When conducting a recent offer mailing for a client – we ran with a rather ‘safe’ subject line.  I say safe – in that, it wasn’t very specific to the mailing.  For example – the offer we were running was a 24 hour only offer – all company credit

reports £1 for 1 day.  However, best practice preaches that the use of numbers and symbols cause issues with deliverability.  And therefore, we always steer clear of using them.  So instead of running with a symbol loaded subject, we ran with a headline of ‘ 24 hours of winter madness’.

So, 1) no mention of company credit reports,  and, 2) no mention of the actual offer.  However, we hoped that we’d intrigue people into opening to find out what it was about.

The open rates pretty good (avg 25%) and in some groups, the click throughs were very respectable.  However, with such a great offer, we were expecting better things.

Following that mailing, we tuned into a webinar, ‘The five best ways to optimise email response’

by Dr Flint McGlaughlin.

Many of the lessons within the webinar were as expected, however, it did provoke thinking.  In particular, when they were going through a series of subject lines and looking at how the campaigns could be improved – one recommendation was to change the subject line of the mailing from ‘Thank you for Making us your Florist of Choice, to ‘15% offer – Our way of saying thank you!’.

(http://www.marketingexperiments.com/images/multifiles/articulate/miami-summit-2010/player.html)

Now of course, any marketer utilising basic best practice techniques is going to be aghast at such a recommendation – let’s see, how many symbols in the subject line – errr…% – and ! =3!

Now of course, from a marketing message – I totally agree.  Communicating very clearly what you are offering right up front is key to successful marketing messaging.  However, what about the spam filters and deliverability – what’s the point of going to all the effort of creating the piece, if it isn’t going to make it through to the recipient.

So we decided to query this point with Dr Flint McGlaughlin – and his response is detailed below.

QUESTION:

How much validity is there to the conventional wisdom that, in the Subject line of an offer email message, numbers, certain symbols (especially £/€/$, %, and !) and “SPAM words” such as “Free” and “discount” will cause a dramatic reduction in deliverability, and consequently effectiveness?

ANSWER:

In the case of the particular company and study referred to on Slide 22, that was precisely one of the questions we set out to answer.  What you couldn’t see in the context of Dr. McGlaughlin’s Email Summit presentation is that this particular 2-treatment comparative vignette was just a tiny part of a much larger and broader study intended to test that specific widely-accepted presumption along with a host of others to see how valid they remained through the evolution of regulatory and ESP-technical filter changes since the time they were first introduced and anecdotally adopted; around 2003-2005.  This was important because we know from our foundational Offer/Response-Optimisation principles of “clarity trumps persuasion” and “specificity converts”, that the clearer and more specific subject line—i.e., the one with the “15% Off…” copy—should convert better.

What we found was that there was, in fact, a small but significant difference in deliverability—interestingly, it was more pronounced among the smaller ESP’s.  In addition, as we had predicted based on the “eme” heuristic, the Open Rate actually declined (…by more than 25%).

In the end, though, the central research question was “Which email subject line will result in the greatest projected net revenue?”   As revealed in Dr. McGlaughlin’s presentation,  despite the slight dip in Delivery rate, and the (what would otherwise have been alarming) drop in Open rate, the Clickthrough Rate (CTR) to the landing page was 60.3% higher.  What he may not have mentioned is that, in direct answer to the research question, the Treatment subject line yielded a 56% increase in projected net revenue vs. the Control.

So, while it appears there is still at least some validity to the commonly held belief that special characters in the email Subject line reduces deliverability, our research—this test two others conducted in different products and industries—suggests that when they serve to do so, these negative factors are dwarfed by the power of clarity.

Interesting eh – I’ll certainly be split testing the subject line in our next offer against this view – and will report back results.

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Or follow me on Twitter – I’m always sharing useful stuff on there too.

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

It’s likely you’ve worked hard to capture your customer and as all good marketers are aware, ongoing communications with customers have proved to improve retention, referral and general brand awareness.

 That’s why, when a customer opts to ‘unsubscribe’ many businesses feel a little ‘rejected’.

