Why Integrating Your Data Systems is Key to Positive Customer Experiences

Working within the customer contact industry does make me particularly critical of the experiences and communications I receive in my everyday life and whilst I try to leave my professional hat in the office, I frequently find myself critiquing the service and communications I receive from companies.

Recently I used the Odeon website to book my tickets for the latest film in the Bond franchise, Skyfall. As a regular cinema-goer I have a profile on their website which lists Chelmsford as my local cinema; using this profile I booked my tickets, before anybody has the chance of ruining Skyfall for me.

The Odeon online booking system is straightforward and easy to use and as you would expect, I received a confirmation email from them after completing my purchase. However, two days later I received a marketing email from Odeon saying “we can see you haven’t booked tickets for Skyfall yet at your local cinema. It’s not too late as there are still tickets available ... just click here.” 

Receiving this email brought two thoughts to mind. My initial reaction was whether my ticket booking has been successfully completed. The second thought was why their two systems (booking and marketing) aren’t integrated, preventing me from receiving emails that are misleading and misinformed. Fortunately my booking was successful so I will be able to see Skyfall unimpeded. I did however email Odeon to question the marketing message and as of yet, have not received a response.

There are important lessons to be learnt from this experience for customer contact and service professionals.

1. The data that you collect should be used to shape your customer communications; ensuring that if you are going to use marketing emails, that the messaging is accurate and relevant to the recipient.
2.  If you are going to request information from your customers it is important that you use it effectively to deliver personalised marketing and communications.
3. There is significant value in linking up your data systems, not only does this allow you to avoid such mistakes, but creates additional opportunities to cross and up-sell.
4. Companies need to be prepared for responses from customers, particularly if they get it wrong, answering their queries quickly and efficiently can minimise the negative impact.
5.  Ignoring the value of integrating data systems and communications can be detrimental to brand image.

Whilst this may only be a relatively minor mistake in delivering an integrated marketing experience to customers, it does highlight to companies the confusion and negative impact a mistimed or misinformed communication can have. It will not however limit my enjoyment of the film, even if the booking experience was compromised.

Getting the Most from Loyalty Scheme Data

As the economic climate drives customers to hunt better and better deals, loyalty schemes have become an increasingly popular way to gain discounts and special offers. But while loyalty card schemes offer a wealth of data about customers, using this data to its greatest potential remains a challenge for many companies, as does building true loyalty and brand commitment.

 These challenges have been highlighted in recent research pieces. A Forrester report found that 40% of chief marketing officers are disappointed with the “erratic” performance of their brand loyalty schemes. Similarly, a report conducted by The Logic Group and Ipsos MORI argued that while over two thirds (68%) of consumers are members of supermarket loyalty schemes, less than half (47%) actually feel loyal to their supermarket.

Successful Loyalty Schemes

That is not to say that loyalty schemes are wholly unsuccessful, many companies aspire to replicate the two most dominant schemes today; Tesco’s Clubcard and the Nectar points system. These stand out not only because of their size and reach but because they have permanently influenced the way customers behave and built long standing brand/customer relationships. Achieving a scheme as popular as either of these is unrealistic for most businesses, but through intelligent use of data, it is possible to run a loyalty scheme that drives significant revenue and profits.

What should a loyalty scheme do?

Ultimately a loyalty scheme must offer strong financial rewards and a clear value exchange for the customer. It must also differentiate itself from the myriad schemes out there and ideally provide customers with targeted offers relevant to their behaviour and interests. Naturally the ways you manage your data are key to achieving this.

Research from LinkShare states that 41% of customers have purchased something online that they would never have bought directly because of a voucher or special offer, showing the value of communicating the right deal, at the right time. Such results can be accomplished through effective data management, which can also help to improve customer retention, increase customer engagement and brand commitment through relevant communication. (Read more about The Value of Data Management).

What it shouldn’t do?

Loyalty schemes are not an excuse to bombard customers with offers and are not an extension of your mailing database. Customers join schemes because they want to be rewarded for their purchases and repeat custom, not because they are interested in every sale or offer you are running. As such, a different approach to communication is required, motivating loyal customers to purchase more regularly by clearly stating the rewards they can expect as they collects points, interspersed with offers directly relevant to their data profile.

