Kevin Hillstrom - Hillstrom’s Hashtag Analytics: A Soup-To-Nuts Methodology For Understanding Why Social Media Communities Grow Or Die Over Time

Hillstroms Hashtag Analytics

A Soup-To-Nuts Methodology For Understanding Why Social Media Communities Grow Or Die Over Time

Kevin Hillstrom

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mack Collier for creating the #blogchat community. This community is a thriving social media ecosystem that is representative of an overall movement of enhanced communication between marketing professionals.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Hillstrom

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, email, Internet, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the author.

13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-4564-0662-2

Published in the United States of America by Kevin Hillstrom

Available from Amazon.com and other retailers.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

Cover Design: Kevin Hillstrom and Createspace.com

Cover Art: Kevin Hillstrom and http://istockphoto.com

Biography

Kevin Hillstrom is a database marketing veteran with more than twenty years of experience analyzing customer behavior at many of Americas greatest multichannel retailers.

Kevin began his professional career in 1998 as a Statistical Analyst at the Garst Seed Company, analyzing corn and sorghum trials.

In 1990, Kevin became a Statistical Analyst at Lands End. It was at Lands End where Kevin learned many of the tricks and techniques required to effectively model customer behavior. Kevin worked with a very bright direct marketing team, developing experiments that explained how customers interacted with different catalog titles over time, learning all about the ways that cannibalization of marketing activities erode company profitability. Kevin ended his tenure at Lands End in late 1995, as Manager of Analytical Services.

In 1995, Kevin became Manager of Analytical Services at Eddie Bauer. Working with an integrated database (retail, catalog, online transactions), Kevin was able to demonstrate how customer behavior changed when new stores were opened in new markets, and how customer behavior changed when new stores were opened in existing markets. As Director of Circulation, Kevin partnered with a seasoned team of Executives to deliver the most profit ever generated by the direct-to-consumer division (catalog + internet), by reducing promotions (free shipping, % off offers), reducing catalog advertising to retail and online customers, and by using advanced statistical models to target customers with appropriate direct mail offerings. It was at Eddie Bauer that Kevin developed the methodologies that would ultimately become the foundation of Multichannel Forensics.

Following a nine month stint as a Sr. Consultant at Avenue A, Kevin became Vice President of Direct Marketing at Nordstrom. The Executive team at Nordstrom Direct was charged with turning around a business that generated more than $300,000,000 in annual sales, but was losing more than $30,000,000 in profit each year. Within just two years, Kevin and his Executive team partners were able to re-calibrate catalog contact strategies and online marketing activities, bringing the business back to break-even.

In 2003, Kevin became Vice President of Database Marketing, working in the corporate office. Kevins team was asked to integrate outbound customer marketing strategies (direct mail, catalogs, e-mail marketing), using an integrated transactional database. In 2004, Kevin was part of a team that decided to eliminate traditional catalog marketing, a decision that was widely criticized by purveyors of existing marketing best practices. In fact, Kevin was skeptical, too. However, within twelve months of eliminating a traditional catalog marketing program, retail comp store sales continued to increase, and without the support of catalog marketing, online sales actually increased at a rapid rate. It was at Nordstrom that the final touches were put on the Multichannel Forensics framework that accurately suggested that retail and online channels did not need catalog mailings to support sales growth.

In March 2007, Kevin left Nordstrom to begin his own consulting practice, called MineThatData. Kevin utilizes his Multichannel Forensics framework to help marketers understand how customers interact with products, brands, and channels. Kevins clients include online pure-plays, thirty million dollar catalog brands, billion dollar retail multichannel brands, and international direct marketers.

Following the collapse of the economy in 2007-2008, CEOs began asking different questions, questions that focused on the long-term sales trajectory of online advertising micro-channels. Kevin expanded his Multichannel Forensics framework, resulting in what are called Online Marketing Simulations, tools that allows CEOs, CMOs, Online Marketers, and Web Analysts to understand how online and offline customers are likely to evolve and change in the future. This information allows the online marketer to identify the Most Valuable Path, or MVP, the path that maps how first time buyers become loyal customers. Armed with this information, investments in keyword campaigns, affiliate marketing, and e-mail marketing change, resulting in an improved and more profitable future.

And in 2010, CEOs asked a new set of questions, questions about customer behavior. Kevin created a new segmentation methodology called Digital Profiles, designed to combine recency, frequency, and monetary information with the channels a customer purchases from, and the merchandise divisions a customer prefers, yielding sixteen actionable segments that can be used for targeting purposes, e-mail marketing strategy, catalog circulation strategy, online targeting, and general business intelligence.

Kevin also hosts the highly popular database marketing blog, called The MineThatData Blog, where Kevin discusses online marketing, direct marketing, database marketing, and multichannel marketing topics on a frequent basis. You can also follow Kevin on Twitter!

Contact Information:

Kevin Hillstrom

E-Mail:

Website: http://minethatdata.com

Blog: http://blog.minethatdata.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/minethatdata

Consulting Services

Kevin provides consulting services for leading online marketers and multichannel retailers. Given his experience at leading multichannel retailers like Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, Lands End, and more than four-dozen consultations with direct marketers and retailers, Kevin brings more than two decades of unique executive and analytical experience to his projects.

There are many popular projects that Kevin performs for CEOs and CMOs.