{"id":355513,"date":"2026-07-08T21:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/analytics\/i-just-dont-believe-you\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T21:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:26:14","slug":"i-just-dont-believe-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=355513","title":{"rendered":"I Just Don&#8217;t Believe You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-5554912652646335150\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">That&#8217;s how an Executive once responded when discussing the results of a mail\/holdout test.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">The results were really straightforward. Take an average of the twelve-month buyer file, select 50,000 customers randomly, then resample the group of 50,000 into two groups &#8230; one receives the catalog, one does not receive it. In the six weeks the catalog was active, I measured total demand spent by the mailed group, I measured total demand spent by the control group.<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$6.00 spent by the mailed group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$4.00 spent by the control group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$6.00 &#8211; $4.00 = $2.00 of incremental demand.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Organic Percentage = $4.00 \/ $6.00 = 67%.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Profit = $2.00 * 0.40 &#8211; $0.90 = ($0.10).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">To The Twelve-Month Buyer File, On Average, The Mailing Was Unprofitable.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">It was the last bullet-point that shook the Executive. The very thought that the heart and soul of his customer base was being managed in an unprofitable manner by &#8230; the Executive himself &#8230; the fact that the Executive was actually harming his business &#8230; was unacceptable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">So he told the room &#8230; &#8220;<b><i><span style=\"color: #0b5394;\">I just don&#8217;t believe you<\/span><\/i><\/b>&#8220;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">The room moved forward, harming the business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">If you are unwilling to believe the most simple level of scientific inquiry, I&#8217;m sorry, you need to reflect inward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Do you want to hear a story about a room deciding that they finally believed &#8220;facts&#8221;?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">It&#8217;s 2006 at Nordstrom. When we executed a mail\/holdout test, we could measure sales on our proprietary credit card within Nordstrom &#8230; and at other brands. We could see if customers used the Nordstrom card to spend more at Neiman Marcus, or Saks, or Amazon. Was our catalog taking business from Neiman Marcus or Saks? No. It didn&#8217;t impact those brands, brands we believed we competed with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Amazon? In 2006?<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$10.00 spent at Amazon in the Mailed Group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$7.00 spent at Amazon in the Control Group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$3.00 per customer incrementally driven to Amazon.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">15,000 credit customers per mail and holdout group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Results were easily statistically significant.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Want to know something even worse? Within the mail and holdout groups.<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$25.00 spent at Nordstrom in the Mailed Group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$23.00 spent at Nordstrom in the Control Group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">$2.00 per customer incrementally driven to Nordstrom.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">15,000 credit customers per mail and holdout group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Results were easily statistically significant.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Do you see what happened there?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Our brand-centric catalog at Nordstrom, in 2006 (we ended the ecommerce catalog program in mid-2005), <b><i><span style=\"color: #b45f06;\">DROVE MORE BUSINESS TO AMAZON THAN TO NORDSTROM<\/span><\/i><\/b>. Imagine if that was happening to most catalog-centric brands (hint &#8211; it probably was)?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">In the my early consulting days (2007 &#8211; 2012), I&#8217;d share this fact with catalog clients. The Executives would just sit there, dumbfounded, thinking about the consequences of driving more business to Amazon than to their own brand. Then they&#8217;d move on, pretending they never heard what I shared, because having to face the data was just a bit too much for the recipient of the message to accept.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">However, when I shared this fact at Nordstrom in 2006, the data was immediately embraced. Nobody questioned it (though they frequently questioned mail\/holdout results). They immediately understood the strategic implications illustrated by the data.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Nordstrom is still here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Most catalog brands went out of business or were gobbled up by parent companies, thereby losing their identity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">I understand why you don&#8217;t want to believe mail\/holdout results. It&#8217;s an outcome that requires sober reflection.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">I understand why your paper rep doesn&#8217;t believe the results. They &#8220;can&#8217;t&#8221; be allowed to believe them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">I understand why your printer doesn&#8217;t believe the results. They &#8220;can&#8217;t&#8221; be allowed to believe them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">I understand why your boutique agency doesn&#8217;t believe the results. They &#8220;can&#8217;t&#8221; be allowed to believe them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">I understand why so many consultants don&#8217;t believe the results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">But it doesn&#8217;t mean the results are wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">There&#8217;s always a group of individuals who chose to not believe data. Modern politics comes to mind. You don&#8217;t convince people with &#8220;more data&#8221;. You work around them. Because you are reading this, you&#8217;re willing to accept what your customers are telling you &#8211; that&#8217;s a good thing!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s how an Executive once responded when discussing the results of a mail\/holdout test. The results were really straightforward. Take an average of the twelve-month buyer file, select 50,000 customers randomly, then resample the group of 50,000 into two groups &#8230; one receives the catalog, one does not receive it. In the six weeks the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12033],"tags":[4629],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-355513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analytics","tag-dont"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I Just Don&#039;t Believe You - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=355513\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Just Don&#039;t Believe You - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That&#8217;s how an Executive once responded when discussing the results of a mail\/holdout test. 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