Adding Social Media to Your DM Strategy

December, 2007

As you probably know, we are really intrigued by the idea and use of social media as part of your direct marketing strategy. Last month, we attended the BlogWorldExpo. Wow! Talk about ROI – we attended several great sessions each and learned from some of the social media pioneers on how to successfully integrate social media into the DM toolkit. We thought that the savvy direct marketers who read our monthly newsletter might be interested in some of our key takeaways from the conference.

Here are some interesting points to ponder as you determine how to get started:

• Creating a company blog allows you to demonstrate and discuss your core strengths to both your existing customers, as well as to potential prospects. And it allows them to effectively interact with you — thus, allowing you to build stronger customer relationships.
• You can effectively build your customer base through building a community online. At the same time, you are also building the reputation of your business through an effective and thought-provoking blog.
• You can add to your profitability by effectively leveraging your blog and building your online community.
• Utilizing social media to create open and honest dialog with your online community will help to create credibility for your company. It also can establish you as the company with the expertise that serves a particular industry best.
• Social media is transparent — so be aware of this. If your corporate culture isn’t healthy, sooner or later this will come through loud and clear to your online community. On the other hand, if you have a healthy and positive corporate culture, this will also come through and will be of huge benefit. Through your online community, your customers will have a better chance of understanding what you are all about — and this builds customer loyalty.
• Finally, use controversy in your posts – but never use it to evoke anger. Your posts live forever! Don’t write anything that you think that — when calmer minds prevail — you’ll wish you hadn’t.

We hope that these ideas will help you to begin to consider how you can build social media into your marketing strategy. We feel pretty strongly that by embracing this channel today, you’ll be setting yourself up for success in the future. Now that we’ve learned so much about it, we wish we’d begun years ago.

We’ll update you from time to time on how social media is helping us to build our business, in the hopes that we may be able to spark a Big Idea for you and your business. Conversely, if you’d like to talk with us about how you may begin to integrate social media into your company’s strategy, just give us a call at (503) 206-5255. We’d love to help you build your online community and create profitable customer relationships.

Taking the Blame for SPAM

November, 2007

Think back to the holidays last year when your Aunt Rachel came up to you and said, “Now what is it you’re doing these days, dear? Are you still responsible for all of that (insert proper expletive) junk mail in my mailbox?”

Uh-huh. That’s what us Direct Marketing types get all of the time. Well, a new study has just been done by Commtouch (as reported by DM News). And guess what . . . this holiday season you’ll be blamed for Junk e-mail, too. Yep, Commtouch’s study reports that spam has now reached a whopping 95% of all email sent . . . 95%! The article reports that Commtouch’s “report, entitled ‘Email Threats Trend Report for the third quarter of 2007,’ found that as image spam declined, new kinds of attachment spam such as PDF and Excel spam increased. Pharmaceuticals and sexual enhancers were the most popular spam topics, at 30% and 23%, respectively.”

No wonder e-mail marketing still has such a bad name. But, here’s the deal: When you use e-mail effectively, this is one of the best and cost-efficient channels available in our multi-channel toolboxes. E-mail marketing can be used to supplement direct mail or telemarketing campaigns or it can be used on its own. Either way, we’ve seen this channel respond beautifully when deployed correctly.

So, as direct marketers how do we compete against the 95% of messages that are Spam? We think that there are definitely some best practices to follow when considering an e-mail marketing campaign:

• Templates: As you design your creative, the use of templates is key. This creates familiarity and emphasizes your colors and branding. You need to keep your messages fresh, however.
• Personalization: This is a proven best practice. Using personalization can increase response rates 4-6%. People tend to read the message when it looks as though it was created specifically for them.
• Drive traffic to your website: By utilizing your website, the customer can learn more about your offerings. However, ensure that they end up on a landing page that is relevant to the message.
• Unsubscribe button: Follow the tenets of CAN SPAM to allow those who do not wish to hear from you to unsubscribe easily. This is not only important — it’s the law.

For more on how to create successful e-mail marketing campaigns, we’d be happy to share our white paper on the subject.

And, as the holidays approach, start planning your elevator speech for your family. It’ll make it much easier to deal with post-holiday-dinner decongestion.

Targeting Essential to Viral Marketing

October, 2007

As savvy direct marketers, we know that one of our basic principles is effectively targeting to the right audience. Without this, our campaigns will never be a success. Well, we all need to remember those ‘basics’, even when we venture into a new marketing area, such as Viral Marketing.

Recently, this was discussed in an article from WebProNews.com: Viral Marketing Not As Contagious As Thought.

From the article: “When it comes to viral marketing only 15 percent of advertisers reached the goal of prompting consumers to pass along their messages for them in the past year according to a new report from JupiterResearch, “Viral Marketing: Bringing the Message to the Masses.”

