Book Marketing & Selling Tips for Authors

Yes, I published this book 10 years ago.  How could a ten year old book in a highly technical and fast moving category have anything to say to today's BIGdata professionals.  Well, in the past 10 years, we created 4 new case studies and won 11 documented head-2-head tests against 8 of the worlds best modelers.  In one of the last, our names out performed them by 321%.  I doubt there is another modeling company in the world that has that kind of competitive success story.  If your company is struggling with your customer data, this is a MUST READ.

To promote the book, I have joined with Authors Marketing Club.  It is essentially an author's co-op where we download, review and promote each other's books.  First promotion launches 11/14/12...  I'll keep you posted - literally!

Book Marketing & Selling Tips for Authors

Making Money with BIGdata 2

We continue to explore the process of making money with data. What are the two main ways we can make money with our data? Improve the List and/or improve our Offer. It all boils down to that.


Paul Zikopoulos, IBM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B27SpLOOhWw. Watch both of his videos - big data is bigger than you ever imagined. For Hudson's Bay, we'd loaded 250 million transactions (not 250M). @JRMigs

Good Data in BigData?

How to Find the Good Data in Big Data

Guest Blog by Ray Schutz, TellAllMarketing

There’s one thing wrong with Big Data. A lot of is is “a little big like overhearing a conversation,” says John Miglautsch, chairman of Miglautsch Marketing Inc., in the second in a series of videos on data. .

 Ray Schultz contributes a summary of my second video in the series 'Making Money With Data'. 

Ray Schultz, journalist and author, has written so much about marketing that he is now a marketer himself. He has launched TellAllmarketing, an agency specializing in content marketing.

TellAllmarketing is devoted to the idea that relevant, well-done content attracts leads and moves them through the B2B purchase funnel. We produce white papers, case studies, email newsletters and other forms of content for clients like IBM Netezza, KBM Group, InfoGroup, NextMark and Reach Marketing.

Founder Ray Schultz has solid grounding in both marketing and journalism. As editor of DM News, he tracked the growth of direct marketing as it evolved from a business backwater into a global force embraced by Fortune 500 companies. From there, Ray moved to Direct, where he documented the online and CRM revolutions.

Spinning Straw Into Gold (overview)

Find out why so few turn their data
into money and also how to do it.

It IS  possible to turn data into money. I’ve seen millions of extra dollars generated on one mailing, catalog response rates of over 100% because of modeling. In the past 6 years, we have beaten 8 modeling firms in 11 massive tests... Gold can happen, but it generally does not happen. People think it is a systems problem and it is NOT a systems problem. It is a thinking problem, it is a brain problem.

Consider the Grimm's story of Rumpelstiltskin. A miller says his daughter can spin straw into gold (a big lie). The king sends for the daughter and says, “Here is a room filled with straw. Spin it into straw or you die in the morning.” 

The database marketing industry also has lies. Only by exposing the lies, can we spin straw into gold. 
more...  

Just posted a short version of my book Spinning Straw Into Gold finished the audio recordings today as well.  

Why am I promoting a book that is almost a decade old?  When I first wrote this, I knew that I was on to something.  Being largely self-taught in statistics and modeling, I kept being amazed that we not only beat mature mailers, but also seasoned modeling companies.  However, since we have continued to pile up wins (so great that we've been accused of 'cheating') I knew I needed to reiterate WHY our system WINS.  It is because we think about the process and have spent over 20 years molding and perfecting a system to achieve it.  Last week I opened our doors to a company that builds databases.  We spent a day showing them everything we could.  Why?  Because this isn't a system that can be easily copied, even if the technology were simple (it isn't) it could take years to prove that it was working as expected... then more years to run all the tests which ours has won.  In addition, it incorporates so much that we have learned from our world class clients - yes, we also include their variables in their systems.  There is a reason why it works and the time has come to share this amazing breakthrough.

