double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

I have always been fascinated how seasonality affects business.  For the most part this is pretty obvious – like the fact that Isotoner probably doesn’t sell as many gloves in the summer as they do in the winter.  Or that Haagen Dazs sells more ice cream in August than it does in February.  But, as a entrepreneur, I am always looking for any possible edge.  Any way that I can predict what is going to happen in the future.  Any way that I can maximize revenue and minimize COGS, even if just for a short period of time.  Seasonality also affects the stock market.  Other examples in the market include well studied seasonalities in sub sectors of the market, such as small cap (the download link is that the bottom) stocks. 

What I really didn’t have a chance to study until we started DoublePositive was how seasonality affects the online marketing business.  Just so we are clear – seasonality is an amazingly influential factor in online marketing.  And, when it comes to live hot transfers, knowing the seasonlities and being able to adjust quickly is one of the great value propositions that we provide to our customer base.  While I can’t give away the secret sauce  I can shed some light on how seasonality affects the live hot transfers business.  Take, for example, the two graphs below.  The one at the top outlines our demand on a daily basis during the winter months.  The one at the bottom outlines our demand on a daily basis during the summer months.

Winter:

vs. Summer:

In the winter months we can see that demand for hot transfers is relatively flat M-TH.  By contrast, in the summertime Mondays and Fridays take a dive and we see greater disparity throughout the week.  We can all certainly understand the ‘Friday effect’ in the summer time, however, I was amazed to see that Monday is a relatively low day as well.  Based on this information, we can infer certain things about our customers and make the necessary adjustments.  What, exactly, those inferences are I shall leave it up to your imagination.

Another way we look for seasonality is on the consumer side.  Intrinsically, we all know its harder to reach consumers in the summer than it is in the winter – they are all on vacation!  But, we have also studied the effects of holidays on consumer contact probabilities.  The effects of religious holidays are different than government holidays which are different based on when during the week the holiday occurred.  All this information is funneled through our DWA to figure out which consumers are the best match for our clients.  The impact of seasonlities are limitless and I could write about this topic forever.  If your interested in discussing how Columbus Day impacts your ability to reach consumers (or any other event for that matter) drop me a line at: s y e d @ d o u b l e p o s i t i v e . c o m