Even with the popularity of social media sites like MySpace and YouTube, viral marketing campaigns are consistently proving ineffective in delivering and sustaining a brand over time, mainly because of misdirected tactics.”

Why do so many social campaigns fail? The article cites a common tactic of targeting “influentials” in the hopes of sparking viral behavior. Unfortunately, all too often, the same message is presented to the same group of influentials, regardless of product/brand. Lessoned learned: just as in all other direct marketing channels, different segments respond very differently.

Social marketing experts are starting to figure out that they need to carefully target their market and then make sure that the message is spot-on. It’s only when those things work together that the social marketing campaign has an iota of a chance of going viral.

An example of different behaviors that should be considered when employing a social marketing campaign: “The report found that relatively older online users are more likely than relatively younger users to forward advertising messages to friends or tell friends about ads. With young audiences showing an increased use of social sites, relatively older audiences show an increased use of email, video and should be included in viral marketing campaigns.”

So, it’s key to understand media and channel preferences when planning a social marketing program. We’ve learned that these three things are key to social marketing campaigns:

1. Understand your target market
2. Match your message/offer to your target market
3. Understand media and channel behavior to optimize the campaign

Sound familiar? We direct marketers have the tools, the expertise and the ability to target our audience. We know how to test and how to ‘tweak’ offers/messages until we get the right combination. And, we’re starting to get a handle on channel preferences. Not to pat ourselves on the back, BUT…We direct marketers are ahead of the game. Let’s bring our direct marketing skills to the world of social marketing. Let’s show them how it’s done.

And, to help you in this task, let us know if you’d like the RRW Advanced Segmentation Game-Plan. It contains helpful tips and outlines our approach in customer segmentation and targeting.

Social Marketing Insight

September, 2007

Social Marketing is quickly becoming the leading edge of Direct Marketing today. We thought you’d be interested in this case study about an up-and-coming winemaker in South Africa who has built an extremely effective marketing strategy around Social Marketing.

Stormhoek Winery is forecasting sales of an astounding 350,000 cases of wine this year internationally — up from 10,000 sold locally last year — and this increase is solidly due to the success of owner Graham Knox’s social marketing campaign. This article states that “Knox — a former advertising whiz — knew he wouldn’t sell wine in an already saturated market by putting pictures of the product on billboards or in magazines. ‘Wine is social, people like to talk about wine, so we needed to figure out how to get people talking,’ he says. ‘Since ancient times word of mouth has been the most powerful means of communication.’ “

So what was Knox’s strategy? He enlisted the help of Hugh McLeod (aka the most influential blogger in Britain), and used social marketing to build awareness. Here’s how he did it: “In between designing quirky cartoon-style labels for Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz, McLeod began blogging about Stormhoek, realising how easy it could be to create a buzz in cyberspace, which would then translate into profit. He offered a free bottle of wine with a personalised label to the first 100 people in the UK, France and Ireland who would include Stormhoek in their blogs.” Brilliant! Simultaneously, the winery started sponsoring “geek dinners, providing free wine in the hope that people would go home and write about it. They did. The idea spread like a virus and soon Stormhoek was the drink of choice among the smartest, most tech-savvy crowd in the UK.”

Social Marketing is here to stay. By creating a buzz around our products and services, we can enlist the power of our most loyal customers to more effectively sell them. It’s an idea whose time has come and we predict that those who embrace it quickly have the opportunity to reap some great rewards. Consider Knox’s answer to the question, ‘Is this the future of marketing?’ ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘It’s interactive, it’s inexpensive and it has a more potential reach than anything else.’

RRW has written several posts in our Direct Marketing Blog on this topic. They may spark some good ideas.

Targeting Essential To Viral Marketing
Social Media: Will it Replace E-mail?
Why do you blog?
Making Social Marketing Mobile
Using Web 2.0 to Expand Reach
Using Mobile Marketing for Social Networking
Social Shopping: The Next In Thing

We welcome the opportunity to chat with you about your marketing strategy. Just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website.

Choosing to Lose–Customers, that is.

August, 2007

One of our most commented-on blog posts last month was one that tackles the age-old question of: How important is customer retention? Did Sprint Nextel do the right thing when they ‘fired’ some of their most needy customers?

RRW holds a strong belief that business strategy must be based on customer profitability. We’re forever preaching to our clients that it makes no sense whatsoever to implement programs that acquire unprofitable customers. And, we’re always trying to push them to direct retention efforts to customer segments that are highly profitable.

Yet, we continue to be amazed at how few companies really have a handle on value or customer profitability.

