Happy Holidays! Time for Evaluation

December, 2006

This goes under the category of “no rest for the wicked.” As the Holiday Season gets into full swing, we need to take the time to re-assess what we’ve accomplished this year, and what we’d like to change for next year.

We recommend pondering topics such as:

• Do we have a strategy in place to move our sales process to a customer-initiated or customer preference approach? We see this trend only continuing to grow. Causing your customers to seek you out and come to you for information (and purchasing!) is definitely a worthy goal.
• Are we effectively using all of the channels available to us today? And, have we integrated them so that the message we’re presenting to our customers is clear and compelling?
• Have we benchmarked our acquisition efforts recently? Is that control package still as effective as it once was? Do we need to implement some new creative, offer or list tests?
• Have we examined our customer retention programs lately? Do we understand if we are reaching out to ‘save’ the most profitable customers, AND those who are likely to leave us?

RRW Consulting has prepared a short list of RRW Holiday Tips that may help you more formally address questions like those above. At a minimum, we’re sure that they’ll pique your interest and inspire some new ideas. The RRW Holiday Tip-Sheet is a listing of the areas that we feel are critical to examine now to prepare you for the future. We’ve included some industry best-practices and some information about new and interesting solutions available today.

Of course, if you’d prefer to chat with us directly about your marketing strategies, just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

Most importantly, RRW would like to extend our warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a successful New Year!

Continued Growth in Direct Marketing

November, 2006

Like many of you, we’ve just returned from the DMA’s Annual Conference in San Francisco. And, like every year, it was an exhilarating and exhausting experience. At the opening keynote address, DMA CEO John Greco spoke of what is happening in our industry today. Here are some of the exciting statistics from that speech:

• DM jobs increased by 7.5% this year – to 110 million
• There is an overall 6% increase in DM spending
• DM sales growth is greater than the overall economy – at 7.4% growth equating to $1.939 trillion in sales.

Greco stated that it is our responsibility and power to continue this trend using “relevance, responsibility and results.” And in this age of concern around data security (189 new bills introduced nationwide!), it is our responsibility to understand and honor consumer preferences and use marketing data carefully and correctly. It is also our responsibility to protect our customers’ and prospects’ information, and thereby to nurture and build a positive image of direct marketing.

When you think about it, we really are very lucky! Direct marketing is all about bringing relevant solutions to our clients that are measurable and results-oriented. Today, there are many different ways to ensure that the solutions that we design for our clients do impact the bottom line. Moreover, we can help them understand customer preferences to better communicate with them, build relationships and maintain loyalty for the long-term.

As direct marketers, we have the opportunity to use all of the channels available to us to communicate with our customers in the way that they prefer. Employing a solid multi-channel marketing approach will allow us to continue the upward trending in DM sales that our industry in currently enjoying, while complying with all of the new data security legislation that will continue to be introduced over time. As stewards of our customer experience, we can grow our customer relationships using data in the proper way, while using those channels that our clients prefer. And, we can do this with measurable, actionable results that are necessary to meet corporate goals. It really is a great time to be a direct marketer!

If you’re interested in our white paper on how to utilize Multi-Channel Marketing effectively in your business or for your valuable clients, let us know and we’ll happily send it to you. Of course, if you’d prefer to speak with us directly, please call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

Direct Marketing 2.0

October, 2006

The Internet is going through a revolution. As we speak, it is rethinking itself and how people are using it (and how consumers will use the Internet in the future). The new concept is called Web 2.0. While you can find many good definitions of Web 2.0 (especially helpful is O’Reilly’s definition) that focus on the technical aspects, RRW’s take is that, in a nutshell, Web 2.0 is built on the premise of providing value to consumers. If you make your services (primarily web tools that make your life/business easier to manage) readily available to your customers (and usually free of charge) YOUR business will ultimately benefit.

Some examples of companies that epitomize Web 2.0 are:
Wikipedia (free, collaborative online encyclopedia), Flickr (a site that allows you to store, search and share photos) and Sourceforge.net (an open-source software website). All of these web services share a common goal of providing value to consumers and businesses.

In the Direct Marketing world where profits are so closely measured, this concept may seem to be a little crazy. How can we simply give away our service/product and ask nothing from our customers? But, if you think about it, our business has always relied on these type of value offerings. For example, in order to convince customers to order through the mail or over the television (without actually feeling or seeing the product), our industry developed the ’money-back guarantee–try for 30 days or return the product with absolutely no obligation’.

