How do you solve a problem like….CRM?
If I’m totally honest, I’m hardly being a visionary when I say that it’s strategically vital for all organisations to build customer loyalty and increase the ‘share of budget’ available? Research regularly tells us that the most significant increases in profitability are derived by increases in customer retention of as little as five per cent. Compare this to the cost of acquiring new customers – up to 10 times more than retaining an existing one!!. To my mind, it’s no surprise that Companies are focussing on customer retention strategies – often to the budgetary detriment of any new business acquisition programme. Getting the balance right is fundamental – May our effectiveness in retaining business be matched by a cost-efficient acquisition strategy!
My experience is that many companies felt they had ticked this particular box by implementing CRM ( customer relationship management) programmes. The investment made was considerable, the returns promised huge, but in practice the ROI metrics have not been delivered – and these metrics were largely predicated against customer retention and the increased revenue therein! So why is this? An effective CRM strategy comprises two elements –the first, deployment of an effective CRM technology. The second ( and IMHO the one on which organisations consistently fall down) is the strategic use of the CRM data to yield personalised, relevant, timely communications – via the optimal channel (s) – both on & offline. So many organisations concern themselves with new data when the real concern is not how much data they currently own or are able to obtain, but how to use the data effectively once they have it!
The net impact of this is a ‘double whammy’ – not only are organisations not making the returns they planned but they also risk losing long term customers through ignorance and an inability to address them with relevant communications.
The answer to this lies, not in a new technology , but in approaching the management of customer data differently and as the basis for the most basic of all CRM principles – “treating different customers differently”.
By using data to define Customer ( and prospect ) segments, by creating distinct and discrete content channels and by delivering this content across all media, we can accelerate the ROI by allowing businesses to drive profit through managing customer data to deliver intelligent marketing insight.
The Company Blog & Looking After Rabbits
To blog or not to blog?
Many months ago when planning the latest iteration of the Purestone website the inevitable subject of the company Blog arose. A furious debate ensued…
Pro Bloggers:
“We HAVE to have one. We’re a digital marketing agency for christ’s sake. We need to suck our own sweets.”
“It will help our SEO.”
“It gives the company a face, personality and tone of voice well beyond what the website can.”
“It empowers people within the business and gives them an open avenue in which they can communicate and express themselves.”
“I run my own blog and contribute to others so it’s second nature for me.”
Anti Bloggers:
“If it’s not updated on a regular basis it will do far more damage than good.”
“Why should we conform? We’re not an industry sheep in how we go about our business so why start now. Unless there’s a business case and justification for it then surely it’s just a pain in the backside?”
“I’m worried about someone saying the wrong thing and making us look bad or like we haven’t got a scooby.”
“Just who’s going to administer it? Add to it? I’m not, I can tell you that for free.”
By virtue of the fact you’re reading this then clearly we opted to have a company blog.
Above are just some of the soundbites from what was a colourful conversation. Of course, this situation, is by no means unique and we’ve sat in many, many client meetings watching and chairing this exact debate. There’s no simple answer. It needs discussion and it needs an eyes open approach. The potential risks and dangers of running a blog are significant… which nicely leads me onto the main point of posting this entry…
If you’re going to set up a commercially focussed blog then it needs regular content and a marketing strategy of its own to generate interest and traffic. Now, the more observant of you and those who regularly visit Purestone will be thinking ”you need to look at your own blog mate”. You’d be right. We have fallen at both these hurdles.
Now I could say that we did this on purpose as part of an experiment to gauge the damage an unkempt blog can have on a company. No one would really believe me though. The truth of the matter is that despite starting with the best intentions it’s fallen away and the distance between posts has grown. It reminds me of when I was 8 and I wanted a rabbit. “James, you will look after it and feed it every day won’t you? I don’t want to have to be looking after it when you lose interest’… “Yeah, of course, I’ll make it the happiest rabbit ever.” After 6 weeks ‘Pluto’ (my new rabbit) was not happy. His feeding wasn’t probably as clockwork as he’d have liked and his claws (?) were getting a bit on the long side.
When we discussed the blog there were many people in the room nodding enthusiastically and commiting themselves to getting a new rabbit/blog. The difficulty is that we live and breathe digital, day in, day out and we’re so busy doing this for clients that we inevitably fall down the priorities list. Not ideal by any stretch but a reality that most companies are faced with.
So if you’re considering a blog please read and heed the above.
Pluto died at 8 years old, he was a happy and content rabbit after my Mum intervened and looked after him.
James Smee.
Bad Rabbit Keeper of the Year – 1985 – 1993
Pluto the rabbit
Is Facebook the Biggest Waste of Time?
It would appear that the average user spends 4 hours and 39 minutes a month (based on June 2009’s statistics) on Facebook, which is the highest of any of the top ten online brands.
This is all according to the most recent Nielsen report and has been digested and commented on by those reliable chaps at Mashable.
