The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Not a conventional strategy, but CWDKids is mailing to people they know are dead.

Don’t laugh: They’ve tested it, and mailings to its deceased file actually does better on average than its living customers.

“So we’re not cutting out the dead just yet,” said Tracy Schneider, vp of e-commerce for CWDKids at IRCE 09. more

So let me get this straight. The show is in Boston, but I think I trekked to Foxboro to get to Track B. I regret my road trip to Waffle House and dollar dogs day at a Reading Phillies game on Sunday. But not really.

I’m guessing I have to go to Worcester for a Track A session. more

I’m here. And this place (Boston Convention & Expo Center) is huge. I’m in a general session with about 1,000 of my closest friends… and I can’t hear a thing!

Except for the echo-o-o-o-o… more

Couldn’t believe what I heard on WCBS-AM 880 yesterday: Gillette put a bunch of videos on YouTube to show guys how to, well, shave down there! Of course curiosity got the best of me… and more than 1 million viewers who learned how to shave a man’s groin (hey, that’s what Gillette calls it!).

Personally I’ll keep my shaving above the neck. But come to think of it, I couldn’t ask my father how to shave my head since it’s something he never did. So the instructional videos seem like a good way for Gillette to build a relationship between a man and his brand of shaving supplies. more

Another sector of retail that’s been looking up is the dollar and closeout stores. And that makes sense, with unemployment out of control and consumers are tightening their belts. I’ve been hearing a lot about the upscaling of Big Lots, which troubles me a bit, and both Dollar General and Dollar Tree recently reported big first-quarter sales increases. more

Kinetic Marketing president Kim Painley is an expert when it comes to helping catalog retailers define their pay-per-click strategies, and she did a bang-up job talking with me about it Monday on MCM Radio (download or listen to the podcast here).

Now, one thing I asked her at the end was about the banner ads that pop up on my Yahoo Mail page. If I go to, say, Williams-Sonoma, for some research like I did today for an article we posted about its rough first quarter, I have to look at that company’s banner ad the rest of the day. Or at least until another merchant drops a cookie on my computer. more