 

Intelligently using loyalty data

A loyalty scheme has the potential to gain detailed information about your customers and can help you to engage, build trust and loyalty. This is only possible however through effective data management and responsible, intelligent use of data.

In order to get the best out of your loyalty scheme it is important to make sure your data is kept up-to-date and relevant, as this can help gain your company valuable customer insight. Insight that is crucial for understanding which customers to target, when to target them, what rewards are relevant, as well as their behaviour patterns and interests. Do this effectively and you will see an increase of customer loyalty through building a successful loyalty scheme.

If you are interested in the role data has to play in understanding your customers, why not take a look at our Why Data Management is Vital to Customer Insight blog?

How Data Management Can Bring Value to Your Business

How are you approaching your data management and do you think you are extracting the greatest value from the information at your disposal? In this blog we will explore just how effective data management can be in bringing value to a business.

The value of data management is largely subjective and dependent upon the sector in which a company operates. For instance the value of data management for Wiltshire Farm Foods, a food retail client is wholly different from the way adidas or a local council perceives the value they gain from our data management services.

On this blog we have widely discussed what data management means to different companies and have argued that larger multinational organisations tend to have different but no less complex data management issues than smaller companies. We have also revealed the significance of data accuracy in Why Data Cleansing is So Important, highlighted the role that data management has in understanding your customer base in Why Data Management is Vital to Customer Insight and shown how this helps to improve customer relations in How Customer Insight Can Improve Customer Relationships.

In all of these pieces it has been demonstrated that through managing and cleaning data it is possible to improve the ways in which a company understands their customers, build better relationships and save costs through improving marketing efficiency (i.e. through the reduction in duplicate marketing mailings and improved customer service). The question is however, what value could data management bring to your business?

Approaching Data Management

The unfortunate truth is that many businesses see data management as a chore and purely a number crunching exercise best left to those with no imagination. It is often the case companies that see data management in this way do not appreciate its importance and that fail to recognise that a lack of accurate and readily accessible data can be disastrous for a company.

At EWA we see things a little differently and believe that data, and specifically accurate, complete and up to date high quality data is one of the most valuable assets at any company’s disposal. Unless data is fit for purpose, consistent and available the business cannot function, in the same way that operations would cease without money, people, buildings or equipment.

To reach the point where your data is this valuable the goal should be to capture data in digital form once only, as close as possible to the time and place of the observations, decisions and results that it is required to reflect. Understandably, determining the costs associated with managing this information or calculating the ROI can be challenging. When data has the potential to monitor the efficiency and effectiveness the company and shape business strategy however, the question should be whether your business can afford to ignore effective data management in the future?

Extracting Potential from Data Management

The insight which effective data management provides can help make strong and healthy strategic decisions for a company by analyzing a company’s historic and future performance, its customers’ present and future needs, the performance of their competitors and information relating to the external environment. The key is having the imagination to analyse and present data in a consistent, accurate, timely and easily understood way, so that is can be used to the greatest effect at the most relevant time.

Up to date and timely reporting ensures that these decisions can be made at the correct time, before the opportunity has been missed. For example, in a retail situation a manager reordering stock needs to have accurate and up to date information on the current stock levels so that the costs incurred with both under or over stocking are avoided. Similarly, a district council sending out letters must have accurate information to avoid wrong addresses, missed bills and correspondence. In both instances, costs can be saved in the long run through having timely insight and accurate data.

So What Can You Do?

We understand that in many organisations, both large and small, there are some major, yet unrecognised or misunderstood data problems; problems such as duplicated and inconsistent data which lead to misunderstanding and misinterpretation.

To cope with and resolve these problems you can reach out for a better data management strategy over the next 12 months. You can also elevate the importance of data management so that it becomes a vital asset to your business, helping you to improve your operations and stay ahead of the competition. By reading this blog you are half way there to recognising the importance and value of effective data management. Why not take the next step to bringing your data back to life and get in touch today?

Why Data Cleansing is So Important

Keeping databases cleansed so that they contain the most accurate and up to date records has always been important. Whilst it may be a labour intensive process the rewards make it wholly worthwhile, adding significant value to your marketing efforts and the understanding of your customers, or potential customers.