 First and foremost, it’s fundamentally important to honour the ‘unsubscribe request’ and remove them from your communication lists immediately.    However, there are some tactics you can look to apply which may ensure that you don’t totally lose the opportunity to continuously communicate with your all important customers:

 1.     Provide more ‘Opt in’ preferences.  When you are inviting your customer to ‘opt in’ to your email communications – very often I see just the one tick box.   From the user’s perspective, all they have to do is tick this box to be assured that they won’t receive any further email communications from you.  However, if we follow the principle of ‘targeted’ communications – and the logic that people don’t actually mind receiving emails about something they are genuinely interested in – then this opens up the opportunity for you to provide your customers with a ‘choice’ of the types of communications they receive from you.   Of course, if you don’t have a wide range of communications – then it may be that you provide choice on Frequency.  So instead of offering just one tick box – provide say, 5 tick boxes: for example:  General Monthly Ewire,  Marketing News,  SEO News,  Small Business News,  Finance & Tax News  - this way the user can just select the Small Business News – rather than receiving all 5.    Similarly, if you don’t have that many communication options to provide the user – then offer choice of frequency,  for example;  monthly, weekly, daily, quarterly etc. 

2.     Find out why your customers want to unsubscribe.  When a user ticks the unsubscribe option – why not ask them ‘why’ they have chosen to unsubscribe.  You can offer a simple drop down box of options – or you can provide them with a box to provide you with their reasons.  This has two positive elements 1) you learn about your customers and 2) it provides your customer with a platform to provide feedback to you.  There are some really neat little applications which do this job very well and cost nothing or very little – such as:  http://www.kampyle.com. 

3.     Provide your customers with confirmation of your action.  Personally, it really frustrates me that when I unsubscribe from a communication vehicle, I don’t get any ‘confirmation’ that my unsubscribe request has been actioned.  This means, I’m often left thinking, ‘did that work’?  From a usability perspective, all online actions should provide the user with some means of logical ‘feedback’.  When a user unsubscribes, ensure your user is directed to a page which confirms the action with a message along the lines of ‘Thank you for your unsubscription request.   I can confirm that your request has been forwarded to our online communications team and will be processed immediately.  Whilst this is being processed, you may receive communications from us, but rest assured that your request is being dealt with.  In order to help us improve our communications, we’d value any feedback as to why you wish to unsubscribe from this service, and indeed welcome your feedback on any other service we provide. 

4.     Double check the ‘all out’ option.  You could go one further and remind your user of what they will be missing out on by unsubscribing.  Particularly if you have a ‘preferences’ in place (as discussed in point 1 above) – this way you can say something like:  Thank you for your unsubscription request.  By unsubscribing you have chosen to opt out of receiving  our  General Monthly Ewire,  Marketing News,  SEO News,  Small Business News,  Finance & Tax News – if you wish to stay subscribed to any of these services simply tick the relevant item below.  Similarly, if you wish to change the frequency of when these communications are sent to you – simply tick the frequency preferences below. 

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Deliverability is the biggest challenge for email communications – it doesn’t matter how much time or effort has gone into the creative, the copywriting or the targeting.  If the email cannot be ‘received’ then the effort is wasted.

The volume of spam is driving the ISPs to block emails.  Currently 80% of email traffic is spam, so there is a legitimate financial reason for the ISPs to control the amount of spam traffic on their networks.

However, deliverability can be improved by following a few codes of good practice:

a)Data Hygiene Policy.  Install a Data Hygiene Policy to ensure that the data within your Marketing Database is as ‘clean’ as possible.  The goals of the policy should be to:
* Reduce incorrect,  incomplete or outdated addresses to a minimum
* Process online unsubscribe requests immediately
* Process unsubscribe requests received offline within a maximum of 7 days
* Inform those unsubscribing that their request has been received and how long it will take to be effective –AND what to do if they ever want to ‘re-subscribe’.
There are email systems that enable the unsubscribe email address to be ‘suppressed’ rather than deleted.  This way if a customer opts in at any point this overrides the unsubscription. 

b) Email Hygiene.  Following opt in / opt out policies and list hygiene is one of the most effective ways to maintain high deliverability rates.  In off-line direct marketing, the cost of producing and mailing each pack acts as a deterrent to ‘over mailing’.  In email marketing however, the marginal cost of each additional email does not hold the same disincentive – and invalid email addresses are continuously mailed.  If an email address is returned ‘invalid’ – then it should be checked for basic errors and if none are found, it should be removed from the mailing list.

c) ISP Relations.  Organisations that don’t manage their data efficiently and continue to mail ‘invalid’ email addresses without cleaning them out will get ‘tagged’ as spammers.  This means that your emails will be ‘blocked’  as you are put under ‘spam arrest’ by some ISPs.    You can rebuild these relationships – you need to identify which ISPs have blocked you and contact them to explain that you are a legitimate business – and that you are now following ‘best practice guidelines’ to ensure that you implement a good data and list hygiene policy.  After all – spammers are not likely to contact the ISPs directly.  Therefore, by making the effort to contact the ISPs and show that you are willing to do whatever it takes to rebuild a good mailing reputation – then you can start to build a good reputation.