On the other hand, we are huge proponents of top-notch customer service. We believe that if you treat your customers right then they’ll respond in turn with high loyalty. Heck, they may even become evangelists and spew your praises to all of their friends and family, if you treat them the right way.

That’s why it’s been so tough to develop an opinion on the recent Sprint decision to dump some of their high maintenance clients. This article in Washington Post, however, firmed up our opinion. Sprint Nextel Defends Cutting Customers.

We believe Sprint made the right decision, IF you’re only looking at the decision in terms of profitability, or even from a service perspective. Those 1,000 or so customers that Sprint Nextel chose to cut were making 40-50 calls each month to customer service. Clearly this wasn’t the right fit (and they may just be kinda wacky to begin with–who has the time to make 50 calls a month??). Handling those calls was certainly detracting from legitimate customer issues.

However, look at all the bad press that this customer-firing incident has caused Sprint Nextel. When you consider that, overall, their subscriber base is more than 50 million customers, how much impact could servicing 1,000 pesky customers really have?

Then, balance service requirements to handle 1,000 wacky customers against the bad press generated from this incident.

Did they do the right thing, overall? The jury is still out, in my opinion. And, it will always be tough to balance the need to retain customers against the requirement that customers be profitable.

We’ve spent some time thinking about ways to obtain that balance, and have put together an Idea Paper that illustrates one way to focus retention efforts only on profitable customer segments. It also includes some other retention tactics that you may find interesting. Let us know if you’d like these ideas. We’d be happy to share.

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

As in Life, Timing is Everything

July, 2007

“DM News” just published a Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study: Timing key for consumers not buying via DM.

Essentially, the DMA surveyed a panel of consumers and asked them why they did NOT respond to a direct marketing offer. The primary reason was that it wasn’t the right time to make that particular puchase.

From the article: “According to the DMA’s “DM Consumer Response Study,” a national survey of multichannel direct marketing sent to 1,000 U.S. consumers that was conducted between October 2006 and January 2007, 24.4 percent of respondents cited “not the right time” as the main reason for not buying during the two-day diary period of the study.”

Now, if we direct marketers only had that crystal ball, we’d know EXACTLY when to present an offer. Response rates would go through the roof. Our customers and prospects would be so pleased that we were serving them so well. We’d save money on not marketing to people not in the market. Life would be good.

Sadly, it’s not that easy. However, with a clever look at available data, there are some cases when you can hit that need head-on; when you can anticipate exactly when your prospect will be needing your product and hit them with an offer right at that moment. Here is a real-life example of a campaign done right. Needless to say, results from this “just-in-time” campaign were spectacular.

Use credit data to trigger shoppers. For a mortgage client, we used a credit bureau to monitor their prospect universe of homeowners. Anytime one of those prospects applied for a mortgage loan through one of their competitors, our client would send them a compelling offer, via first class mail. Since the mortgage process can be lengthy, in many instances, our client was able to take the sale away from its competitor. This marketing program served the consumer as well; they now had a few competitive loan offers to review.

So, in a nutshell, while we Direct Marketers don’t always have that crystal ball to understand exactly when our prospects and customers need to buy from us, we do have lots of data and tools at our disposal to implement what RRW terms “Just-In-Time Marketing.” We’ve written a white paper with more ideas and tactics to make this happen. We’d be happy to share.

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

Mobile Marketing

June, 2007

Remember when people were saying that the Internet would never catch on? That people would never buy things over the Web and that no-one could ever make money… Those nay-sayers couldn’t have been more wrong.

RRW believes that the next big trend (and it’s already upon us) will be widespread adoption of Mobile Marketing. We attended the Sixth Annual Global Mobility Round-table held this past week where wireless industry experts talked about just how far Mobile Marketing has come.

Citing examples from Japan’s success, Bruce Hawver from Motorola talked about how his company is starting to change the marketplace in the US for data services delivered through a wireless phone. The three markets (Consumer, Prosumer and Enterprise) are starting to move from early adoption into the growth stage.

For Consumers, there is an upswing in the use of mobile entertainment. This is no longer just associated with younger users. In fact, many consumers are checking sports scores, following their favorite reality TV show heroes and downloading and listening to music with their wireless phones.

For Prosumers, there is a spike in the use of productivity services, such as simple calendaring and day-planning, to managing their stock portfolios and retirement accounts.

For Enterprise, there is high demand for going beyond email and calendaring uses to more enterprise-wide applications like access to intranets, internal databases and management dashboards.

This is occurring because data coverage is so much better than it used to be with mobile phones and because wireless equipment providers are supplying devices that are small and feature-rich, and they have improved user interface and initial setup requirements.