Click here for the full article
New Business Generation – Has Digital & E-marketing had its day?
With marketing budgets getting tighter ( is that even possible?), unsurprisingly Marketeers must validate and account for every £ or $ they spend. The need to create, qualify and groom new business leads for Sales is the ‘de-facto’ measure for the performance of every marketeer. The Finance Directors challenge of ‘Prove your value to me’ is heard in Boardrooms throughout the land. So as Marketing Management, how do we decide to allocate our budget across the myriad of choices? Clearly the logical place to start is by using those media choices that deliver the most tangible, qualified results. Now no-one ever claimed that solus TV can create sales – more reasonably it can launch and support sales activity, even moving market share points through concerted effort. What TV can never achieve is a 2 way, on-going communication with a Customer, much less a prospect. Anyone remember Radion Automatic?? Launched in a blaze of TV and POS glory, the brand quickly died once TV and retail support was reduced to maintenance levels. When it comes to e-marketing, it’s hard to benchmark your own campaigns against industry norms. It’s even harder to then turn that into real metrics for evaluation of absolute value.
Sometimes the product, offering, target market or even price isn’t right. What is important is that the Client (through Purestone) can see this, react to it, craft different messages & strategies and respond to the results immediately. What other media choice allows you to change and tweak your creative, or copy, or call to action as the campaign goes out? I genuinely believe that e-marketing can make a difference to the business generation capabilities of any organisation. Those that treat e-marketing as a truly strategic media choice through which they make highly personalised, 1 to 1 campaigns can expect to achieve great results. Those that treat e-marketing as ‘blast, forget and hope something sticks’ – well, they still form an unenlightened majority of marketers. Treat your prospects as people, personalise your messaging to distinct groups and, surprise surprise, your results will rapidly improve.
Facebook losing money ?!
Today to my astonishment I read that facebook, commonly recognised as the biggest and most successful social media website in the world is currently running at a loss and has not yet generated a profit in any financial year since launch. What I think makes this even more astounding are some of the facebook statistics which they actively promote via their own website -
- More than 200 million active users worldwide
- More than 100 million users log on to facebook at least once each day
- More than two-thirds of facebook users are outside of education
- The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
With this kind of consumer audience and what seems to be a fairly cost effective and simple advertising model, what is going wrong? Is too much time being spent on developing clever functionality and not enough focus being put into generating revenues?
If we are to believe what is reported, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg isn’t interested in making money, it’s more about connecting people (which I think is easy to say when you reported to be worth over $1.5 billion!!) but with his personal fortune depleting at a rapid rate, will his focus change?
In a recent interview the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones speaks to facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg about facebook revenues, piracy and what the future holds.
Facebook losing money interview
However much Sheryl claims that it’s all part of their global plan, in my opinion facebook needs to get its business model in order before they miss the boat, in case they haven’t heard, Twitter has arrived!
Twitter: here today gone tomorrow?
From Barack Obama to Paris Hilton everyone is at it, Twitter has taken the digital world by storm, the human urge to know what other people are doing is fuelling the growth of the website (we are a nosy bunch!) but does it have a long term future?
A recent Nielson report called ‘Twitters or Quitters’ identifies that while the uptake in new Twitter accounts is monumental the drop out rate of users beyond the first month of usage is around 60%, on this basis the future may well look bleak unless Twitter are able to reduce this number considerably, getting members = no problem, keeping them = problem!
So why is it that so many people join the Twitter bandwagon and then decide it isn’t for them after just 30 days? Well we’ve got our thinking hats on in the office and come up with a few thoughts as to why this might be:
Facebook or Twitter – I think a great deal of web users are weighing up whether to dedicate their ‘web time’ to either facebook or twitter, which each vying for a large proportion of our time we feel that the majority of standard web users are making a choice of one or the other, and Facebook with it’s extensive functionality seems to be winning the way, albeit they are very different websites with different pro’s and con’s, but that’s another post!
Too much work – To begin with, twitter is great, you search and follow people with similar interests/views and can pleasure in reading their thoughts and what they are up to (the nosey side of us again!) However, very quickly as the numbers of followers and following increase, managing your twitter account can become a very time consuming and arduous task, there are a number of tools on the interner designed to help you manage your twitter account, Tweetdeck is one of them, a great app to help you organise your tweets, replies and direct messages, there are litterally hundreds more a selection of which can be found here.
Boredom – Ultimately everything has its shelf life and whilst knowing the ins and outs of everyones business is attractive to a lot of people it soon wears thin. Unless people have an underlying reason to use twitter i.e. personal gain, brand building/management for businesses I believe that their interest in twitter will quickly dwindle, not coming close to the long term attractiveness of sites such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace.
Social Media – Tool or Weapon?
So the media burbles on about Social media and it made me think – is this a tool by which we can meet our customers or is it just a weapon they can use to publicly humiliate us?