There are email systems which you can purchase which directly manage your list hygiene and ISP relationships – if your business is dependent upon online communications – then it is likely that you would opt for this type of email service provider.

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Marketing effectiveness, whether offline or online is ‘simplistically’ based on the following:
“right message, right person, right time”

There are many factors that can determine the success of an email campaign – and indeed there are many ways to define the success of a campaign. 

Jupiter Research undertook some research in 2005 which identified that 73% of immediate purchasers bought because an email message featured a ‘sale price’ (targeted offer) and 67% bought because it featured free or discounted shipping (giving them something for free).   

Further, 60% of buyers said that a key motivator to purchase was the fact that the message contained a product the recipient was already considering. 

This makes sense – and provides a strong case for ‘intelligent’ targeted marketing campaigns – by which I mean following up specific segments behaving in a particular way. 

For example:  A newsletter is deployed and promotes 3 items.  Three follow up emails are then sent to the users – dependent upon which item they explored. 

Whilst there are no ‘hard and fast’ rules as to creating a ‘successful’ email communication – the following considerations should apply when crafting them:

Personalise: Where possible personalise the email by using the intended recipient’s name in the body of the email and where appropriate in the subject line (however, don’t get too carried away with this if it is difficult to do – as this practice has not shown to make a significant difference).

Relevance: If there is a ‘history’ with the intended recipient include reference to previous purchase history, enquiries or preferences you are aware of.  Eg:  ‘We noticed you were interested in our New Organic Bodywash – we have a special 50% discount you can take advantage of, however, it’s only available for the next 48 hours… so act now’.

Multi-part: Research has identified that HTML emails pull a higher response rate than plain or rich text emails.  In the registration process be sure to ask your customers how they want to receive their emails.  However, most online marketers opt for sending both emails simultaneously.  The recipient’s computer will then recognise and display the optimal email format.

Layout: Research shows that a user browses their emails before being drawn to a particular area of interest.   It is advisable not to ‘play around’ too much with the layout of a regular communication – as overtime users become familiar with its layout (how frustrating when supermarkets change their sections just when you’re familiar with all the areas you need).   Newsletters often benefit from a Table of Contents at the top of an email outlining the copy contained within the communication.

Most read: As part of your layout – particularly where there is multiple messages (as in a newsletter style communication) it is widely known that the ‘top two’ messages are the most read.  Therefore, ensure you keep key messages at the top.  

Auto preview: It is worth considering the content of the first paragraph of the plain text version of the body copy which is visible via Auto Preview.  It is generally accepted that the ‘3 second rule’ applies to email marketing messages – and therefore the most compelling copy or image should appear in the first paragraph to encourage the individual to open the email and read on.
Images: Images can play a large part in getting a key message across – whilst image blocking is increasingly prevalent – a way to get around this is to utilise ‘alt tags’ (so that if images are blocked, descriptive text will appear in its place).  

Email size: There are Best Practice guidelines which advise that messages should not exceed 60k in total file size.  Large images can cause emails to get caught by spam filters.
Subject line: The subject line, like any headline, should convey a strong call to action – a compelling subject line will draw the recipient into the email.   If a regular communication – it’s good practice to maintain a ‘consistent’ subject line.  Good practice guidelines advise that the subject line should not exceed more than 70 characters. 

Spam triggers: Be aware of trigger words such as:  free, hot – and other seemingly innocuous words such as ‘tips’, ‘enter’, ‘sample’, ‘private’, ‘reserved’, ‘products’ and ‘introductory’ – these have also been identified as key ‘spam’ triggers.

From box: Similarly as familiarity of layout – people become accustomed to knowing who is sending emails to them – and will determine whether they open them based on who they are from.    

Transparency: The subject line should accurately reflect the subject, purpose and content of the messages. 