Data cleansing is about more than good housekeeping, removing duplicate or obsolete data and correcting inaccurate information. In today’s climate of data protection and financial pressure on marketing budgets the necessity for cleansed and accurate information is greater than ever. Here are just some of the important reasons to ensure your data is sufficiently cleansed.

Benefits of Data Cleansing:
• There are myriad financial benefits to cleansing your databases, not only will such activities stop you wasting money on storing old or obsolete data, but the improved accuracy can result in greater return on investment for your marketing activities.
• This greater accuracy in terms assists in your target profiling, meaning that your marketing campaigns will be more focussed, relevant and subsequently more likely to be successful. Understandably, using obsolete data for your targeting activities will only lead to misdirected campaigns.
• Storing old information can actually harm your brand image and customer perception. For instance, if you are consistently sending marketing literature to old addresses, customers that may have died or opted out of receiving promotional material, your efforts are actually helping to create a wider negative image, rather than return on investment.
• In modern business the Data Protection Act should always be a consideration, particularly in regards to the storage of personal information, where failure to cleanse can actually result in non-compliance. Subsequently, cleansing activities are necessary to eliminate any chances of breaching the Data Protection Act and hence any financial penalties.
• Finally, improving the quality of you data results in improved customer insight and adds considerable value to your marketing efforts by improving ROI.

These are just some of the reasons to undertake data cleansing, however, as a business it should be remembered that the process is ongoing, databases require practically constant management and cleansing to ensure they contain, up to date, accurate and valuable information.

How Customer Insight Can Improve Customer Relationships

It has been established in previous blogs just how instrumental customer insight is to today’s marketers in the creation of marketing campaigns. However, it should be noted that it is only through effective and thorough database management that it is possible to take advantage of the greater customer insight and make this knowledge work for greater profits.

Customer insight is only one side of the coin, after all having and using the knowledge of customer behaviour are entirely different processes. Essentially it is the ability to make sense of the data that results from customer insight projects that leads to more effective business relationships.

One way in which this is possible is by compiling data that around customers’ order lag. The frequency of orders is a vital piece of information in understanding the patterns in which customers place orders. By studying these patterns it is possible to identify which customers are lagging in their orders and which are simply maintaining their regular ordering behaviour, subsequently indentifying the customers that could need contacting to encourage future purchasing.

It is through developing a Critical Lag formula, based upon customer ordering behaviour that it is possible to interact and communicate with customers at the right time. When this is combined with effective customer segmentation prospects can be readily identified and targeted to make the most of existing business relationships. The results of effective communication based upon a solid understanding of a customer base are less customer churn, and greater revenue generated from each customer.

Fundamentally customer insight is a highly valuable business tool. It is however only through efficient and effective database management that it is possible to make sense of the data extrapolated through customer insight activities and use this information to formulate customer relationship and retention strategies.

The Value of Customer Insight to Marketers

Customer insight is rapidly becoming a vital component in any business strategy; after all, who can afford not to know who their customers are, how they behave and how their loyalty can be assured? Put simply customer insight employs the collection, analysis and use of data, allowing businesses to create customer acquisition, development and retention strategies.
Customer insight can play a massively important role in planning and implementing marketing campaigns, helping marketers to extract the greatest revenue from limited marketing budgets. It does this by creating best match profiles for potential, loyal and the most profitable customers.
Fundamentally greater customer insights allows for more effective targeting. It has been a long known fact within marketing that a campaign can stand or fall on its ability to target the right type of people. A misguided campaign can be a costly mistake; conversely a well targeted campaign can court potential customers, produce profitable relationships and develop future prospects.
Understanding where targets should be focussed is only possible through in-depth analysis of data. Data is one of the most powerful tools at the marketer’s disposal and an integral element within modern customer insight services. In most cases, this data is easily accessible and gives the opportunity to identify profitable prospects, rather than pursuing customers that will provide little if any return on investment.
Existing customer data creates massive up and cross-selling opportunities. The profiles created using segmentation and modelling help to identify precisely which customers should be targeted through a greater understanding of their purchasing behaviour, the types of products they are likely to buy and an idea of their likely spend.
Understanding the behaviour of customers means marketers have the knowledge to implement campaigns that target these profiles in a very specific way, taking into account when and how they spend their money in order to extract the greatest revenue. It is this potential that attracts so many marketers to customer insight services; understandably, having the knowledge of how your customers spend their money is an extremely valuable asset in business.

