Making mass marketing more personal!

When you think about the marketing strategy of any of the large Packaged consumer goods companies , you are likely to think about Mass marketing! An interesting variation to this is Coke with its My Coke Rewards.In fact, Coca-Cola often thinks instead in terms of large niche markets driven by lifestyle or life stage, according to Michael La Kier, director of My Coke Rewards for Coca-Cola North America.One place the company focuses in on its niche-market consumers is online via mycokerewards.com. The site offers personalized home pages based on consumers’ preferences (e.g., preferred brands, activities, etc.). In the course of 24 hours the website gets more than 285,000 visits, during which the average length of stay on the site is 9.5 minutes, and about 13,000 new members join. The program currently has more than 9 million members who have logged in more than 100 million times and have redeemed about 5 million rewards in total. Ginger Conlon has this interesting article on Coke’s marketing strategies.

Really want Customer loyalty, improve the Customer experience first!

Customer loyalty is such an overused term today. Every brand wants it and the common thinking seems to be to just launch a card based loyalty program to buy customer loyalty. In fact recent reports from Forrester find an increasing emphasis on customer experience and a payoff in terms of customer retention. It is of course much harder to truly create a strong customer experience. Inadvertently companies make it more difficult for customers to engage and do business with them. How often in a bank, the relationship manager does not have a single view of all your financial investments with the same bank!! But make no mistake about it, building a superior customer experience is a difficult task and often “silo” based organization structures come in the way. Here is an interesting article by Christopher Musico on how to improve customer loyalty using improved customer experience 

 

Counting efficiency at the Cash till

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal discusses how the Meijer grocery chain along with other retailers are starting to use production techniques to monitor the throughput of employees.In hard times every little bit of efficiency needs to be squeezed through. But how much is “too much”. Measuring the time that a cashier at a retail store takes to help you pay and move on is an important efficiency measure that stores use. But using data analytics indiscriminately may do more damage than good. A lot of “impulse sell” also happens at cash points along with the “happy conversation” that makes up a good customer experience. By all means measure your business and watch the numbers very closely but ensure you allow the “human element” to come through,that’s what “great” retail is all about.Check out this article  in the Wall Street Journal on how analytics is used to trim costs.

Love your data, set it free!

 

Data services are freeing corporate data from the silos, allowing for its use on demand while providing security to the data's custodians. The demand for more data more quickly is driving IT departments to rethink their entire systems architectures.

At Cequity, we have been helping clients work within the constraints of multiple -source systems while making data accessible for marketing when they need it. Our philosophy has been to make data more flexible and easy to access so that enterprises can take advantage of huge amounts of data that they accumulate today.

Dana Gardner writes on how important it is to get rid of data silos for better customer management:

In the past, data was structured, secure and tightly controlled. The bad news is that the data was limited by the firewall of personnel, technologies and process rigidity. Today, however, the demand is for just-in-time and inclusive data, moving away from a monolithic data system mentality to multiple sources of data that provide real-time inferences on consumers, activities, events, and transactions.

The move is in the ownership of data value to the very people who really need it, who help define its analysis, and who can best use it for business and consumption advantage. Analysis and productivity  values rule the future of data as services. The [new] model is of keeping the data where it belongs and yet making it available to the rest of the world. Our data is trapped in these silos, where each department owns the data and there is a manual paper process to request a report.

According to Brad Svee, "Requesting a customer report takes a long time, and what we have been able to do is try to expose that data through Web services using mashup-type UI (user interface) technology and data services to keep the data in the place that it belongs, without having a flat file flying between FTP servers, as you talked about, and start to show people data that they haven't seen before in an instant, consumable way."

Read more on how to use your data for better customer management

Customer-centric lead scoring

 

We have always seen that companies struggle to manage the leads that they generate. Either they are not followed-up effectively or there is a conflict of what is defined as a hot/warm lead by sales and marketing or there is no defined process of managing unconverted leads to extract more value out of the marketing investments made.

