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Do you really know who and where your customers are?

4 May 2006 - Jake Orpen

E-marketing is the latest bullet in the Direct Marketers armoury. Being hailed as the most cost effective, easily measured and targeted communication tool with enormous returns. Why is it then that a 30% read rate is considered excellent for any electronic newsletter? Why is that so many tracked e-communications are never read, or never reach their target?

The answer is simple – your customer database!

There are a growing number of despondent Marketers who are frustrated with their email or sms campaigns. They usually fall into 2 categories:

Category a: Very excited to start but frustrated because their customer databases are hopelessly out of date or inaccessible or they don’t have customer permission

Category b: Had early successes, but over time the delivery success rate goes into steady decline. (Keeping data uptodate was not covered when a strategy was put into place).

The reality that we have to come to grips with is that customers are constantly moving and changing. The fact that last year Joe Customer existed in your database with a certain profile doesn’t mean that he is there today. Joe Customer has experienced changes in his life; he has been promoted, relocated, retrenched, has upgraded, switched and changed domain and address. Within 6 months your well constructed contact list may well only be 50% accurate!

It is not enough to capture & load customer information once and hope that it will remain valid for the foreseeable future. Clean customer information is a moving target and most organizations are in denial about whose responsibility this is.

Reasons why Organisations DON’T Scrub their data:

• » Unbelievably up-to-date customer information is not considered a priority (the "they'll contact us" attitude)
• » No-one in the organisation is ultimately responsible for the quality and management of customer data
• » Companies are not aware that this can be safely outsourced
• » The perceived costs are too high
• » The data will age anyway – data scrubbing will be a high ongoing cost
• » A company’s strategy may be to get closer to their customers, but direct communication is not considered as a means
• » Marketing budget if its either above-the-line or below-the-line, organisations continue to opt for above-the-line in the hope their message will be wide spread – and perhaps because they don’t know precisely who they want to target
• » Organisations watching their marketing ROI use the spray and pray approach where the more names on the database the better – its irrelevant whether they are accurate or not
• » ROI – organisations are not aware of how the process of cleaning data can be measured and the means by which their return on investing in data scrubbing can be proven

Conexus has rendered all these reasons obsolete.

"We have developed an innovative & cost-effective solution called Datafix which, when used in conjunction with our outbound Call Centre, can ensure that your customer database is an asset giving you a competitive advantage. You can now have a targeted audience for your direct marketing and customer relationship building initiatives" explains Jake Orpen, MD of Conexus.

"Recently we have helped a client grow their permission-based database from 0 to over 17 000 over 6 months. This list gets cleaned daily for the client and so remains uptodate and useful. They are now able leverage this asset through regular electronic communications.

Datafix is:

• » A centralised, organized, system used in conjunction with a call centre.
• » Designed to confirm, update and acquire customer information
• » Flexible enough to accommodate any list import
• » A secure system in which users have levels of access based on unique logins
• » A fully customizable system based upon your business needs
• » Designed to provide extensive reporting and analysis to suit unique client requirements
• » Equipped with addon features such as crosssale / renewal questions

"Accurate customer data is an asset in the hands of a clever Marketer" insists Jake. "Up-to-date profiles mean better targeting of segments, fewer wasted messages, cost reductions in media spend, direct access to decision-makers and relevant communication to chosen targets."

"This is a major issue in the CRM & CIO community; companies are spending millions on enterprise-wide CRM systems but are finding that they still need to clean the data that runs through them in order to gain the ROI’s they expect." concludes Jake.

With today’s pressure to demonstrate Marketing ROI creating a need to approach marketing scientifically, capturing and maintaining accurate customer data is the first step towards 'precision marketing'. Can you afford not knowing who and where your customers really are?

- Ends -

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About Conexus

Conexus is a leading, award winning Customer Interaction Solutions company driven by passionate people. With significant investments in Call Centres and software applications, Conexus is able to provide clients with a full suite of innovative 1-to-1 Relationship Marketing, Sales and Service solutions.

More information can be found at www.conexus.co.za