Exhibitions and making your data work for you

The aim of this blog is to try to give some advice and help people avoid one of the biggest errors made while taking part in events or exhibitions. Based on my previous experiences, I hope to give you some pointers which will enable you to make the most of any future events.

Exhibitors spend a huge amount of money on stands for exhibitions to make sure they look state of the art; they make sure they have their best sales personnel present to establish and build new customer relationships, and finally they make sure they gather as much data as possible on prospects. However, all of this time and money can be wasted if you do not act on a few key points!

The key objective for exhibitors when venturing in to any event should be to gain a deeper customer insight, generate leads that can be turned into monetary value, and increase their company’s profit.

Exhibitors normally gauge how successful a show has been by the amount of data and leads they collect. All this is extremely valuable, but unless this data is used quickly and accurately, it could be a waste of time collecting it in the first place.

Making better use of the data you worked so keenly to collect can be the hardest part about taking part in a show. It’s sometimes difficult to find the time or resources within your company to do simple things such as data capture the information from an exhibition into your sales and marketing database when you get back to the office. However, what people often do not realise is within that data can be the key to your future success.

Information that can be extracted from data and information captured can offer customer insight that will open your client base in so many ways. Handled by the right people, it can be of significant benefit to your company, placing you leagues ahead of any competitors.

By enhancing this data you can build relevant propositions, it can affect future decision making, you can cross sell, track the behaviour of your clients and know when they are more likely to place orders with you.

What you do at the show does not have to change, you know what you are selling, you are the expert in that, what needs to change is what you do after, so let an expert get the most out of the hard work you put in.

At the show make sure you are asking for the correct information from your prospects so you can make the most of your data. If in doubt ask an expert for some advice on the data to be captured and how to go about it, it can make the process a lot less painful in the long run and remove the need for manual data capture.

You have spent a lot of money on the show so you need to get the best return on your investment; by allocating a small amount of your budget to outsource your data management really will bring you the return you deserve.

If you have any event advice or tips please post them for us all to learn from.

Project Management – The Language Barrier

Would you go to a foreign country without learning a bit of the language or understanding the culture? No probably not, or if you did, then you would be at risk from looking slightly ignorant or embarrassed every time you tried to order a drink! Project Management can work in the same way and it’s essential to understand the language that’s spoken by those that you’re working with both within your own organisation and perhaps more importantly, with the client.

This doesn’t of course mean that for a Project Manager to speak to a Customer Insight colleague they need to have detailed knowledge of how to build a propensity model, understand neural networks or determine the most appropriate regression model. But, it does help if they can have dialogue which the ‘analysts’ are comfortable with and translates well to the client. If language and terminology is used that the Project Manager doesn’t understand, they shouldn’t dismiss it as a foreign language, they should attempt to talk ‘pigeon analytics’ until a common ground is found. I’m sure you’ve all been on holiday trying to order that dish from the menu that you have no idea what it is, but with a bit of patience from you and the native waiter, you work it out together.

Once the language is established and understood, the Project Manager can then be clear when detailing the clients’ requirements. It is essential that these are understood and consensus is reached to be confident that project efficiency is maximised. When managing a Print and Fulfilment campaign, it’s essential that the correct inserts go with the correct personalised letter – it matters to that individual what is received. Or another analogy would be to go back to the international dish, if you don’t understand what that foreign ingredient is – then on your taste buds be it!

Should any problems arise through the course of a project, the Project Manager is responsible for working the challenge through with the person who will essentially resolve it whether that is the client or internal colleagues. This will have a positive impact as the solution will support the overall project objectives and also enhance understanding. When managing a Database Marketing project, decisions and choices can be vast and the wrong one made through miscommunication could have a big impact of the overall deliverables.

