The Solar Plexus Punch of Targeted Marketing
July 8, 2010
The other day a flyer dropped out of a magazine I subscribe to. Yes, I do still read paper!
I tossed it towards the recycling pile, along with all the others that came with it, without a glance. No surprises there – open rates are very low, and action rates even lower.
However, in this case, one of my children picked it up and opened it, probably because of the image of two dirty, tired, and very young girls on the front. Inside, the names of the children: the same as the names of my two daughters.
Coincidence? Or very clever marketing?
Whichever it was, the message was very powerful indeed.
Rationally, targeted marketing like this would be expensive, but doable:
- Problem 1. The magazine already has my name and address since I’m a subscriber, but the advertisers don’t – but perhaps I gave permission to share “with carefully selected partners” at some time?
- Problem 2. They’d need to find my daughters’ names. More difficult, but not impossible, given the multiplicity of databases out there.
- Problem 3. Then merge, print, and get the flyers in the right magazines. This is really just a logistical problem, tricky but not insurmountable.
So not easy, but worth it, perhaps, for the impact.
What can you do to personalise your message for your audience, so that you get the same power behind the message?
The Rush To Financial Literacy
April 22, 2010
Source: SmartFutures
In my last post I had a reference to Financial Literacy Education. In Europe this is known as Financial Capability. Many financial services companies are rushing to provide some type of financial education to existing and potential clients. What is behind the rush?
A number of developments converged to produce the 1000 year financial storm–
The global economic crisis, more complex investment choices and the shift of pension investment choices from the employer to the employee, when combined with widespread financial illiteracy, is causing increased stress among a significant number of the public.
Research suggests that 15–20 percent of employees have financial problems severe enough to negatively affect productivity. A financially stressed employee spends an average of 20 hours per month of work time on his/her personal financial problems.
The Case For Financial Education at the Workplace
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Too many people fail simple tests on the basics of compound interest and basic financial math. The result: poor financial decisions such as not investing in company-offered voluntary investment plans. This worsens individuals’ financial condition and puts their retirement at risk.
Many financial services companies, banks, credit unions and financial advisory firms are offering a variety of financial literacy education resources.
Some examples in the US
Bank Of America FINANCIAL TOOLS
Wells Fargo HANDS ON BANKING
CitiBank FINANCIAL CAPABILITY
Examples from Europe
Barclay’s BUILDING FINANCIAL CAPABILITY
Halifax MANAGING YOUR MONEY
Caixa Galicia SECURE YOUR FUTURE
Some are critical of these programs. They indicate the motivation is to restore the tarnished reputations of the financial services sector. Perhaps, but the educational services offered do assist in helping individuals to improve their knowledge of financial matters.
This subject is important enough to warrant additional posts in the future.
Sara Lee Targets the Mom Audience
March 2, 2010
Corporations have several purposes, one of which is to solve a problem or to address a need. The Sara Lee Corporation aims to satisfy that concern by creating a new, interesting segment to its corporation, appropriately addressed as a “Saga Solver.”
Problem Solver
This new corporate development in their social media campaign efforts was released last week. The program is designed to help busy moms with household decisions in making and preparing meals and selecting healthy food alternatives for her family. Each segment is presented as a ‘problem’ of sorts and offers a panel of field experts who help moms figure out the answers to their family’s concerns, all sprinkled with humor and entertainment. Here is one of the videos from the corporation that they’re using as a social networking tool to reach busy moms:
Saga Solvers: How Do You Stop Being a Short-order Cook?
Niche Target Audience
The Sara Lee Corporation is aiming and targeting moms in its campaign by showing them how some of their problems can be solved with their products, and lending a friendly, professional ear also seems to help the situation.
They’ve made this social networking campaign to be inclusive of all moms; working moms, stay-at-home moms, student moms, etc. They are also heavily utilizing their Facebook page to promote the new segment and entice feedback and responses from their readers. How successful is it so far? As of today, March 2, they have over 23,000 fans on their page and it’s steadily growing!
When corporations target a specific niche audience, they are usually successful because their resources are targeted towards those demographics and marketing specifically to their needs. And, what does every mom need? She needs for her life to be simplified and as hassle-free as possible. Kudos to the executives at the Sara Lee Corporation for recognizing and addressing a need and for offering solid advice with a bit of humor.
What do you think of their new Saga Solver segments? Do you see the immediate benefit of the advice given and where it would be of help to moms?
Questions: Individual Influencers and Customer Service
September 2, 2009
How should companies deal with the growing power of individuals who use social media?
Specifically, I mean powerful individuals with a complaint about customer service.
Leaving aside the cases where the accumulation of many complaints over time leads to significant corporate change, such as the Dell social media success, and the cases of complaints that go viral because they are entertaining, such as the United Airlines guitar videos, there are an elite group of people with an extraordinary reach. These few have access to potentially millions of other people.
How should companies deal with this?