Look over this article and see if it makes sense... and if it does, perhaps we should talk about how you handle your customer contact system.

I'm working with Author Marketing Club to promote my book on Kindle - click this picture to check it out.

Social Media Adventure Update

In June 2012, I began my social media adventure.  I had approx. 200 contacts on Linked-In and 3 followers on Twitter.  As of today, I have 262 followers on Twitter and 411 on Linked-In.  I have also met and reconnected with some terrific people.

I posted two video blogs - I think I'm going to like that the best.  I have re-energized my vision for direct marketing and I will be speaking ad ECMOD in London the last week of November.  

If we have not yet met, feel free to follow, connect, retweet or whatever.  Hopefully I will be speaking near you and we can grab a cup of coffee.  In the meantime, if you have a topic you'd like to discuss, comment and lets start a conversation.  As you can see (below) I'm starting to get how to make it easier for you to connect.

In the next few weeks, I'm hoping to convert my book, Spinning Straw Into Gold into both a Kindle version and an audio book.  I've built my first facebook app and will be attempting to create a viral system to get you lots of cool offers.  I'm not sure of the business benefit of facebook and google+ so I'm tip-toeing into those with my main focus going to Twitter and Linked-In.

@JRMigs twitter bio
my website
http://
my linked-in public page
linked-in business page

The Structure of #BIGdata

Enjoy a new 6 minute introduction to #BIGdata by @JRMigs

"Back when I started, not only didn't we have #BIGdata, we had to convince our clients that they might want to save more than basic address information. Lets start piling it up and we'll figure out what to do with it later. If you, knowing all you know about you, can barely predict what YOU will do... how can I, as a predictive modeler, knowing almost nothing about you, expect to predict you? What is the difference between HARDdata and SOFTdata?

10

10

Why don't Marketers decide better?

Marketers Flunk the Big Data Test - Patrick Spenner and Anna Bird - Harvard Business Review
Great article, especially the part about a team... keeping bright shiny objects out of view... :). The truth is that good use of data does require more than one type of brain. We have very very careful people in charge of loading and processing data, clever systems people who write very very fast procedures to generate hundreds of variables and oh, there is that weird wizard-type guy who we rarely take out in the daylight (me). Data is not self-revealing, even with validation, noise and correlation can be confused - and causality is never really in there. As Dr. Ed Lemer, UCLA, http://bit.ly/O6RXNh said to me, "You don't violate statistical principles, you have a higher standard... that it makes sense." And almost none of the computers I have know, could tell me what would sell. Until we get that built into our use of #BigData, there will still be that strange alchemy of science and magic that makes marketing the fun that it is. bit.ly/McLWsp @JRMigs 

Another interesting related article. "True direct marketing offers the greatest opportunity to attain marketing certainty, but only if you test. Until we reclaim that message, we’re just another piece of the ad mix. And without testing, we’re not nearly the most important piece."

How Valuable is Your #BIGData?

From "Spinning Straw Into Gold" by John Miglautsch @JRMigs

I don’t know much about straw so I called my friend at the local feed mill (like the miller). “The first thing you must know about straw” he told me, “straw is NOT hay.” Hay is made from the green grass that they cut through the summer. “Hay goes into an animal, nourishes it, feeds it. Straw is what goes under the animal and catches what comes out of the animal.”

Straw is a byproduct of wheat, you cut the grain off the top and the stalk that is left is almost worthless. It is used as a cleaning product.

You have to understand that like straw, most of your precious data is worthless - straw.

This is fundamental.

If you get nothing else out of this, understand this.

Your data is mostly worthless.

If you can face that, you are far ahead of your competition in turning data into money.

The continuation of this point is available on a new post on MigMar.com @JRMigs

Sherwin-Williams Integrated Marketing

http://ow.ly/c8Znd Sherwin-Williams is implementing B-B #IntegratedMarketing to reach out to body shops in a variety of ways.

