Jill Kaufman

on February 5, 2009

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Account Services

Happy Customer Appreciation Day!

We may not be in a real depression (yet), but a lot of marketers could use some Zoloft about now. Customer attrition is throwing a wrench in our plans for the quarter, if not the year.

My usual take on things is to see the glass as half full -- but it seems pretty empty. New leads and new customers are certainly harder to come by and churn is depleting the base. It’s become even more important to focus on current customers and stem the losses.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Segment your list and get closer to your most valuable customers. Take a look at what they’ve been up to and make them a sweet offer.

2. Survey customers and find out what you should stop doing. What irritates them about your customer service? What inconveniences them that you can fix?

3. Take a holistic view of your customer marketing program. What should trigger a communication from you? And what’s the call to action?

4. Start a dialog. Do you need a company blog or a presence on Twitter? It couldn’t hurt.

5. Stop marketing to the customers who cost more than they’re worth. You don’t need to "defriend" them.  Just ignore them. This money-saving idea will allow you to move budget to the customers who deserve your attention.

Customers, as we like to say, are the reason you’re in business. If you think you’re depressed, remember they could use a little TLC, too.

 

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Jill Kaufman

on January 8, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Account Services

Question everything.

There was a popular bumper sticker a long while back that said "Question Authority." Of course, the correct response to that is, "Who says?"

Around here, we question everything. It can get a little annoying. But in the long run it's the best thing for our clients. Here are some of the questions I've heard in the last week:

• What would it take to get that creative out to the client for approval sooner?
• Is that the best headline we could come up with?
• Should the background be blue or white?
• Are we targeting families with children at home?
• What's the most relevant benefit of the product for this target group?
• If we move some budget from mail to online, what would the results be?
• If we put more budget into mail, what would the net be?

I love questions. It shows that people are thinking. Even if the answers are only opinions, you learn something. And, as direct marketers, we're in the unique position of getting some factual, real-world, quantitative answers to the perennial question "What do consumers really want?"

Here's to more smart questions (and answers) in 2008!
 

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Jill Kaufman

on November 8, 2007

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Account Services

Who do you look like on Facebook?

Advertising Age recently asked its readers whether people tell the truth about themselves on Facebook.

Does it really matter?

I guess it would be helpful for marketers to know who they're talking to — warts and all. We may have wart remover in our product line-up, after all. (But maybe Facebook isn't the place to be marketing wart remover.)

If Facebook or other social networking sites are about aspirations — looking like who you want to be, rather than who you really are — direct marketers LOVE tapping into those emotions.

In my opinion as a marketer, sometimes you take people at face value and sometimes you assume your target audience has flaws, fears, hidden agendas and unspoken desires. Just like the rest of us.
 

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Jill Kaufman

on October 10, 2007

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Account Services

Maintaining tribal knowledge

Just came out of a client meeting where the CMO asked, "How do you keep track of all the learnings?  You pride yourself on learning something from a test with one client and applying that knowledge to the next.  I have a guy over here who knows something the woman over there needs to know but doesn't.  How do you guys make that happen?"

I wish I could say we were perfect.  We'd love to have Hacker University, where new employees go for a week or a month and come out with a B.A. in What We Know.

We do have some systems, of course.  A rather long list of people in the company gets raw response analysis reports for every client as soon as they're completed.  Our senior management team is fanatical about being involved up to their elbows in client work.  We have a great record of low turnover, so many people at all levels have been here a good long time and will at least know that we tested something before - if they can't call up the results at their fingertips - so they can at least start digging up answers.

We also have a tradition of open forums at 8 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, when our Strategy Council meets.  This is a group of senior executives who make themselves available to any Account Manager who wants to pick their brains on behalf of a client.  I highly recommend making this a practice at your company.

And our Account Managers formally present client results to their peers at a weekly meeting.  The team gets up to speed on test results for each client at least on an annual basis - and for important information that has broad application, more often.

One of the many things I appreciate about Hacker culture is that we do share information with each other quite liberally.  Some people in my past work life felt that knowledge was power and they certainly didn't want to disseminate any of their personal power.  We have a much better spirit of "we're all in this together" here - and that makes it easier to share what we know.
 

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