I became aware of another one of these stories when I followed a link in a blog I regularly read, to another (which I don’t). I didn’t realise who writes the second blog until halfway through the post – and that in itself is interesting, because it shows that the story reached way past the blogger’s usual readers and followers, revealing just how quickly and widely these customer service stories travel.
Essentially, the story is that an expensive washing machine broke a week after delivery. Now, we’ve all been in the repair-loop, haven’t we? Repairman comes, doesn’t have the part, has to order the part and wait for delivery, comes back, still doesn’t have all the right parts, has to reorder and come back, fixes the machine, fix doesn’t work…
Except in this case, there’s a customer service failure.
Failure 1 (at retailer service department): policy says there must be three attempts at a fix before they replace. Not three visits, three fixes.Failure 2 (at manufacturer): schedule says 3-5 days before someone can come to look. Not fix, come to look at the problem.
Failure 3 (at manufacturer): And when customer says ‘I have a lot of followers on Twitter – if I say something on there, will someone help me’, customer service says that doesn’t matter.
So: customer tweets. Customer, it turns out, is @dooce, with over 1,168,000 followers on Twitter. She now has over 2900 comments on her blog about this issue. That’s a lot of reach.
A Twitter storm erupts; customer is eventually contacted by someone senior from Whirlpool (for that is where the MayTag machine came from: @WhirlpoolCorp) who gets a repairman out within the hour, and a fix done within 24.
At the same time, customer is contacted by a competitor (Bosch – @boschappliances) and offered a free machine. Customer isn’t comfortable with this, and negotiates with Bosch that the machine should be donated to a local shelter. Bosch go further and donate a dryer as well.
Hurrah! Customer wins: working machine. Shelter wins: working washing machine and dryer. Bosch wins: lots of great publicity.
What about Whirlpool and the (unnamed) retailer?
Here are my thoughts – or, mostly, questions:
On customer service
This kind of public customer service failure is a clear message to both retailer and manufacturer to re-examine their customer service policies. The common-sense view is that a week-old machine should have been fit for purpose; it clearly wasn’t. So what should the policy have been?
Some companies have a clear focus on providing the best possible customer service; John Lewis and Marriott, for example. Others don’t, and that decision is down to company strategy and positioning. But social media is pushing companies for better customer service all the time. In ‘the old days’ it used to be said that an unhappy customer tells 10 people; now they can tell millions within minutes.
So how should the companies concerned deal with this, and with the impact on customer service? The questions I’d ask include:
- How much flexibility and power do the people at the front line really have to rectify problems? (Could they have behaved any differently within the company constraints?)
- In this case, could the retailer and the manufacturer have communicated direct, cutting down the wait time?
- Could you implement a triage system, either by people paying to be a priority customer, or by having a policy of responding to certain types of calls more urgently (roadside recovery companies going out to women alone with children first, or the utilities companies getting to people with medical needs first)?
- Do you need to reconsider the priority given to customer service, given the potential impact on corporate reputation? Do staff understand the corporate priorities?
Whatever the policy is, it should be clearly explained in advance to customers and to staff. Mismanaging expectations is at the root of the problem.
On social media monitoring and priorities
@WhirlpoolCorp were monitoring what was being said about them and their products; @Boschappliances were monitoring what was being said about their competitors. And it looks as though both reacted fairly quickly to the social media complaints. That’s great, and is exactly what social media experts recommend when facing a Twitter crisis. Companies do need to be alert to the potential of a social media PR crisis.
But would it be possible to escalate complaints made to customer services in the same way? Do social media users get a better response than those in the standard service queue? And what if the customer didn’t have 1m followers, but only 10, or 100? Should they be treated in the same way as the customer with 1m followers, because anyone can be the trigger for a Twitter storm?
Was the Whirlpool customer service agent right to say that Twitter didn’t matter – if she’d been told that all customers should be treated alike? Or wrong, because of the potential impact on the corporate reputation?
What is your policy on this?
And is it wrong for a customer to publicise a problem via social media? Personally, I think it’s OK, as long as they’ve tried going through the company’s own problem solving procedures first. As has been said before, this bad publicity is the symptom of a problem, not the cause of it. It’s going to happen; this time it was Whirlpool; but next time it could be you.
On powerful influencers
How should a company react to ‘don’t you know who I am’? In theory, everyone should receive the same, excellent service; in reality, this is very difficult to achieve.
You may be monitoring what is being said about you, but is it worth identifying who are the powerful influencers in your core market?
“Yes, yes, we do that”, you say, “in order to communicate with their audience in turn, and to fine-tune our marketing messages”
… but have you considered flagging these people up to customer services? Handle with care; VIP.
Is that ethical?
Would it even make a difference? After all, anyone can use social media to publicise their complaints, not just your key influencers. Twitter complaints are high profile, and the crisis can escalate very quickly. It can’t be denied that some people can shout louder; but is it possible to identify those people in advance of the crisis?
Do you provide a better service to those who can shout the loudest (or pay the most), or provide a less good service equally to all? What are your customers’ expectations? What is your brand promise?
