased. When asked what I think is the best metric for ranking customers, I invariably recommend our proprietary Loyalty Score for a two reasons. First, it is highly predictive, corresponding to the probability that the scored customer will make a purchase in the next period. Second, it’s tested and proven through use by many clients over the past few years. We have a lot of confidence in it. Besides, I enjoy tweaking people who think the only good measure is revenue.