Testing:  There’s a practice called ‘split stream testing’ whereby you take a subset of the data and test two different subject lines.  You can then assess after 24 hours and roll out the campaign using the most popular subject line.

Pre testing: It is really important to test emails before they are deployed.  Some email deployment systems have these testing processes in built.  This way you can test how your email will look on different browsers.  Some deployment systems also check that your email template works effectively – and is optimised for deliverability.  

Unsubscribe: An unsubscribe method needs to be apparent on every email communication. 

Timing: It’s worth testing email ‘timing’.  There is some benchmark data (reliability not verified) to suggest that more customers are likely to visit websites and make purchases on weekdays rather than weekends.  And that conversion rates for visitors peak around midday on weekdays – making this an optimal time for reaching consumers. 

For more information about Best Practice Guidelines for Email Marketing visit www.dma.org.uk

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“Mailshots don’t work” – is a phrase I have become accustomed to hearing when discussing marketing tactics with businesses.  Indeed, when I enquire further, I am offered tales of how hundreds and sometimes, thousands of letters, invitations, newsletters and all matter of communications – have been sent out using up significant resource (both time and money) and yet yielding not a single response. 

Even in the age where ‘emarketing’ has seen rapid growth, direct mail is still a serious tactic – with direct mail increasing by 130% over the past 12 years – it is estimated that Consumer Direct Mail now generates £26.283 billion worth of business every year.  

To get the most out of direct mail requires a combination of skills: 1) a clear understanding of the purpose of the mailing; 2) accurate and relevant targeting; and 3) an interesting execution that involves the reader and creates a response.  To put it simply, the most successful campaigns are those that put the right message in front of the right person at the right time.

So let’s take a look at the winning combination: Right message, right person and the right time.

Right Person

Targeting is the first step in any direct mail campaign.  Question your motives: who are you trying to attract?  Who do you want your mailer to reach?  Targeting is not easy – ideally you have to have some knowledge of your audience, in order to be able to target effectively.

A great start to targeting is utilising existing customer information.  Such information should enable you to identify the potential to sell more services to them, or to generate profiles of who the best prospects will be.

Of course, when approaching the cold market, there is also the option to purchase marketing lists – where you have the ability to drill down to specific information – such as turnover, size of business, number of years in business, number of employees, demo and geographics etc – however, you still have to establish the ‘profile’ of who you are looking for – based from your own knowledge, which is likely to be gleaned from experiences with your own customers. 

Right Message

There are many tactics and ideas for making your direct mail piece ‘stand out’.   And indeed some businesses spend enormous amounts of money on their direct mail – and go to extreme lengths to ‘make an impact’ – sending chocolates, lollies, cakes and all matter of goodies as part of their direct mail campaigns. 

It’s worth remembering that what customers are really looking for is relevance – they are far more likely to respond to a mailing which has an offer they are interested in, than to one which has a great design or gimmick, but is of no relevance to them.

Indeed, it’s easy to get carried away with the ‘attention catching gimmicks’ – this is the fun stuff.   And whilst the ‘whacky’ designs may catch attention – what all direct mail experts agree on is the importance of ‘the sales letter’.

Experts agree that in writing the sales letter the key is to ‘plan ahead’.  And 90% of the thinking should happen before those eager fingers start tapping at the keypad.

The focus of the letter is to win new business.  Some key tips to follow when crafting your letter:

• Be yourself – personalise the letter as much as you can and demonstrate a sound knowledge of your audience’s business dynamics and a clear understanding of the obstacles they face.  If the reader believes you have empathy with their situation – they are far more likely to continue reading.
• Don’t talk too much about yourself – readers are interested in what you can do for them – not what you do.  Focus on the opportunities your products and services present for them.
• Use the words ‘you’ and ‘your’ as much as possible and minimise the ‘we’s’.  This will warm up your letter considerably.
• Use sub-heads, bullet points and highlighted or bold text to convey key points.
• Be very direct about your offer – and get the value proposition or the offer in quick.  If you can save them £500 immediately – then tell them this in the headline.  And of course, repeat the offer again, half way through the letter – don’t let them miss the opportunity.
• Make it easy for people to buy – have clear instruction of how to take advantage of the offer; ‘simply phone Jack on ….’, ‘simply send back the enclosed prepaid response card’.
• Be sure to keep your response mechanisms simple and provide a few response options.  Don’t stipulate that orders must be done ‘online’ – as that may present an obstruction to buy. 