Another classic example of how to implement this concept is to give away a sample of your goods to gain interest from a client (commonly done in the packaged goods industry). As they use your product or service, you learn more about them, and they learn more about you and how great you are. Once you begin to establish that relationship, you can begin a dialogue, expand and build a profitable relationship.

RRW believes that if we provide real value to our customers, we will ultimately reap the benefits of this generosity. We challenge you to extend the Web 2.0 concept to your marketing!

To inspire some ideas of how to embrace this concept (and to illustrate how RRW is putting DM 2.0 to use), we’ve put together a Checklist (free, of course), titled: “Embracing Direct Marketing 2.0”. If you’d like it, we’ll e-mail it to you immediately. Of course, if you’d prefer to speak with us directly, please call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

Focus on Testing, and More Testing!

September, 2006

• Have you changed your control piece in the last six months to a year?
• Have you tested new lists lately, or have you been mailing to the same lists/customer segments over and over again?
• Have you tried a new channel? Have you incorporated e-mail or maybe revisited outbound telemarketing?
• What about your offer? Have you compared it to your competitors’?
• Have you tested pricing strategies lately?

If you answered “NO” to any of the above, it’s time to take a good hard look at your testing process.Here are some guidelines that we find helpful as we work with our clients to implement testing strategies:

1. Design your tests to ensure that you’ll be able to act on results. For example, if you are testing a new source of data, make sure that the roll-out universe is large enough for you to make a difference in the long-term. It’s great if you find a new source of leads through the testing process, but not so wonderful if the universe is tiny.
2. A valid control group is crucial. It’s pretty difficult to prove success, if you have nothing to compare results to. Sound direct marketers always maintain a control group (sometimes called a hold-out sample)–a group of customers/prospects who receive no marketing from you. This way, you can benchmark results of the folks marketed to against those who you did not–to develop a deep understanding of results.
3. Always focus on profits as you evaluate test results. Remember that a test is only a success if the return on the test campaign is better than other campaigns. Consider, for example, a test that appeared to be a success because it generated higher than average response rates. A closer look, however, at close rates showed us that although response was great, the test campaign generated less conversions (fewer new customers). Hence, overall the test could not be considered a success.
4. Keep your testing focused. Try not to test too many things at one time. Testing, for example, creative, offer, pricing, lists, etc at the same time muddies the water and makes it virtually impossible to understand true results.

The above is a short-list of testing guidelines. If you’re interested in a deeper-dive into RRW’s philosophy of a continuous-learning approach, we’d be happy to send you “RRW’s Test-and-Learn Approach”. Of course, if you’d prefer to speak with us directly, please call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

Integrate Sales and Customer Service

August, 2006

Recently, after presenting at both the DMAsc and the Inland Empire Ad Club on the subject of customer profitability, we were posed an excellent question. The question was: “As marketers, how do we solve the problem of a disconnect within the sales or customer service process?” Specifically, how do we impact sales success when we know we are doing our job. We are making the phones ring; we’re providing sales with the best, highly targeted leads, but they are not converting them – for whatever reason – into closed sales.

Hence today’s focus on your internal processes.

Maybe it’s time to take a look at the processes in place in your organization. Perhaps a review of each and every customer touch-point (from web to call-center to outside sales) may point out areas where sales and service could improve–where you could isolate concrete ways to improve each customer’s experience. This, in turn, increases your number of closed sales and builds loyalty within your customer base – two very important keys to any company’s success.

We’ve seen, first-hand, what occurs when there is not a solid strategy behind how leads are worked within your sales process. When this is the case, all of your hard-fought marketing gains are erased. It is imperative, therefore, to ensure that sales and marketing are marching toward the same outcome – the same goals – for the greatest success. Examine the sales process and determine where the “holes” are.

In our experience, we’ve seen spectacular changes result after such a process review. Sometimes, it’s the simple things that are isolated as breakdowns in your process – and with some small changes, great improvements can be made for the better.

RRW brings an outside perspective and a focus on the customer to help clients understand where they may be able to make positive changes. Sometimes these changes seem obvious (where you just want to kick yourself and wonder why policy wasn’t changed sooner!). But, sometimes, the problems are not so apparent. And, you’re so immersed in your daily work, it can be difficult to see those things that need to be changed.

If you’re interested in a real-life example of a process review that resulted in a more positive customer experience, we’d be happy to send you our Call Center Review Case Study. Of course, if you’d prefer to speak with us directly, please call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com

Multi-Channel Integrated Marketing

July, 2006

Consider these facts (as sourced from the DMA Statistical Fact Book):

• Consumers receive on average 25 pieces of promotional mail each and every day!
• The USPS estimates the volume of direct mail in a typical year to be 100 million pieces.

