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Famous Last Words : Size Matters

February 2009 By Denny Hatch
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Paul Fredrick Sacher is one of the five premier catalog merchants of menswear—primarily dress shirts, ties and cuff links. A number of years ago, I drove out to his headquarters to do a full-dress story about his career and his business, Paul Fredrick MenStyle, for Catalog Success magazine.

When I was running Target Marketing, I bought shirts from Sacher’s Paul Fredrick MenStyle catalog. His was the only one that carried my strange size: 17″neck, 32″ sleeves. I bought a lot of his shirts, and they were good shirts—fit well, looked nice and lasted through numerous washings.

When I went on my own a number of years ago, I stopped buying dress shirts. I have seven Paul Fredrick no-iron dress shirts, and I wear one, at most, two or three times a month. I almost never buy a new shirt anymore.

That said, Paul Fredrick inundates me with 1) catalogs and 2) zillions of e-mail offers, such as the one illustrated on this page.

Once in a while, I think it would be nice to order a shirt—especially when Paul Fredrick has a sale. Recently, I received an e-mail offering dress shirts for as low as $19.95. So I clicked through and browsed the sale merchandise. I found a nice shirt for $19.95, clicked on it and was ready to buy. I clicked on the “size” option box and up came one size only—not mine. “Screw it,” I said to myself. “I am not going to spend time going through the sale catalog trying to find a shirt that fits.”

Understanding E-commerce
Paul Fredrick MenStyle knows my size: 17-32. I have ordered this size for years. Here are the rules of how to appropriately offer shirts to me, and other existing customers, via e-mail:

  • I am busy as hell. I do not want to spend time shopping.
  • Offers can be individually personalized and programmed if you have behavioral information that relates to the customer. The e-mail ad on this page that was sent to me is generic, not personalized.
  • With dress shirts, the only information that I care about is size—17-32 shirts. No other criterion exists.
  • Ergo, to guarantee my opening Paul Fredrick’s e-mail, the subject line must be: “DENNY, GREAT 17-32 DRESS SHIRTS ON SALE—AS LITTLE AS $19.95.”
  • The offer should have been programmed so all I saw on the landing page was 17-32 shirts, leading with the $19.95 shirt, which shows Paul Fredrick cares about me and is not pulling my chain. I would buy.

The Same Goes for Zappos

 

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