As our core business is Customer Relationship Management, the skills required to work efficiently and effectively with clients and colleagues alike are ingrained in all our Project Management staff. A Project Manager needs to have skills to perform a range of duties from sales, to accountancy, to business analysis and even diplomacy as well as a firm understanding of the importance of when in a service department, do as that service department does!

Database Marketing – Five Top Tips

Most marketing professionals understand the reasons for collecting good customer and prospect data and most also understand (in theory at least) what to do with that data.

However, one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the number of businesses that don’t get the best from their data. So for that reason, below are some basic tips for using and getting a return from what has the potential to be a huge asset – your database.

Keep it clean – There’s no point in collecting huge quantities of customer and prospect data if it isn’t regularly cleansed and updated. With customers moving around frequently and more and more people subscribing to TPS and MPS, you need to give your campaigns a fighting chance of success by starting with a clean and up-to-date database.

Unlock the intelligence – Most customer databases have a story to tell and can offer so much more than just a mailing list. Modern customer insight and data mining techniques can add real value and help drastically improve the success of marketing campaigns by targeting customers that are statistically more likely to buy your products.

Make it relevant – How many people have received marketing messages from a company that they have an existing relationship with but which are completely irrelevant to them? If you have transaction and sales information in your database (or you can prise it from your Accounts Dept.) then you’ll know what your customers buy, when they buy it and how likely they are to buy related products… Why not use this information to make your campaigns 100% relevant to your audience?

One size doesn’t fit all – If your message is relevant and timely then your campaign should succeed - right? Wrong! Make sure you give consideration to the communication medium, not all of your customers and prospects will respond (or welcome) traditional DM no matter how relevant the message. Today’s marketing professionals have a wide range of channels available to them from email, SMS and DRTV or even good, old fashioned, telemarketing. Trial and measure your campaigns across different mediums before rolling them out completely - different customer/prospect profiles will respond to different channels.

Learn from experience – So your data is clean, your message is relevant and the communication channels have been chosen, the campaign goes live and the results are encouraging, happy days! Well of course that’s good but the results of even the most successful campaign can tell a valuable story and inform your next campaign. One thing we always advocate is analysing the results of a campaign to understand factors such as which channel brought back the best response rate, what the profile(s) of the responders were and the time lag from message delivery to response. These factors (and more) will all help your next campaign to become even more focussed and help target the customers/prospects most likely to respond.

If you pay attention to this advice and ensure that your database continues to evolve and grow, then your marketing campaigns will have every chance of success. But we’re keen to hear your feedback and experience, what database marketing techniques have proved most successful for you?

Welcome to the new blog of EWA Bespoke Communications

EWA is an award winning relationship management agency and we specialise in providing outsourced marketing services including:

• Database Marketing
• Customer Insight
• Contact Centres
• Response Handling
• Print & Fulfilment
• Relationship Management

We have been in business for over twenty five years and provide outsourced customer relationship management programmes for clients such as M&S, Nissan, adidas and Merial Animal Health.

As an outsourcing agency, return on investment is ingrained in everything we do at EWA and clients need to see a return on the trust and financial commitment they place with us. That is why every campaign we handle is strictly managed to agreed service levels and outcomes are analysed to gauge their effectiveness.

To give an example; approximately three years ago EWA highlighted to M&S the need for a customer retention programme in order to help reduce customer churn. The programme that was developed and put in place by our Systems and Customer Insight team has today seen customer churn levels reduce by 20% which represents an additional £750,000 worth of orders since the programme’s inception… impressive results we hope you’ll agree.

The reason for launching our new blog is simple… we have a lot to say! EWA has been a market leader in customer relationship management since 1981 and we want to share our knowledge, create debate and discuss areas of work which we are passionate about. As with all blogs, it will be a work in practice so please check back regularly and feel free to send us your feedback on any of the topics we write about.

The blog will become the voice of EWA and will be contributed to by experienced staff in senior positions across the company. We’ll be discussing topics as varied as customer service and the benefits of outsourced contact centres to getting the most from your data and how eMarketing impacts our lives.

We believe we have expertise in supporting outsourced marketing services for our clients and our blog is an opportunity to tell you about what we do; for you to question us; challenge us; learn about us and most importantly engage with us!

We’re looking forward to your thoughts and comments and welcome anyone to join the online conversation!