A recent article in Marketing Week touches on an important aspect of effective customer management; relevancy. The initial excitement with which marketers and businesses embraced email as a new channel for contact, gave way to disillusionment from both the consumer and the service provider. On the one hand, the customer faced an onslaught of unsolicited marketing materials. On the other hand, despite the volume of broadcasts, businesses were struggling to see any trickle-through to their business.
Over the past few years, as opt-ins and tailored mailing lists became the norm, the volume of “solicited spam” (unwanted emails, but from businesses where a customer currently has or has historically had a relationship, rather than boundless offers for Viagra) the industry has come to the realisation that the opportunity for direct contact needs to be tailored. The initial approach was to be frugal with broadcasts, but general with content. And there is some success with this approach.
However, true email-based customer service comes from timely, relevant and pre-emptive contact. By examining customer data, a consultant can help your business translate patterns that exist in your data, and ensure that email broadcasts are:
• targeted to portions of your base (rather than the whole base)
• contain relevant offers and information (know what your customer wants before they do)
• due to their specificity, can be fully quantifiable – true end-to-end ROI
• If used correctly, can assist in arresting churn
By knowing that that less really can be more, a move towards a data-driven customer service approach can help a business generate revenue for a relatively small level of investment.
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