Tim Wilson has an interesting perspective on how better customer management can lead to significant increase in return on marketing investment:

Old school lead-generating efforts often fail because Marketing and Sales initiatives are dependent on each other but disconnected. The image often associated with this relationship is a funnel. At the top of the funnel is Marketing, which finds and lures leads that are then pushed down to the lower portion of the funnel, which is Sales.

This funnel image is fundamentally flawed because it suggests a linear process. Rather, to succeed, the process must be ongoing and circular, like cogs that continue to rotate and engage each other. One cog is Marketing (tactics), and this must be in alignment with a Sales cog (engagement), both of which are driven by a third cog: the continuous process of lead marketing optimization.

Complaints from the Sales department often occur because Marketing prematurely hands over leads to Sales, which creates efficiency problems. First, some of the information that needs to be gathered could have been gathered automatically through a Marketing dialogue. Second, the lack of that information results in lead handoffs that have little or no near-term potential. Over time, these inefficiencies cause Sales representatives to lose trust in the value the Marketing department is providing. In the worst case, it results in the salesperson starting to cold call himself, which makes the level of inefficiency even greater. According to Anders Grondstedt:

"Non customer centric thinking organizations are organized to efficiently produce and distribute goods. They relegate customer management and brand building to marketing and communication departments and agencies that sequester themselves in separate offices, isolated both from each other and from the customer, churning out advertising and other communications material to an information overloaded world. They make a virtue of outspending and outshouting the competition. Run more ads. Maximize the numbers of impressions. Get more ‘ink.' They are frittering away millions of dollars in "marketing."

 

Read more to learn why successful companies must move towards Customer-Centricity

Are banks ready to shift gears to attract and retain Gen X and Gen Y?

 

According to a loyalty programme survey by Maritz Research, Younger Generation of Customers are less loyal to Banks. 

At Cequity, we agree this is a challenge for banks and we do recommend banks must change the way they service this generation. They need a whole host of new services which makes it convenient for the young generation to bank with them. Also, there is a need to understand their financial needs and configure products that can fit into their life. Take a look at what the research revealed:

"For the most part, the current customer experience model at banks caters to the Silent Generation and Boomers, who more frequently bank in-person at branches. But, younger generation customers are much more mobile and rely more heavily on online interactions," says Thad Peterson, division vice president, sector strategy and solutions for Maritz' financial services sector.

• 37 percent of Gen Y and 36 percent of Gen X believe they would get better customer service at a different bank, compared with only 24 percent of Boomer and 16 percent of Silent Generation respondents.
• 22 percent of Gen Y and 21 percent of Gen X reported being upset in the past year about high fees, whereas only 14 percent of Boomer and six percent of the Silent Generation respondents reported the same.
• 18 percent of Gen Y and 17 percent of Gen X reported being upset about a lack of ATM locations, compared with only 11 percent of Boomer and three percent of Silent Generation respondents.

Washington Mutual is one institution that successfully caters to the needs of younger customers. WaMu no longer requires a signature to open a checking account. The bank simply uses the first signed check as the authorization signature -- incenting new customers to do business with the bank by simplifying the process and eliminating a trip to the bank. It appeals to the Gen X and Y customer desire to just "get it done,"

Read to find out more about banking loyalty solutions.

Survey reveals telecom industry missing marketing opportunities

 

A recent survey by Valista reveals that mobile industry wants more streamlined campaign on-boarding and campaign management services. At Cequity, we do encourage telcos to start thinking CLCM (Customer Lifecycle Campaigns) which includes campaign planning for on-boarding of new acquisitions, defending the relationship in the first 90 days, reinforcing the relationship in the next 45 days and win-back programs if there is a churn amongst these customers. It needs to be a systematic and planned process of customer engagement. Take a look at what the survey revealed: 

"It can typically take months to introduce a new mobile campaign across all the carriers," Heeran said. "This clearly needs to change as many campaigns lose relevancy with each passing month and some campaigns are never considered because of the production time. Mobile service and content providers need to be able to react to the market quickly and provision new mobile campaigns in a more dynamic fashion."

