Recently Seth Godinwrote about Long Tail thinking.  The illustration he uses explains why the front part of the curve is all about the block buster and the customer that is "unreachable".  Although I appreciate his thinking and the illustration, there is another way to benefit from Long Tail thinking.

I began using long tail thinking, and a very simular illustration, back in 1995 when I joined Insight(NSIT), the large computer reseller.  Back then I used it to train my staff on the practice of matching direct response orders to headcount and resource commitments in the sales center.  At the time, we established the long tail as it related to half-life analysis and whether or not the campaign sold through in 3 days, 3 months or 9 months.  The long tail was used to describe the time frame in which responses from a campaign were received.  Unique phone numbers, isolation of customer segments through RFM modeling, A/B splits, etc., were all used.  We did our first email campaign of 500 records in 1995.  It had a very short tail.  Not much good for driving sustainable quarterly revenues.  Wonderful for the end of quarter push.  Catalogs, back then, had a long tail - 9 months worth.  Buyers on the front part of the response curve (see Seth's chart - pocket 1) were typically those that were extremely loyal buyers.  These were the customer segments where we had 30-80% order rates.  This was the ideal place to introduce new products.  This was an easy home run.  Further out on the curve (pocket two) was our bread and butter customer.  Consistent loyal buyers.  Out on the long tail (pocket three) were the late bloomers.  Slow to make a decision, challenging to deal with when prices changed or we sold out of stock - but having a long tail was wonderful.  It provided a sustainable business that took dramatic bumps out the day to day sales numbers.  Long tail thinking is great, but it’s not limited to reaching the unreachable - it’s also about reaching your core, raving fan.

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