Web Analytics, the OTHER dismal science

Amazing article on the futility of consumer behavior #prediction with #BigData. Will voice of sanity be heard before we #drownInData ? http://ow.ly/c7brh If you like this you might also like http://bit.ly/McLWsp @jrmigs <><

One Month In

After just a month (or so) of trying to figure out Social Media, I have received one international speaking invitation, sold an unexpected book in New Zealand, re-connected with a half-dozen long-time friends in the Direct Marketing community. The hard numbers are: followers:6->53, Klout 5->21 Most importantly, new vigor for connecting with the #BigData industry - lost without a compass. :)

Is this what I signed up for?

You've read that I've been trying to increase my "Platform" with #SocialMedia (note the cool #hashtag). I've tried thinking of all the cool things I've ever said... maybe I can remember some... then again, I'm at my best in an extemporaneous context. This makes my blog - at least at this point a bit less than #pithy.

To learn the ropes, I've been following my friends - I must admit my admiration for their continuous blog effluence has increased exponentially. (I'm wondering if euphuism is rewarded in twitter Klout rankings?)

Does this kind of 'communication' advance civilization? My #followers have increased 383% so it must be making some kind of #contribution. (I haven't studied hashtags yet, except to know I should put some in.) So, if you're looking for serious posts to move you to the next level - check out my #TwitterLists cause I do have some super wonderful friends.

Platform by Michael Hyatt

I attended a very practical teleconference yesterday with @MichaelHyatt. I also purchased his book, Platform. It landed in my Kindle, complete with live links to tons of sites, full of information on tools and suggestions. There is a special offer for the book on http://michaelhyatt.com.

#RFM in Social Media

I've been taking classes in Social Media (believe it or not) and they suggest that I should find a search term that others might be looking into. Since I've had major wins in catalog circulation I tried that. Well both terms are a bit too general I think. I use predictive modeling but I find tweets by super models. If I use quotes to combine the terms I find people in financial analysis which I really know nothing about. In the shower this morning I thought about #RFM. It stands for Recency, Frequency, Monetary. It is the foundation of almost all customer scoring. Unfortunately, with most formulas, RFM masks the potential of the best customers and also smudges the the worst into one big glop. We virtually always beat #RFM by working a lot harder, creating a host of additional variables. So, I'm going with #RFM (or e-RFM) and we'll keep exploring with Social Media.

The Tyranny of Time-Saving Social Media

OK, so now I'm engaging on Social Media - as you all know, my tweets feed my hoots which post to my site and my reading list comes up on my blog which now should post to my site as well. I look away from my screen and there are 99+ new tweets from all across the world - on every topic imaginable. These are people I'm "following" so I guess I should read it. I've managed to limit Linkedin (I wonder if this will post there?) to actual posts (not who's now connected to whom) but nevertheless it is endless. TV commercials happen when I'm not watching... but these are friends and people who I want to "connect" with. Is it OK to ignore their precious broadcasts. I guess it is... if they really wanted me to hear about the latest battery-saving Droid tips, they would drop over with a case of beer. LOL John <><

The Post that Ate the Internet?

I am very concerned.  My post feeds my blog, to RSS into other pages, twitter, facebook, linkedin, onto my site which may feed my blog - could this take over the web?

The Adventure Begins (again)

The adventure began a few weeks ago, with the end of a 6 year gig. A very large catalog hired us to pull all their customer names, to relieve the burden from their IT while converting their order entry system. In the process, our analytics were compared with some of the best modelers in the world. We won eleven tests against eight systems but that is another story. Anyway, I took another assignment - trying to grow an e-commerce company with very little spending (something all marketers wish to accomplish). They have great products and a small loyal following. "Lets try Social Media..." My head is starting to swim... partly from staying up until 2am a few nights (because that was the only time the training videos I'd purchased would play)...partly from trying to program joomla, hootsuite, twitter, facebook and linkedin to talk with each other... now that I have this working for myself, I just have to figure out what to say :)