Any organization with a database of contacts needs to ensure it maintains relevant, regular and up-to-date communication with its customers or subscribers. Successful marketing, whether to a large or small audience, is all about ensuring you deliver the right message, to the right people at the right time.
Equally important is recording what information is broadcast, then measuring and analyzing the results. Furthermore, to be most effective, any gathered intelligence needs to be updated and available in 'real-time' to the sales team, in order to enable a timely, relevant response to any issue raised.
Effective marketing campaigns should serve to build relationships with your database of contacts, attract customers, retain their interest and initiate a response. To achieve this, your contact management strategy should ensure the following:
– Marketing material is relevant to the recipient
– Contacts in the database are regularly informed
– All records in the database are kept up-to-date in real time
– Results are measured and responded to efficiently
Keeping it relevant:
All too often many companies send out marketing literature that is largely irrelevant to recipients, especially via email. They still practice a false economy of mailing to the masses, in the vain hope that their message will 'hit the spot' with at least some of the people receiving it.
Such high volumes of general mass mailing can lead to the alienation of existing customers. Too many irrelevant emails will be considered as annoying junk and recipients will simply unsubscribe from your mailing list if this is the case – thus removing the opportunity for future communication with them.
A smarter marketing strategy is to target smaller sections of your profiled database with a valid message based on gathered intelligence. For example a widget supplier has a database of customers, some of them will only buy blue widgets, some only require red. Two different mail shots relating to their widget color preference would yield a higher level of interest than one general all encompassing message sent to both.
The more in-depth your profiled contact database is, the more you can target a specific audience. Collected intelligence that includes buying trends will give you the opportunity to focus your mail shot message on how your product or service fulfills a customer's particular requirement. For example if you know some customers typically buy in bulk during the winter, you can tailor your mailer to them based on that criteria, highlighting seasonal offers or large quantity discounts.
Regular contact:
Along with keeping the content relevant, a planned marketing schedule should maintain regular contact with the people in the database. All too often companies leave it until enquiries and orders begin to dwindle before sending out a clutch of desperate 'hello we are still here' messages. This sudden increase in email activity with no specific direction can reflect a certain level of panic within an organization, and will not convey a particularly professional impression.
Market research suggests that customers who receive regular relevant communication from a company will build a 'sub-conscious' relationship with them, and they will be more likely to consider using them when making a purchasing decision.
For large organizations, particularly those in the public sector, maintaining regular contact with a database of members, subscribers or trustees should be a priority. People need to be kept informed of the latest developments within any organization they support. Ideally they should always hear any 'breaking news' from the source, rather than primarily through the media.
Up-to-date records:
Secondary to the people working in an organization, the most valuable asset to any business should be its contact database. A business should maintain its database with up-to-date intelligence if it wants to maximize every sales opportunity. Indeed the better you know your customers the easier it is to sell more to them. Consequentially, any changes in customers' requirements should be noted, otherwise your data can quickly become out dated.
Results and responses:
All to often many companies embark on high volume marketing activities yet fail to follow-up their campaigns with any degree of priority. It may be they simply can not cope with high levels of response or that results are not available in real-time. Either way, by the time any results have been measured, it could be too late to take advantage of any issues raised in the feedback. This can be viewed as a missed opportunity for the company to 'strike while the iron is hot'. Furthermore a failure to promptly follow up any requests could leave respondents with less confidence in the organization.
… and finally:
Now more than ever a company's future profits could extremely depend on the strength of the relationship it builds with its customers. Simply reviewing your contact relationship management during the current economic downturn, could not only help you retain your current customers, but also ensure you reap rewards once customer confidence in the economy is restored.