However, there are some areas that still need to be improved. Wireless companies need to continue to help consumers to understand pricing schemes. Many consumers use only a tenth of their wireless capabilities because they believe (sometimes mistakenly) that the real cost for all services is too high. Also, they need to continue to work on making the handsets less technical and more user-friendly. Finally, they need to work on battery performance – particularly when using the phone for data services.

All said, Mobile Marketing will continue to grow to become a leading marketing channel. Those who jump on the bandwagon today and embrace this technology will have the ability to become leaders in their environments. Currently, there are 2.6 billion mobile customers and this number is currently growing at 20% per year. World handset sales are currently at 1 billion and are growing by 22% per year. Mobile services will surpass broadband services worldwide by 2008 (that’s next year folks!).

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published a nifty set of guidelines that pertain to Mobile Advertising. Just let us know if you’d like us to send you a copy of these guidelines. Of course, if you’d prefer to chat with us directly about your multi-channel marketing strategy, just call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

RRW Every Day!

May, 2007

This months’ newsletter topic will be short and, hopefully, sweet!

RRW is pleased to announce our new Direct Marketing Blog.

We decided it was time to practice what we preach–namely the concept of providing value, without any clear return on the investment. We’ve spoken on the topic of Web 2.0 and Direct Marketing 2.0 many times in this newsletter.

We’re two weeks strong in our daily posts. So far, blog topics have included: Direct Mail and the Environment, Raising Postal Costs, Customer Data Integration and E-mail Marketing (to name just a few).

We’re having fun writing about things that interest us and we believe that you’ll enjoy visiting our blog. And, if you have any input you’d like to comment on, please do so. We welcome feedback! Plus, for any service providers to the database marketing industry, if you have a new product or great case study, share it with us–we may be so interested, we’ll include it in an upcoming blog, or link over to your site.

Enjoy our Direct Marketing Blog!

To contact RRW, please call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

Proving the Value of Analytics

April, 2007

How important would it be to you to have the ability to test-drive your marketing campaign prior to investing cash, resources and time implementing it? Wouldn’t you love to have a crystal ball that would predict how a campaign would perform? Well, with analytics, you can, essentially, do just that.

Analysis can predict response and sale rates. Research can project the impact of your campaign, hence predicting success (or failure). It can help you hone in on your target market and hit the right segments with the right message, every time.

Seems like employing an analytical strategy would be a no-brainer, right? Unfortunately, we’ve seen organizations that have a hard time embracing statistical and analysis tools to help guide marketing strategy. Maybe they feel that their market is changing too quickly to take the time to learn from past behavior. Or, resources are tight and spending $5-20,000+ on an analytical project just doesn’t seem to make sense.

But, what if you could prove that the investment would more than pay itself off? We’ve found that if we can identify savings and clearly articulate benefits and deliverables from analysis, then senior management is much more apt to embrace and employ an analytical strategy.

Justifying analytical expenses is certainly not rocket science and, is in fact, fairly straightforward. RRW has put together a workbook that identifies areas that will help you make the case for including analytics in your marketing tool-kit. We’ve used it successfully with clients from numerous industries.

If you believe that your firm could benefit from more/improved analytical services and would like to see our ideas on how to build and present a solid case proving the ROI of your efforts, we’d be happy to send you the RRW Analytics Workbook.

Of course, if you’d prefer to speak with us directly, or would like to know more about RRW’s capabilities, please call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.

Knock-Your-Socks-Off Customer Service

March, 2007

People buy from people they like and trust. They DON’T buy from someone who is rude, someone who doesn’t listen, or someone who seems to know NOTHING about the product or service he or she is representing. We may buy one time from a rep with a bad attitude, but we’ll never return. What a shame.

As a direct marketer, our focus is typically on the business of acquiring new customers–supplying leads to a sales-force, making those phones ring or causing response rates to rise. Of course, if our leads never result in new sales – even though we marketers may have done our best to bring in the business – then our overall goal of increasing profits is not going to be realized. Or, even worse, if the focus is on maximizing customer value through up-sell and loyalty revenues, then an inferior customer experience will KILL all of your well-intentioned and executed retention campaigns.

Hence today’s focus on creating Knock-Your-Socks-Off customer service.

The first step is to take a look at the processes in place in your organization. Review each and every customer touch-point (from web to call-center to outside sales). This review will point out areas where 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 loyalty within your customer base – two very important keys to any company’s success.

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. Oftentimes, these changes can be implemented very quickly – and for little cost to the bottom line.

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.

Let us know if you’re interested in a real-life example of the sort of process review that resulted in a more positive customer experience. We’ll e-mail you the RRW Consulting Case Study titled: Call Center Review. Of course, if you’d prefer to speak with us directly, or would like to know more about RRW’s capabilities, please call us at (503) 206-5255, or visit our website: www.rrwconsulting.com for more info.