 

According to the survey, the mobile industry could take better advantage of customer loyalty programs as a way to spur purchases of downloaded content.

 

"Surprisingly, none of the respondents said that they use any form of loyalty scheme as an incentive to increase content purchasing or encourage repeat buyers," Valista officials say. "Over 70 percent of those surveyed, however, use other promotions methods to entice customers to purchase more content, including discounts, free trials and product bundling."

Read more to find out how telecom companies can better leverage Loyalty Schemes and Campaign services.

50 Golden brands that made a difference to the marketing world

 

1959 was the year The Marketing Society was founded and the birth of modern marketing. Today, The Marketing Society is the most influential network of senior marketers dedicated to championing marketing in the UK.

Selecting a brand for each of the past 50 years was not easy. Their shortlist was assembled using a variety of different criteria. Which brands were launched, relaunched or revamped? Who was winning awards? Who were the top spenders and the top sellers? And which brands encapsulated the zeitgeist of the year?

Take a look

Intersection of Business, Science, and Technology: Business Analytics

 

The world of business, analytics and technology is converging. Today, it can be rarely separated since there is a close correlation between them, as it helps businesses get closer to their customers by understanding data, predicting and delivering what they need. Atomai brings this trend & insight out very well. Read to know more on the growing importance of analytics in today's business environment:

Companies like GE, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SAS Institute, Exxon, and Google are among the thousand of companies around the world that are working to unleash the power of the mind by intersecting business, technology, and science. Business analytics is the future, and the future is now.

Some time ago business, science, and technology were three distinct and separate disciplines. The advancements in these three disciplines during the last five years have created a quantum leap in how each directly affects the others. Businesses, large and small, make global transactions on a daily basis. Technology allows people from around the world to communicate internationally and storage large volumes of digital data. Science allows accurate predictions using large databases around the world.

The Value of the Consumer’s Voice

 

It's not often uncommon when clients tell us that customers are increasingly not filling-up application/enrollment and feedback forms completely, data about their customers & their profiles are not updated and also information about their behavior is increasingly becoming scarce & difficult to get, how do companies handle an market environment like this?

We think organizations have to change way they capture or mine data. They need to look at where else can they 'dialog' with these customers - Twitter, Facebook, Google Chat etc.? How often have you seen companies even capture such" Dialog Points" for a possible "information opportunity"?

There is an interesting point of view on how to improve customer relationship management. Take a look:

To stay on top of purchase trends or address dissatisfactions, marketing teams often administer surveys and comb through hundreds of thousands of responses to find needles of profundity in the customer service haystack. In reality, if today's consumer has a gripe or suggestion, he or she no longer fills out a comment card or a survey. Instead, the customer takes it to the keyboard and posts comments online for the whole world to read. Given the influence of word of mouth (or more appropriately, word of "blog"), your business will feel the direct effects of online reviews - positively or negatively.

According to a 2007 Deloitte & Touche study, more than eight in 10 (82 percent) of consumers said their purchasing decisions have been directly influenced by online reviews.¹ With the advent of the blogosphere and social-media tools such as Twitter and Facebook, there are more opportunities for customers to voice their opinions, and the circle of influence has grown much wider. Monitoring for these comments must be a core part of your business.

Organizations have a unique opportunity to connect with their customers just by letting them know they are being heard. JetBlue Airways created a Twitter account after learning customers were using this platform to voice their frustrations. Now, Twitter has become a key customer management service portal where the airline offers discounts and responds to flyers in real time. Using Twitter, JetBlue has turned around its negative public perception, even in a struggling aviation market.

The Web's reach is boundless and social-media text is quite unstructured making it impossible for a typical search to uncover everything of relevance. So, how can marketers and executives sift through all of the social-media noise - the ruminations, misfindings and the insignificant rants - to find the true opinions and reviews about their brands?

