Do You Want A New Metric?

Try this one on for size.

• YouTube Index:  Total Subscribers / (Annual Net Sales / 1,000,000).

Let's consider two companies.

Company #1:  JCP. Approximately $11,000,000,000 in annual net sales, 61,900 followers on YouTube.

• YouTube Index = 61,900 / (11000000000 / 1000000) = 6. Six subscribers per million in annual net sales.

Company #2:  Griot's Garage (I've used this example frequently ... and I don't know their annual net sales, let's say it is $20,000,000). 39,300 followers on YouTube.

• YouTube Index = 39,300 / (20000000 / 1000000) = 1,950. One thousand nine hundred and fifty subscribers per million in net sales.

Now, Griot's Garage could have double that volume in net sales or half that volume ... it doesn't matter. They have a video following. JCP does not. Griot's Garage customers/prospects care.

If you are a traditional catalog brand, your days of lists and co-ops are ending. They ended years ago to be honest. You'll move over to Google/Facebook, but your merchandise assortment (catering to a 60-84 year old customer) won't align with prospects in that realm. You'll be disappointed. You'll tell me that digital doesn't work very well. It works fine. It's a merchandise / channel alignment that flummoxes you.

Meanwhile, Google/Facebook become more expensive as time passes ... and the competition out there dilutes response. Acquiring new customers? It gets harder every day.

This is why community matters. In 2025, Community is your prospect list ... it's the place where you interact with both best customers and prospects ... it's the place where best customers and prospects interact. It's a living, breathing ecosystem that doesn't cost you much but pays you back handsomely.

YouTube is just one aspect of community, but it is a reflection of how much prospects and customers want to come along for the ride with you. In the example I gave above, the Griot's Garage customer/prospect is 300 times more interested in going along for the ride than is the J.C. Penny customer/prospect.

Your YouTube Index matters. It tells you how much your customers and prospects care.

If your YouTube Index is over, say, 200, you've got a fighting chance. Though these numbers aren't set in stone.

What is your YouTube Index?

For My Catalog Readers: Catalog Keynote Presentation #1

Here's the link to Keynote #1 ... tomorrow we focus on Keynote #2. It's lunchtime at NEMOA, so it's a good opportunity for you to gain a different perspective! Gather 'round your garden salads with chicken breast, fire up your noise cancelling headphones, and watch the keynote on your iPhone.

Reminder: Happy Hour on April 3 at 8:00pm EDT / 5:00pm PDT

Send me an email (kevinh@minethatdata.com) to get your link for the 50 minute event on Thursday night!

Great Moments in Omnichannel History

Joann Fabrics: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/bankruptcy/how-joann-fabrics-went-from-a-cult-favorite-retail-darling-to-a-bankruptcy-disaster/ar-AA1BTmh7

Elite Program participants know all about the "COVID-bump", correct?

MLB

When you pay $150ish for the MLB package and it is opening day, you expect the service to work.

Now, when my internet cable is out for the better part of a day, my cable company could care less ... deal with it, moron.

So at least give MLB props for trying to make amends.

How did they make amends?

• Take $10 off your purchase of $25 or more at mlbshop.com ... here's the code: EFW5WFYSTF.

You know what this means, right? If we assume they have 65% or higher gross margins, they're making money off of their mistake.

Outside of my marketing audience, much of my former readership on the old Twitter had contempt for marketing professionals ... and we get another example here why that's the case. Not only do you not get a pro-rated credit for the service they couldn't provide, they have to make money off of the crumbs they do offer you.

Ok, I'm done now.

Mushrooms

First, you should read this because the next time you walk through a forest you'll view the forest differently.

Importantly, there is a quote in the story that should resonate with every one of you who strongly believes in marketing attribution.

• "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

I'm frequently exasperated by the marketing attribution solutions y'all employ. I fully understand the reasons for having a version of truth. I have full contempt for the corrupt manner in which marketers and their service providers measure "truth". Like the boutique vendor some of you use ... suggesting that most in-store orders from the three weeks after a catalog was mailed are "catalog driven". Ha! I wonder who benefits from that version of "truth"? Or the retargeting executive who told me he wanted credit for $314,000,000 of sales (95% of what the brand actually generates) because his insipid surveillance tool planted at least one ad in front of 95% of buyers in the past year ... and he wanted credit regardless whether the customer saw his nonsense or not.

Attribution is the act of trying to pick out anything by itself. In doing so, the beauty of your business is erased. The critical role of "what" you sell is replaced by a "guess" of "how" something sold.

Obviously, I'm not saying you should have a quality attribution solution.

Obviously, I am saying that if you don't step back and understand the beauty of your business via the merchandise you sell, you are missing out on all of the mysteries of why you business is successful (which means you are missing out on the reasons why your marketing tactics work).

Cross Channel Attribution

Last week's article.

A sampling of the ingredients.

• Complex
• Powerful
• Comprehensive
• Touchpoints
• Holistic
• Customer Journey
• Sophisticated
• Data-Driven
• Visible
• Actionable
• Optimize
• Insights
• Crucial
• Temporal
• Privacy
• Strategic
• Evolve
• Essential
• Forward-Looking Brands
• Complex
• Competitive Advantage
• Rich Insights
• Customer Engagement

Yes, as J. Peterman said to Elaine ... "that's a lot of words".

Some words/phrases were missing.

• Sales/Profit increased by 15%.
• The specific math and necessary techniques used to perform the analytics.

One of my clients said something particularly smart a few weeks back.

• "This represents our version of truth".

Cross Channel Attribution, at best, is a "version of truth". Think about it in terms of gravity ... there is a specific mathematical equation that represents gravity. If you asked 100 people what the equation was, maybe five would know it, but everybody would understand the general idea of how gravity works. Of the 95 who didn't know the actual equation, there would be a handful of people who would be very confident their equation would be close to accurate and better than everybody else ... they'd yell stuff like "Pi-R-Squared". If you aren't in the five who know the actual equation for Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, "Pi-R-Squared" might sound complex, full of rich insights, maybe even temporal. But without any details and actual knowledge of the truth, how do you know "Pi-R-Squared" is right?