When did you last talk to a customer?

Most businesses are trying so hard to attract new customers, they fail to invest in talking to existing customers. OK you may communicate with the customer during the transaction: when they are buying the car; dining at the restaurant; consulting about pensions; buying a PC online but what about afterwards? 

It's easy to fall into the trap that because the sale was made, the jobs been done. However, it should be the start of a long relationship not the beginning of the end of the relationship. 

Whatever product or service you supply, every day that passes without contact with the customer means there is less chance that the customer will make another purchase. Of course, this doesn't mean you have to pester the customer every day for 3 years because they bought a printer from your website.

But it does mean that you should be having an ongoing dialogue with the customer that provides value to them (and you) and also shows you care about their business. 

The communication strategy will vary.

The communication solution for someone buying an online £200,000 mortgage may not be the same as someone spending £10 on printer cartridges. The right solution will depend on a range of factors including the product or service; the purchase value; the average purchase interval; the degree of customer involvement etc.  

What doesn't change is that you should be doing something to increase customer lifetime value. Continuing an appropriate regular dialogue with customers after they have purchased is the best way to grow customer lifetime value. If done properly it should :-

• increase the customer retention rate
• increase the average customer lifetime
  
• increase the average transaction spend
• increase the number of transactions per period

Over the past 20 years, I have helped some of Britain's best brands use a range of marketing techniques to increase customer lifetime value. Many of these techniques are unknown to over 99% of SMEs but the good news is that many would work equally well with smaller businesses.

Better still, online businesses have specific advantages. The ability to track visitor behaviour online should provide greater customer insight than most traditional businesses have access to. Secondly, the ability to send low-cost personalised emails with dynamic content specifically tailored for individuals has moved customer communication to a new level. This would not have been either affordable or possible for SMEs to do using traditional communications.

As BT used to say, 'It's good to talk.'

Related blogs

What do you say to your valuable customers? - Comparing Amazon's 'lifetime' emails with copy from another company that leaves a lot to be desired.
Are you doing too much web marketing? - How Sainsbury's have got the 'lifetime' email frequency wrong.

Web marketing tips that any business (large or small) could apply to attract and retain new customers

• Capture customer behaviour data (visits / purchases) as part of your web marketing strategy to increase customer lifetime value
• Analyse the data to identify who to talk to, when to talk to them & what to say
• Automate the process and use letters or ideally emails to send an appropriate message based on your data analysis
• You have to do more than just say "Hello Peter" - Offer appropriate content based on their previous online behaviour 
  
• Make sure the copy is appropriate for your brand but do not try to con or patronise your customers - they are not stupid
• If you are unsure how to do this, get a web marketing expert to help

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.

Marketing is a mystery to UK business

The latest results taken from a marketing survey (The Marketing Performance Index) indicate that marketing is a mystery to UK business with less than half strongly agreeing that they carry out any of 25 marketing activities to a very high standard.

The Marketing Performance Index has been running on my Brand New Way SME website since August 2004. The survey lists 25 questions across 5 categories and asks respondents to give themselves a score from 0 to 5 with:-

• 0 being 'I haven't done this at all' 
• and 5 being 'I have done this to a very high standard'
  

'I have a clear purpose and vision for my business.' 

The statement with the strongest level of agreement was 'I have a clear purpose and vision for my business.'  51% of the UK business respondents strongly agreed with the statement but 20% of respondents strongly disagreed.

'I am making the best use of the marketing communication options available'

Only 16% of respondents strongly agreed with this statement & a significant 40% of businesses strongly disagreed.

As someone who has worked in marketing for over 22 years I have mixed views. Firstly, it reinforces my view is that although many companies talk marketing, few really understand what marketing is. On a positive note, it shows a real opportunity for the few that get it, to help the many that don't.

What's your Marketing Performance Index?

The Brand New Way Marketing Performance Index is designed to help you identify your marketing strengths and opportunities for improvement. Why not complete the online questionnaire? It's free and should take less than 10 minutes.

 

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.

Are you doing too much web marketing?

In the first 9 days of February (6 days excluding weekends) I received 5 emails from Sainsbury's:-

• 3 from the 'Wine by the case' team
• 1 from the 'Flowers' team
• 1 from the 'Online team'

In January, I had at least 5 emails just from the 'Wine by the case' team, in addition to any I might have deleted. 

As you would expect from someone who spends much of their time helping businesses to increase customer lifetime value, I am an advocate of email marketing to customers providing the business makes relevant, timely offers that are likely to be of interest to the customer.

Yes I am interested in Sainsburys emails highlighting wine sales and ideas for Valentines Day. However, the frequency is too high and if I get another one tomorrow I will probably unsubscribe. 

How much is too much?

Well it depends. I am happy to receive several short emails every day from some companies e.g. web marketing news. Other emails have a much longer frequency e.g. those from a car manufacturer tend to be monthly or even quarterly. If I was a fleet car buyer, I would probably want them more frequently.

The ideal frequency for a specific email campaign will depend on email length, newsworthiness, quality of content, the customers interest in the product or service. It should be frequent enough to be helpful and to build or maintain a relationship but not too frequent to irritate.

Taker a look at the metrics. Try different intervals and observe the open rates, clicks and unsubscribes. For e-commerce sites, monitor the effect on sales and customer lifetime value.

Alternatively, ask your customers what frequency they would prefer or give them  a choice.

Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?

I don't know how many email teams there are at Sainsburys, but the 'from addresses' imply at least 3. You would expect the various teams to talk to each other and develop rules in terms of the maximum number of customer contacts in a given period. 