Right Time

A key aspect to Direct Mail is ‘timing’.  It’s very difficult to know exactly when your target customer is ‘ready to buy’.  Of course, there may be some seasonal opportunities which determine an opportune ‘direct mail’ time – and so consider this when planning.  But that still doesn’t provide any guarantees.

Timing is exactly why ‘one hit wonders’ are extremely rare – if evident at all.  More often than not – deciding ‘when to mail’ is more of a case of what you can internally manage and resource.

And that’s fine – provided that you don’t plan on doing mailers in ‘isolation’.  By this I mean – that you do not attempt to attain the elusive ‘one hit wonder’ – but instead plan a Direct Mail Campaign – or an integrated marketing campaign of which direct mail is one component.

Regular communication is the only solution to the ‘right time’ problem.  Even with sophisticated consumer behaviourial profiling, knowing just ‘when’ a customer is ready to buy – requires skills beyond the realms of our 5 senses.  

Even if your offer is amazingly compelling – for many of the people you mail, it may simply be a case that now is just not the right time for them.  However, 6 months down the line – it may be the perfect time for them.  And so – regular communication allows you to build ‘share of mind’, loyalty, and eventually ‘hit the mark’.

Let’s think about it this way.  Research in ‘sales activity’ tells us that the optimum number of times you need to ask the customer to buy in order to gain a positive result is 7.   And of course, your direct mail piece is effectively a ‘remote sales man’ trying to win over your chosen target.  This tells us that regular communication is necessary to achieve the end objective.  It’s a bit of a numbers game (which Capital One by the level of the direct mail activity must know all about!).
Learn from your activity

The bottom line exists – and so you need to measure success.  Did the campaign fulfill its objectives; achieve the desired results, all within the set budget?   

The key to ongoing successful campaigns is that of monitoring responses.  Like many things in life – the more you do it – the better you get at it.  The same applies to Direct Mail. 

Over time you’ll learn which targets respond to which messages and of course, you’ll be able to monitor any particular ‘response’ patterns too – giving you a valuable insight into the ‘Right Time’.

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The Marketing Mix is a term used to describe the combination of tactics used by businesses to achieve its objectives by marketing its services or products effectively to a specific target audience.

For many years, in marketing jargon, this was referred to as ‘the 4 Ps’ – namely; product, price, promotion and place.

The logic behind the ‘4 Ps’ is to apply a tactic that focuses on marketing the ‘right product’ to the ‘right person’ at the ‘right price’ in the ‘right place’ and at the ‘right time’.

Once you’ve identified your target audience – then the ‘4 Ps’ provide you with a simple process to follow to ensure that you’ve got your marketing proposition right. For example, let’s say we want to market umbrellas – and have decided to target schoolchildren. Given our audience it would therefore be appropriate to market:

• Coloured, cartoon character covered, small size umbrellas (product)
• At a low price (price)
• Selling them through school uniform outlets (place)
• Promoting them through point of sale / school book bags (promotion)

Let’s now say that our target audience is gentleman’s smart umbrellas

• Black, high quality, business like, oversized umbrellas (product)
• Premium price reflecting the quality (price)
• Selling them through gentleman’s clothes outlets, tailors (place)
• Promoting them through point of sale, possibly relevant trade press (promotion)

The above examples clearly show that identifying your target audience, determines how you apply the ‘4 Ps’ tactic.

So let’s look at the ‘4 Ps’ a little more closely – and then I’ll introduce some more ‘Ps’ for you to consider.

Product

Marketing is about many things – but in its simplest explanation, it’s about identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer needs. Therefore, you need to be sure that your products and services continue to meet your customers’ needs – and perhaps even ‘delight’ them!

To keep on top of how your products and services are performing, it’s good practice to periodically carry out customer research asking your customers:

• What they think of your product/service
• How satisfied they are with the quality
• What they think of your support services (if appropriate)
• Are you meeting their needs
• What else could you be doing

Be sure to ask these questions for each service or product you provide – and have a system for collecting and analysing feedback.

I have worked with a number of businesses that do extensive customer research, find out some great product and service enhancements – but then don’t actually ‘implement’ anything in line with what the customers are saying they want.

