Kroger's Secret Marketing Weapon

Found this very cool article about how Kroger is using database mining to market to its customers.

It also explains why I'm getting so many coupons for twinkies in the mail.

This isn't directly related to email marketing, but it might inspire you to think about ways you can segment your customer email lists, then run experiments on them...

"At its core, the dunnhumby approach assigns a score to products on Kroger's shelves based on attributes like price, quality, freshness, and the size of the package. (Organic Swiss chard would have a much different score than, say, Twinkies.) Dunnhumby's computers then search for customers whose shopping carts have similar scores, and groups those shoppers together into segments. Kroger right now has seven segments, such as budget shoppers, those "watching the waistline," and so-called "family-focused." Each segment gets customized mailings, and can be further broken down if need be."

Read the full article at CNN Money: Kroger's Secret Weapon

If this kinda marketing stuff gets you excited, and if you're a MailChimp user, you can do this kinda stuff with your email offers too. Here are the tools you'll need:

• MailChimp's API - Sync your customer dB and purchase info with your email marketing efforts
• MailChimp AIM Reports - Track individual user-specific email open-click behavior
• MailChimp List Segmentation - Send campaigns to targeted subgroups based on their purchase behavior
• MailChimp A/B Testing - Test different offers, subject lines, and send times to optimize your results
• MailChimp's Inbox Inspector - Preview your campaign in different email apps and check them in spam filters before you send
• MailChimp Experts -   Need help getting all this done? Hire a MailChimp expert. Many of them specialize in databases.