As VP of marketing and business development, Kathy Hecht ensures that Silver Star Brands produces gold-star results. One way she does that is by creating what she calls “actionable customer segments” and then targeting them. In a recent test she oversaw, Silver Star Brands sent personalized emails that generated 12% more revenue than the non-personalized emails in the control group. Next, the company tested a set of demographically targeted emails; these generated 160% more revenue than the control group. As a result, Hecht and her team have shifted the company’s email strategy so it incorporates much more demographic and behavioral segmentation. Due to initiatives such as this, Hecht has reduced the company’s marketing spend by more than 10% in the last two years while growing sales.
Marketing strategy: A lot of people talk about being data-driven, but I would say that I’m data-pattern-driven. If I can find the similarities then I also, by definition, can find the differences and that allows opportunities for exploitation — oh wait, optimization…the more politically correct word.
Winning ways: Silver Star Brands started as a catalog company. What do catalog companies do when they want to grow their sales? Well, it’s a culture of more: I put more names in the mail, I add more pages to the book, or I add more drops…. If you’re a cataloger only, that’s the only lever you have. Now that we have e-commerce [I’ve started] to dismantle the culture of “more.” I’ve taken millions of dollars out of my catalog budget without [any] impact on sales — because at some point, more no longer works. That’s how we’re funding a lot of our digital growth.
Defining moment: It was when I saw Malcolm Gladwell’s spaghetti sauce video. It talked about how there’s not a right answer; there are right answers. That led me down the path of relevant content. I saw firsthand when I was at American Greetings what can happen when you put a funny card in front of people who like to send funny cards…. When you could actually give somebody relevant content, seeing lifts of 70-80% — it’s become the fixation of my life’s work since then.
Trend watching: One trend we’re watching is customer tolerance around [shipping and handling] time and cost…. Where’s people’s tolerance? How much are they moving because of [Amazon] Prime? We’re in the middle of Wisconsin. We have one warehouse. So shipping and handling — customers’ feelings about it, how they’re viewing it as is it a necessary evil, is it something that’s going to keep them from ordering — it’s a really big thing for us, and I’m keeping a close eye on that.
Marketing staff must-have: I’m looking for soccer players, not track stars. If you’re a track star, you can go out on the field and win, even if your team loses, because you run an individual race. Basketball and soccer are the ultimate teams; the team has to be able to adapt, learn, and work together, and they either all win or they all fail. So, part of what I look for is a mind-set of somebody who can be part of a team and understands that it’s a team win and we either all win together or we fail. Marketing is so interdependent that if you have a lot of track stars, you’re going to have a lot of silos, you’re going to have a lot of conflict, you’re going to have a lot of fighting over attribution and budgets. It doesn’t happen when there’s one team.
Advice to young marketers: Be brave and not stupid. Stupid is, “I haven’t really thought this through.” Brave is, “I have and I know that this is the right thing.”