On public relations and workload management
While I felt a certain unease at the propriety of Bosch’s interpolation of themselves into the story, others here at Corporate Eye saw this as a PR triumph – with a double gold medal for then donating the equipment to a local charity at the request of the influential blogger.
Bosch have clearly done well out of this, and Whirlpool made a nice recovery once senior management got involved. But is there a PR issue looming? Will there be a backlash against companies providing unbalanced customer service? Will there be a rush to Twitter, as people perceive that those who do get a better deal?
And how will you balance the customer service workload and priorities? Should the priorities for customer service really be based on reputation management?
Social media policies need to include customer service and crisis management
Lots of questions here, but only you can decide the answers. Ultimately, each company will need to decide for themselves how they handle influential individuals, and on the priority they give to problem escalation via social media; and they will need to do this before the crisis hits.
Does your social media policy cover this? How about your corporate ethics?
Getting it right for the best customer experience
May 19, 2009
A month ago, we heard from Colin Shaw (founder of Beyond Philosophy) on how companies should react to the current climate. Today he’s back, to share his views on one of the secrets of a great customer experience…
A few weeks ago we conducted our annual study tour in London, England. This is where we take delegates to visit a number of leading companies for a behind-the-scenes look at how they approach the task of building a great customer experience.
The companies included Prêt-a-Manger, Virgin Atlantic, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Dell Computers, T-Mobile, Lexus Cars, AOL and Microsoft. As we travelled around these companies on the luxury coach, I pondered what the common traits are of companies who provide a great customer experience? Undoubtedly one of these traits is “attention to detail”, so let’s give you an insight as to what some of these companies did. Prêt-a-Manger told us about the absolute struggle they go through to make sure that all the ingredients in their sandwiches are additive free so as to enhance the taste of the sandwiches. This involves a great deal of searching to determine the best supplier, as well as extensive tasting. The time and money they spend on this activity is phenomenal and is testament to their customer focus.
But this is just one element of the attention to detail these companies pay. Liam Lambert, Director of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel told us of his “attention to detail”. He wanted his doorman to stand out as ‘beacons’ to help promote the hotel – as it is on the less busy side of the street and after seeing other hotel doormen who were all dressed in grey overcoats. This colour made them blend into their hotel buildings and act as great camouflage. Liam decided to dress his doorman in red, creating a true beacon. It was clearly effective as more people noticed them than ever before!
Liam told us about how he treats his new arrivals and our group was privileged to attend and witness his ‘Morning Prayers’. This is where all the managers from each department within the hotel get together every morning and talk through each new guest explicitly that is arriving at the hotel that day. They look at who they are and look at where they’re coming from and therefore how likely they are to be tired, for example. They even get on their guests’ web sites to discover more about the person staying so that they can ultimately provide them with a better service. Finally, if available on the web site, they will print a picture of the individual who is staying with them and place it on the ‘Guests Wall’ so the staff can recognise the person by name.
So, do you go into that amount of detail with your customers? When a guest is staying with them they ‘learn their behaviour’. They also take note of the drinks they order, whether they like ice or not, whether they have a cappuccino or a Latte after a meal. This information is then recorded on what is effectively a CRM system, which is them utilised to enhance the customer experience on subsequent visits. This is pure attention to detail!
Our visit to Virgin Atlantic highlighted to us the amount of time they have spent on working out when the optimum time is to deliver hot towels in Upper Class – before or after takeoff, for example. They also have calculated the most pragmatic and attractive layout of a service trolley, and have great new lie down beds situated in Upper class. As someone who spends a lot of time travelling around the world giving conference speeches, I can’t wait to try them.
And Dell Computers have set up a number of ‘Listening Posts’ to ensure they capture customer information and convert this into something that is usable by the customer.
So, attention to detail in building great customer experiences is paramount. The converse is also true, and lack of focus on the customer experience will detract from it. The other night I visited my local cinema. The ‘baby booster chairs’ were left in the aisle so that when we entered the cinema late, we nearly broke our necks falling over them! Not to mention the vast queue to buy a ticket, with only two tills in operation and three people standing at the back chatting whilst dozens customers showed their indignation. We have all had similar experiences, but it takes thought, time and commitment to build a great customer experience.
We recommend you to pay attention to the detail in future – both in ‘real life’ and on the various sites that are part of your company’s web estate.
A classic example of focusing on the details that make the customer experience of corporate web estate better is Amazon’s recommendation system, which gives the customer suggestions as well as providing potential up-sell opportunities. Like the Mandarin Oriental example above, this helps the visitor feel that the company ‘knows’ what they like. And the customer reviews provide reassurance, so the visitor feels they are making the right choice.
At a more mundane level, ensuring that the website is user-friendly, with appropriate help easily available when needed, matters. Visitors need to be able to navigate the site to find what they need (without falling over unnecessary ‘baby buggies’, or being led down navigational dead ends). And ensuring that the site can be found easily, and is distinctive helps. Consider the Mandarin Oriental again: is your site dressed in the appropriate livery, and acting as a beacon for your visitors?
Thanks, Colin!
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