If you are going to go to the trouble of undertaking research – be sure it has a purpose. And be sure that you are going to use the information to further enhance your products and services. It’s also really good practice to provide your customers with an update of ‘why’ you are updating, enhancing your products or services.

“Thank you to all customers that kindly participated in telling us what they thought of our A Product”. We received excellent ideas and really constructive feedback. In light of which we have developed Product A so that it now includes XYZ.”

A statement such as the above provides your customers with the open knowledge that you are ‘listening’ to their needs and ‘responding’ respectively – the mark of a truly marketing focused organisation.

Place

Place relates to your means of distribution. Depending on whether you provide products directly to the consumer (B2C) or directly to other businesses (B2B) is likely to impact your pricing and promotion decisions.

You may be selling through wholesalers, direct to retail outlets, or direct to the consumer. If selling to wholesalers, then there are likely to be ‘mark up’ costs to cover their overheads, similarly with retail outlets. And from a promotional perspective, wholesalers and retailers will have to be persuaded to stock your products and services. It may be that you have an online presence, and may be selling directly to consumers ‘online’ – so you may be advertising with search engines and on related websites.

Price

Price determines your profit and is therefore, a very important element of the mix. And probably the most influenced by the other elements of the mix. Place impacts price, promotion impacts price as does product.

When determining ‘price’ you need to consider:

a) Your target audience. What will they be prepared to pay for your product or service. Going back to the umbrella example above, children’s umbrellas say, £4.99 Gent’s umbrellas £9.99. There’s a clear difference between the ‘price positioning’ of these two offerings.

b) Costs. What does it cost you to produce this product or service? This is key – you don’t want to be selling a product and making a loss. Consider the margins you want to make – how many you have to sell to break-even. Map out all the costs associated with production. There are a number of hidden costs that come out of the woodwork – and if you don’t calculate what it costs you to produce your product correctly, the more you sell, the more you will lose!

c) Competitors. Look at what your competitors are charging. Go online and run a quick ‘Google’ search on the type of product or service you provide – and see the costs. Even call competitors for a price if costs are not readily displayed.

Promotion

Traditionally, the promotional mix was made up as follows:

• Advertising
• Sales promotion
• Public relations
• Direct marketing
• Personal selling

And how you used these elements depends on your message, your reach (target audience) and of course, your budget.

Of course, there are a whole new tranche of ‘promotional’ elements to consider now too. I refer to these as ‘Social Media’ – and whilst one could argue that these fall into the ‘Advertising’ or ‘PR’ categories, I prefer to outline some of the popular ‘online’ angles for you to consider:

• Blogs / forums
• Email marketing
• E-Newsletters
• Websites
• Social Networks
• Search Advertising

3 More Ps

The ‘4 Ps’ have provided a tried and tested tactic for marketers over the years. However, in the late 70s – came the rise of the ‘service’ organisation. Marketers then developed the ‘4 Ps’ further to create ‘7 Ps’ – including, People, Process and Physical Evidence.

People

You can clearly understand that in a service organisation – people determine the quality of service your customers receive. Where people are the front line communicators, it’s important that they are happy, skilled and motivated. A happy team makes for happy customers.

Indeed, in a saturated and competitive market place, service is usually the only means for an organisation to differentiate itself. Think of Apple. Their service level is amazing. Ok, they have good products too – but so indeed do Dell. However, from my experience of being both a MAC user and a PC user – from my perspective, Dell doesn’t come close to Apple’s service levels.

And of course, the level of service you provide can often mean that you can charge a more premium price. Customers are likely to pay more for excellent service levels.

So here are some tips for creating a happy, skilled and motivated team:

• Recruit wisely. Be transparent with the level of service you expect from your team at the interview process. Recruit those that are enthusiastic, motivated and that you can see have a clear understanding of how important their role in keeping customers happy is.
• Train your team. Provide a good induction to your products and services – ensure that your team member understands what it is you do, what you offer and who does what within the organisation.
• Look after your team. Nurture them, get them involved. In fact, get them to set some service standards; key measurements that they want to be assessed against. These Key Performance Indicators – are then something that you can measure and monitor and discuss with your team on a regular basis.

Process

The processes involved in delivering your products and services to the customer have an impact on the way in which your customers perceive you.

Be sure that you map out these processes to ensure they are logical and not causing unnecessary delay or inconvenience for the customer.