The sheer volume of mail is making it harder and harder for mailers to break through the clutter. On top of volume, consumers continue to complain about intrusive marketing (such as outbound telemarketing and unsolicited e-mail marketing), as evidenced by the Do Not Call initiative, the CAN-SPAM Act and other privacy legislation.

So, as direct marketers, how do we continue to generate responses, leads and revenues? We believe that one important tool in our arsenal is the effective use of multi-channel marketing.

It is key to integrate all of your marketing efforts in order to maximize your marketing investment. If done correctly, a multi-channel approach should reap more profits than the sum of each program deployed alone. It’s critical to understand the correct communications ‘path’. For example, should you send a direct mail piece, followed up with a phone call? Should you then e-mail? And, how do you control for the other offers out there in print or on TV?

Finally, it’s imperative to understand channel preferences. Do you know which customer prefers to receive a catalog, which likes e-mail, and which simply wants to be left alone–they’ll contact you when they’re ready to buy?

There are some tactical methods that can maximize your overall marketing investment through the successful implementation of multi-channel marketing. RRW uses an analytical, test-and-learn approach that allows us to identify the communications mix that generates the most profit. We also offer tools to help get a handle on channel preferences.

Let us know if you’d like a copy of our White Paper featuring leading Multi-Channel Marketing practices. Or, if you’d like to chat about your program – just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com.

The Evolving Economy–What’s Important

June, 2006

The tone at the Southern California Direct Marketing Association’s annual Expo last month was all about the changing economy and how marketers are re-thinking their strategies on three key topics: Data, Database and Smarter Analytics. People are focusing on the customers that they have, and mining that rich data to turn loyal customers into even more profit for their companies. They are evaluating their databases, and many are deciding to build them – and going with vendors that are easy to do business with. Finally, good analytics are a must. Let’s look at these three topics in a bit more detail:

• Kicking up retention efforts. Many marketers are turning their concentration to retention. They are mining their internal customer data to figure out how they can build more profitable relationships with each of their customers. This just makes good business sense, and we’ve helped our clients build strategies around what the best “next product path” is for many segments of their base. This has proved to help maximize profitability and build loyalty. If you’d like a case study on a successful cross-sell/up-sell program, click here and we’ll send it your way.
• Database anyone? Many savvy marketers are making the decision to closely examine their database needs. They are determining specifically what they need – and staying away from vendors who push unnecessary technology at them. The approach seems to call for starting with the basics and building on as your needs change. Also, the more nimbler vendors are winning the business. We’ve put a lot of thought into the best ways to choose vendor partners. We’d be happy to send you our White Paper titled: Creating Better Partnerships.
  
• Stellar analytics.Determining what your ultimate customer looks like is important to planning your campaigns. Utilizing a good analyst can be a money-saver and profit-maker for your company. Look for an analyst that understands your business needs and knows how to crunch data six ways to Sunday. Look for one who has sound business experience coupled with statistical know-how. The best way to understand how analytics can boost results may be to review our Acquisition Case Study. It shows how superior analytics positively impacted program results.

RRW Consulting has excellent ideas on how to maximize each of these areas to help you thrive in this changing economy. We’d love to chat about your individual needs – just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com

Create Profit Through Effective Segmentation

May, 2006

As database marketers, we are firm proponents of customer/prospect segmentation. We have helped implement numerous segmentation systems, either from a customized approach (where analytics drive the identification of clusters) and we’ve also helped our clients tailor their data investment to include an off-the-shelf segmentation system (such as Prizm or Personicx).

We believe in the driving goal behind segmentation-that is-a better understanding of your customer groups will improve your marketing efforts, and, ultimately, make you more money. However, our experience has shown that the (often costly) investment in segmentation is not always the wisest. And, the main reason for failure is that there was no strategic or tactical plan to reap the benefits of the new segmentation.

We’ve found that if the focus is on increasing profits when you are developing segmentation strategy, you’re almost guaranteed success.

To illustrate the point, here are two examples of segmentation projects that absolutely had a positive impact on profitability:

• Retention Efforts: We performed segmentation to understand which customers were most profitable, and then focused retention dollars only on those customers who were not only likely to defect, but who were also highly profitable.
• Improved Acquisition: We performed segmentation to identify distinct customer groups (or segments) that buy very differently-with different motives, demographics and financial characteristics. Then, we acted on these findings. Offers and creative messages were tailored to meet the needs of each group. For example, we found one segment that predominantly was made up of families, and our client included a photo of Mom, Dad and the kids in the mail piece. Just this simple change made the piece resonate with the recipient. They related to the message and they responded at higher rates than the control.

