For many years the operations and activities of the catalog marketers have stopped as their data files have been delivered to their services bureaus or printers.
The proficiency and sophistication of the service bureau aside, the marketer is reduced to a passive bystander, waiting for counts, waiting to see the results, plugging in numbers into spreadsheets and trying to make decisions based on the limited amount of data that can be supplied in these traditional processing environments.
The challenges of today’s multi channel marketer are evident; they must work faster and do things cheaper, while using more sophisticated marketing strategies that are easier for people to implement. They must do more with less and rely more heavily on partners to assist them. Equally challenging is the effort to bring together the different marketing channels. As suppliers become more proficient at listening to customer requests they are able to offer more “hands on” marketing solutions.
Observe the changes in public commentary and debates. People used to sit around the barber shop or local restaurant and discuss the news of the day. Now it takes about 2 minutes for a story to start receiving comments. The stories will be shared across social media networks and people put their two cents in. The same goes for the decisions that marketers need to make in regards to their catalog, direct or email marketing communications. As a process is completed in the traditional work flow, clients can now more quickly view the results, with an on line access tool, and consider the implications of the work done. Maybe they see a trend of data quality degradation early in the process and are able to avoid a shortfall at the end of the process. Maybe they catch an error in file delivery that would have gone unnoticed in the past because the vendor didn’t have the same intimate knowledge of the file as the client does. Because schedules can be compressed new ideas can be added on the fly during the marketing prep work, new test panels can be created and additional segmentation can be done.
Testing and segmenting can also be done quicker with an online tool that allows for “what if” scenarios. Maybe a segment of older customers should be dropped so a different pool of records can be inserted. A marketing effort may be close to achieving certain postal discounts and adding additional names may reduce the overall cost of the project. Added marketing intelligence from third party databases can be plugged into traditional processing with no increase in charges. Processing costs that were dictated by the number of records passed are now being assessed by the value provided and restrictions on the quantities are going away. Bundling services and combining steps lowers costs and shortens timelines. The focus shifts back to marketing objectives rather than processing objectives.
Change happens in phases, no one is moving to the next generation of marketing without some hurdles and hiccups. Making good decisions, using common sense and sticking to sound principles will continue to help companies as they face rising expectations for continued growth. Vendors that take a proactive approach to their customers’ challenges will build stronger relationships and ultimately help partner with them for the mutual benefit of each organization.
Little Know Tips to Improve Data Hygiene Processing
As the multi-channel marketplace grows in complexity there are a few bedrock principles that continue to make sense.
The mystery of channel preference
It is increasingly more difficult to manage communication with customers and prospects because of the following conditions; new channels are introduced as technology advances, old channels are made obsolete and perceptions change, branding and image are no longer controlled solely by that company or it’s marketing department, and the pace of business in general is accelerating.
The decision to support single tasking
If only one lesson has been learned from the difficult economic times it is this one, things are not going back to the way they were. Changes in marketing strategies, communication channels, preferences of customer contact and the impact of user generated contact have created a new world order.