The answer is semantic search and analysis. Semantic search provides early identification of consumer concerns, suggestions, likes and dislikes and purchasing trends. It uncovers this information from the most unstructured corners of the Web. The retrieval of such information is not limited to recognizing key words as typical Web searches do. Instead, it uncovers the meaning the words express in their proper context and accepted meaning no matter the number (singular or plural), gender (masculine or feminine), verb tense (past, present or future) or mode (indicative or imperative).

10 Things Your CFO Should Know About Measuring Marketing Effectiveness

Marketing is changing dramatically and the one area where the change is most dramatic is the area of “Marketing accountability”. Marketers are being asked by CEOs to quantify the impact of their marketing programs towards business. Increasingly CMOs are responding by building closer linkages to their CFOs and understanding the financial metrics better! Marketing and finance must be aligned before the CEO can authorize any significant increase in marketing investment levels. More critically,the CMO & CFO must be able to speak the same language as they evaluate the ROI of the marketing investments.

In today’s markets with slowdown & recession being on everyone’s radar, it has become even more critical for the CMO to connect with the CFO and reduce the gap by creating clear & accountable marketing measurements & metrics.

Pat LaPointe and Dave Reibstein share their thoughts and insight into the world of marketing measurement

http://www.marketingnpv.com/articles/features/Building_Blocks

 

Are “free customers” valuable?

Customer lifetime value has been a long studied area in Marketing. But traditional models in this area seem to break down when they encounter a setting where the Buyers & sellers are interacting to create value for the enterprise. Consider an auction –here the Auction houses traditionally make money by charging the “sellers”-the “buyers” don’t pay to be there. How do you then value the “buyer” –is one “buyer” worth 4 “sellers”? What is the correct metric? The answer is critical for the auction house, which must determine how to allocate marketing and other expenditures between buyers and sellers to attract new business. A similar situation would exist in most online marketplaces like e Bay.

 

In a recent working paper, Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta studies these customer segments who at first do not seem to be adding value, he calls them "free" customers.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5595.html

 

How do you dig into Pricing Psychology?

I came across this interesting thought about why as Marketers we should care deeply about consumers actually using our products & services. Consider this counter intuitive thought . "Suppose that Mary and Bill join a health club. Bill pays $600 on enrolling; Mary selects the $50-per-month plan. Who's more likely to renew their membership? Mary. Every month, she's reminded of the cost-so she works out more, to get her money's worth. And members who frequently work out tend to renew."

There is an interesting article in the Harvard business Review on "Pricing and the Psychology of Consumption".

Have a look and re orient some of your traditional marketing plans with this new approach.

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbo/articles/article.jsp?articleID=1814&ml_action=get-article&pageNumber=1&ml_subscriber=true

Politics & “Customer Knowledge”

There is so much information about the customer across the enterprise but people across departments often “hoard” this information while it can be so effectively used to increase business for all. Thomas Davenport believes that “Customer knowledge isn't a highfalutin abstraction. When managed well and applied to various customer-facing business processes, it can increase customer purchase and retention levels, save money by directing marketing efforts at customers who will respond to them, and yield products and services that customers really want in the first place.”Read the detailed article and start a Customer knowledge program at your company!http://www.cio.com/article/108404/_Managing_Customer_Knowledge?page=1 

Is Business Intelligence an oxymoron?

It is difficult to implement Business intelligence initiatives in most companies. Creating a fact based or “evidence” based culture is not something that can happen on its own. It needs huge corporate commitment right from the CEO downwards. Setting up a Business Intelligence unit or Customer Intelligence unit is a good first step but often “not enough”. Unless you make it easier for business managers to analyze data , the Business intelligence vision remains only on paper. At Cequity we believe very strongly in democratizing data and our unique Cequity ACE platform for “slice & dice” business intelligence is an example of that. The Aberdeen group has some nice comments on this. Lack of Business Intelligence and IT skill sets continue to plague companies interested in taking BI to the next level, According to David Hatch, research director at Aberdeen Group, a part of the answer lies in providing more user-friendly BI tools. Read more about how you can drive Business intelligence across the organization in this interesting post:

http://www.cio.com/article/170201/Four_Tips_for_Better_Business_Intelligence_in_