Consider how you communicate with your customers and how easy it is for them to communicate with you. I recently worked with a business (and they are not alone in this practice) that sent post transaction confirmation emails from the customer support team from a ‘no reply’ email address. The email was asking the customer to contact them if they had any challenges etc – yet had no contact details within it – and the customer couldn’t just simply reply to the email.

My question to them was ‘how does that look to the customer’? You’re communicating with them, yet giving them no means to respond. Getting your customers to communicate with you should be simple and easy.

My advice is to review your business processes on a regular basis. Review how things are working and look at ways to ‘tighten up’ any gaps.

Re-engineer your processes to keep a pace with the business environment. Be sure to check that the way you deliver your products and services is the most efficient, cost effective and customer centric way possible.

Physical Evidence

Physical evidence is the term used to describe the image that your business portrays to the external environment in a physical way. Namely; premises, team appearance, car park, vehicles, reception area etc, effectively, how you position your business.

When customers do not have anything that they can touch, see or try before they buy, they are more likely to assess you by the image and associations you portray.

I personally explain ‘physical evidence’ as part of an organisations ‘brand values’. What is communicated physically, says everything about the brand – and therefore, your business. Customers are building a mental picture which they will retain from the moment they are introduced to your business. So it’s important that your physical evidence is consistent with the type of product or service you provide.

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Once you’ve agreed the type of information that you are going to collect, and created the relevant fields for your database.  The next stage is to input or import the data.

Until your database is well established, it is wise to give responsibility to one individual for overall Database Management.  This Database Manager will set up a ‘protocol’ for how data should be entered, which fields have to be filled, and is responsible for the deletion or addition of entries.

It is also important to regularly ‘clean’ your database.  If a mailing is returned marked ‘gone away’ be sure that your database is ‘up-dated’ accordingly.  Aim for your database to be 99% accurate at all times.

The platform for your Marketing activities

Once your database is established it becomes the focal point for all your marketing activities.

All too often businesses embark on marketing activities without having an efficient means of delivery.  With a sturdy and accurate database in place, marketing activities are far more successful, as the method of communication is easy. 

Also – email marketing had rapidly grown and is now a key marketing tool. In fact for many businesses it’s the preferred communication medium. It’s an efficient and inexpensive way to communicate with customers. 

Further, why not add a fun element to your database – which also lets your customer think that you are thinking of them.  It is likely you will hold dates of birth – why not schedule a simple ‘Happy Birthday’ email.

Your database is the nerve centre for all your marketing activities, providing you with a means to apply tactics to nurture your customers and capture prospective ones.

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If you were set the task of mailing all of your customers to advise them of, let’s say, a seminar you were running – how simple a task would that be?

Ideally, it shouldn’t be a problem at all – because you would hold your entire customer’s contact information and their preference as to how they want you to communicate with them (email or mail).  The pulling of the distribution list together should be simple – put the mailer together, merge with your customer base and press print or send.  The real effort should be focused on getting the seminar together and creating the marketing campaign. 

However, for many businesses, communicating with customers just isn’t that simple. 

In many businesses there are a number of ‘databases’ relating to different products or services.  Therefore, the total customer base is spread across different platforms and often fragmented – and it then becomes a considerable task to  pull together the entire customer base onto one centralised electronic database – the core marketing hub.

However, that’s what’s needed for efficient and effective customer management and effective marketing.
Building your marketing database

To build your marketing database, start with the basics and then add on the information that is of particular interest to your business.  Be sure to keep your database simple though – you need to be able to retrieve data quickly.

1. Customer Identity and Characteristics
* All names, addresses and telephone numbers
* Business: Type of business, number of employees, key personnel, current customer or  prospective customer.
* Consumer: Sex, date of birth, family members, hobbies.
2. Service Requested/Special Requests/Interests
* Services purchased
* Complaints
* Enquiries, Instructions, Agreements
3. Recency /Frequency / Monetary Factors
* Recency = when customer last bought your service
* Frequency = how often they buy
* Monetary = how much they spend on what
4. Media that influenced Transaction
* Advertising, Direct Mail, Tele Sales, Publicity
5. A History of Customer Relationship
* The information gathered will give you a complete history of your customer  relationship.
* You will be in a position to contact customers on a personal basis, through the most  appropriate medium.
6. Your Return on Advertising and Sales Budgets
* By recording all transactions in your database, including the medium that stimulated it,  you can break down the return you get from all advertising and marketing activity.

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