Inevitably, if every department in a large corporate was given a free hand to contact the customer as they liked, the poor customer would be bombarded. This was true when each customer contact by post cost £1, so given the marginal cost of email is near zero, there is likely to be an even greater push to communicate more frequently by email. To avoid irritating customers, it is essential that a sound customer contact strategy is implemented. 

4 years ago, I went to Sainsbury to suggest they implement a strategy to contact customers by email but  they said it wasn't for them. I have no idea whether Sainsburys have a customer contact strategy for email or not but my experience suggests it needs improving.

What is your view re how much is too much? Click on the comments link below.

Web marketing tips that any business (large or small) could apply to attract and retain new customers

• If you email your customers, set up a strategy to decide which customers should get the email and how often

• Set the frequency based on content quality, length, newsworthiness & perceived customer interest

• If more than 1 person or department is involved, set up rules on the maximum number of contacts to the customer per period and how selections are made when too many people are competing for the same slot

• Put a programme in place to measure email / sales performance against key business metrics? Read more about web metrics.

• Revise the programme & rules based on performance

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.

The UK has the most active web population in Europe

At the introduction to a web marketing seminar I was running yesterday, the audience was surprised to hear that the UK has the most active online population. The data is taken from a June 07 comScore World Metrix study:-

• Germany has the largest online population (32.6M aged 15 or older)
• Holland & Scandinavia have the highest proportion of web users (>68%)

However you measure it, the UK has the most active online population in Europe with the highest number of:-

• average daily web visitors (21.8M)
• web usage days per month (21 per user)
• average time spent online per month (34.4 hours)

In a previous blog, Why is UK web marketing growing so fast? I revealed that UK average spend per web user is also higher that the rest of Europe and is even higher than the US.

Given many UK economic indicators are pointing to a slow down, can you afford not to take advantage of the growth opportunities in the UK web market? 

Web marketing tips that any business (large or small) could apply to attract and retain new customers

• Do you have web marketing strategies in place to attract high numbers of targeted prospects?

• Is your Search Engine Optimisation strategy delivering good results against your target key words?

• Have you invested sufficiently in Pay Per Click advertising? The UK average is around 9% of advertising spend. However, as small and medium sized businesses are unlikely to be using more expensive media like TV, then their investment in web marketing should be much higher.

• Is your web marketing working?

• Have you got a programme in place to measure web performance against key business metrics? Read more about web metrics.

• Do you have the web marketing skills in house to do this?

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.

Is Valentine's Day part of your web marketing strategy?

If you are in the red roses or chocolates or greetings card business I would expect you to say yes, especially if you are reading this in Ecuador which is apparently the rose growing capital of the world.  But what about the breakdown business? That's car breakdowns not relationship breakdowns. Are events like Valentines Day an opportunity for you to market your business and engage with your prospects and customers in a different way?

I would say yes. Here's an example from the RAC.

Before I started Brand New Way, one of my marketing roles was at the RAC, the UK motoring organisation that's been around as long as the motor car, I tested the idea of RAC patrols giving red roses to stranded motorists on Valentines day. I sourced single red roses in a clear container with a card printed 'With best wishes from the RAC'. The strategy was for patrols to give them to members having breakdowns on Valentines Day, providing we had given great service i.e.

• got there quickly (within 30 minutes)
• and fixed the car quickly

Having fixed the car, the patrol would say something like "I'm sorry that you have been inconvenienced today by your car breaking down. Please accept this rose with best wishes from the RAC". I trusted patrols to use their discretion and decide when it was appropriate to hand over the rose and when not.

'Looking for a man you can rely on?'
To help change peoples views about the RAC brand (which at the time was perceived as old fashioned & unapproachable), we also ran a small ad in the national press on the pages devoted to Valentine's messages. The ad said 'Looking for a man you can rely on 24 * 7? Call the RAC on 0800.....Apparently, we got a lovely call from an elderly lady who didn't know that we offered that kind of service!

Don't just bolt it on without thinking?

Developing a Valentines Day theme will be easier for some companies than others. The RAC example shows that it is possible to think laterally. However, an email I received on Saturday from Hewlett Packard was pretty poor. It had hearts pictured on the email and featured price cuts on printers, PC's and a camera. It also included savings on supplies such as ink cartridges. 

Call me old fashioned, but I would never have considered sending an ink cartridge (not even light magenta or pink) to my Valentine. Apart from the hearts, the only attempt to tailor their communication to the theme was the subject title 'Surprise your Valentine'. It certainly would have been a big surprise for most people! This is a particularly crass example from a big corporate with undoubtedly a huge marketing team and external agency support.  

Web marketing tips that any business (large or small) could apply to attract and retain valuable customers

• Do you have a promotional calendar that's in tune with your customers or do you sell the same stuff in the same way all year?

• Make promotional themes a key part of your web marketing strategy to focus your activities across the web site to create an event that is relevant and topical for your customers

• Don't just bolt it on to what you would have done anyway (like HP), but consider how to make the theme work most effectively with your offer (like RAC)

• Make sure you have a business objective for every marketing activity e.g. attract x target web visitors per week at less than £z per visitor or achieve p sales per week with an average revenue of £q at less than £r per visitor 

• Measure your web performance against your key objectives on a regular basis. The more you spend, the more frequently you should measure
  

• Identify what's working and what isn't

• Make improvements based on the learning

• Continue measuring & improving

• If you need help then get a Web Marketing expert 

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.