It often comes as a shock to people new to immediate marketing that the response rates are so low. Successful, profitable promotions often result from sales to 2% or less of the mailed universe. Database marketers, today however, are finding that they can greatly increase these response rates in marketing to their existing customers by use of Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM) analysis. The email address details are nothing in short supply of amazing. Let me offer you one example.
An educational products company in the South experienced a two million-name customer database, built up from sales over a five 12 months period. Every spring they mailed their entire list with a good video offer that regularly got a response rate around 1.3%. It did not produce much profit but moved a great deal of product.
Last calendar year, one of their marketing officials visited a workshop where he learned all about RFM. On his return he aimed his programmers to code the client database for RFM, creating 125 RFM “cells”. He did a promotion to a representative test of 30,000, which produced a net loss. From that test, however, he learned the response rates of every of the 125 “cells”.
For his rollout, he mailed only 554,000 of both million who have been in the 34 cells that did better than break even on the test. His experience is not unique. All over America, database marketers are waking up to the silver mine in their customer databases that may be opened up using RFM.
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In this short article, we shall explain the principles behind RFM, and details some of the research that is currently being conducted in this field. RFM has been found in direct marketing particularly by non-profits for more than thirty years. It is based on both appropriate reasoning and empirical evidence of customer behavior.
People who’ve bought from you recently are much more likely to respond to a fresh offer than someone who got made a purchase in the faraway past. This can easily be illustrated by anyone with a customer database that includes purchase history. The database must keep one piece of information Atlanta divorce attorney’s customer record: the newest discretionary purchase time.
The database is sorted by that date, and the very best 20% (in conditions of recency) is given a code of “5”. The next 20% in conditions of recent buys is coded as “4”, etc. Everyone in the database is either a 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1 in conditions of recency.
If your data source keeps track of the number of transactions with your customers, you can code your customers by frequency also. You will notice right away that frequent buyers respond better than less frequent buyers, but the distinctions are much less pronounced than those for Recency. That is why RFM is RFM instead of FRM or some other combination.
Notice specifically that the lowest quintile in the rate of recurrence did better than quinine #2 2. Why should that be? For a straightforward reason. Completely new customers have a recent code of “5” but a rate of recurrence code of “1”. So the minimum regularity quintile provides the clients who are your best responders always. Monetary, the truth is, does show distinctions between quintiles, however they are from as dramatic as those for Recency far.
Is this true for any products and services? Not necessarily. If you’re selling mutual money, you can find a far greater response rate from your big spenders than the tiny spenders, because they may be able to buy more simply. But that is not necessarily a company rule. Response will not measure ability to respond just as much as willingness to open the envelope and browse the contents.