RRW Consulting has put together our “Advanced Segmentation Game-Plan” that provides practical ideas and a game-plan to help you create, employ and then act on segmentation results. Let us know if you’d like a copy.

Of course, if you’d prefer to chat with us directly about your segmentation and targeting strategies, just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info. Also, we’ll be speaking on this topic at the Direct Marketing Association of Southern California (DMASC) Marketing Expo (coming up on May 17th). The title of our presentation is: “Squeezing Profit Out of Every Customer Relationship-Using Intelligent Database Management and Analytics”.

Effective Data Strategies

April, 2006

With the changing economy and our ever-evolving marketing roles, it is becoming very important to take a hard look at the data that drives our marketing programs. Data is a key driver of campaign success – it makes the phones ring for our sales people and it ultimately brings in satisfied customers that spend their dollars with us instead of our competitors.

A good way to determine what data is going to be most effective for your current campaigns and enhance your future marketing strategy is to conduct a data assessment. Here’s a snapshot of RRW’s proven methodology; it’s how we help our clients select the best data for their specific needs.

Interview the people who use or benefit from your marketing data and campaigns. Starting with your internal marketing experts, ask them: What data has been valuable for your campaigns? What have your analysts seen as being predictive in your internal models? What data would you like to have that you don’t have today? Then survey other groups, like sales: What is the quality of the calls coming that are coming in? What are the call center metrics in terms of sales closed per calls taken? This exercise will give you a clear understanding of your data needs, and help you create a data “needs” list.

Interview potential data partners. Now that you know what data will most effectively fuel your campaigns, identify those data vendors that may be able to fuel these needs. Identify a large group of vendor types, i.e., large compilers, specialty providers, and niche providers. Interview them closely on their data elements, percentages of coverage, customer service and support, and their willingness to test.

Come up with a final vendor list – and test. After completing your interviews, determine those providers who seem to most closely fit your requirements. Create a data test so that you can test for accuracy and coverage. This will help you select your finalists.

This seems like a lot of work, but it is a sound approach that will ensure that you get the most benefit out of every important marketing dollar spent. We would be happy to discuss how we could help to facilitate a data assessment on your behalf. Or, we can also send you a no-charge copy of the “RRW Data Strategies Check-List“. We’re always available to discuss your data strategies – just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

Goal-Setting and Achievement

March, 2006

We’ve probably all seen direct marketing campaigns that, in spite of being well-executed, failed miserably. For some, the response rate/sales projections were not achievable. For others (and this is especially frustrating) results were actually favorable, however by the time results were measured, the campaign already had the internal perception of being a failure.

How, then, do you ensure success in your campaigns?

We believe that there is a fairly simple set of steps to take to ensure overall success. If you follow these steps, not only will your campaigns ‘work,’ you will also finally receive the recognition you deserve and your star will rise within your organization. We see two key areas that are important in helping you reach this desired outcome:

1. Goal Setting
2. Communications

Let’s start our with the goal setting phase. Ask yourself the following questions: Will the campaign positively impact corporate objectives and goals? In other words, is your campaign in line with overall and specific corporate goals? Will it support or detract from these goals?

Are your projected results achievable? Do you have the right systems in place to fulfill requests/orders? Do you have access to the right data to ensure an optimal campaign?

And finally, can results be measured? Make sure that you have a concrete plan for results measurement. Go one step further-generate a long-term plan to apply learnings from this successful campaign to the next program.

Once you’ve set achievable goals, the next (equally important) phase is the communications process. By the way, this is where RRW sees many marketing experts fail-they’re great at marketing, however, in the frenzy of getting things done, they forget to market themselves! Therefore, make sure that you communicate your high-level campaign tactics and goals with key drivers within your organization. This can include IT, finance, customer service. Get them on board; generate excitement. Use the full team of stake-holders to jointly develop your definition of success. Finally once you have achieved success, make sure that you communicate your success to whomever will listen! This key back-end communications process will help you secure more funds for future projects, as well as help you realize long-term job security.

If this process intrigues you, and you’d like to see more information to help you achieve your campaign goals, RRW has created a “Goal Achievement Checklist“. This is a series of questions and factors to consider when you are in the midst of the campaign planning process which we’d be happy to send you. Of course, we are also available to talk with you about your specific program and explore how some of our direct marketing expertise may assist you. Just give us a call at (503) 206-5255. Or, please visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more information on our experience and capabilities.