Canadian Marketing Blog

Can Direct Mail be Environmentally Friendly

I am probably going to regret opening this can of worms but lately my thoughts have turned to the impact on the environment of direct marketing. I am not crazy enough to tell you that marketing (especially direct mail) is a positive environmental force - a few industries today can claim to be that. But I do think that my colleagues and I are reducing the impact, albeit in a small way.

By focusing on customer data, companies can dramatically change the environmental impact of their direct mail initiatives. Specifically,

1. By building a complete view of the customer (linking disparate databases), companies can reduce duplicate mailings and control the flow of communication to their customers.

2. Using analysis techniques such as predictive modelling and segmentation, communications can be targeted maximizing the impact of every piece of mail. This can ensure that only those most likely to respond will receive a piece of direct mail.

3. By cleaning up databases, and fixing addresses, undeliverable mail can be reduced.

4. By enabling opt-outs (and using the CMA opt-out list)- and specification of contact preferences - companies ensure that those who do not want to receive mail do not get it.

5. By merge-purging external lists against one another and internal files, targeting of the same prospect multiple times can be avoided.

My response for years when asked "Oh, so you are responsible for all this direct mail I get" has been "No, I am responsible for all the direct mail you DON'T get". I have a feeling I might be asked that more and more in the coming years!

For more on this read the Aberdeen Group's report:
Green Marketing: Leveraging Customer Data to Reduce Direct Mail Waste by Aberdeen Group.

I am also encouraged by the new focus being shown on this issue by our key industry groups – perhaps too little too late but all action is better than nothing:

- NAMMU (National Association of Major Mail Users) has an annual award that recognizes innovation in making the mailing industry as environmentally friendly as possible. The winner in 2007 was Domtar for their EarthChoice Paper.
- DMAT (Direct Marketing Association of Toronto) has recently announced the creation of a taskforce to study the issue of environmental responsibility.
- The Forest Stewardship Council of Canada (FSC) launched their FSCXpert (FSCX) Program late last year – this is an educational program and designation for graphic designers, and communications and marketing professionals committed to responsible forest management.
- And, of course, the CMA has a variety of case studies and green tips available to marketers who want to reduce their environmental footprint.

Canadian B-to-B Sales and Marketing Integration Survey

The words “sales” and “marketing” are generally spoken of in the same breath, as their goals should be nearly identical: To get new customers, and to retain and grow current ones. Unfortunately, the reality of the relationship between the two functions in most organizations ranges from strained to working at cross purposes. In an effort to drive better insights into the relationship between the sales and marketing functions of B-to-B organizations across Canada, the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA) recently joined forces with the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), and SiriusDecisions, and launched an exclusive survey. The B-to-B Sales and Marketing Integration Survey uncovered a wealth of exclusive data and knowledge about the efforts and results being achieved by Canadian companies. Here we present the executive summary of findings and insight from the survey.

Communications: One of the key indicators we wanted to probe was the perceived willingness of marketing and sales staff to make their counterparts successful. Respondents reported a general willingness to make the other group successful (57% Yes, 35% 50/50). However as we’ve observed with hundreds of organizations, the greatest challenges to sales and marketing integration are the lack of integrated processes, effective measurement and goal alignment.

The majority of respondents have formal processes in place for regular communications between sales and marketing (63%). But are they the right processes for effective demand creation and lead management? Are roles and responsibilities clear? Are definitions and handoffs clear? Do sales and marketing have common goals in mind?

Goals: When asked to identify their most important goals, marketing respondents indicated that they are clearly focused on lead/demand generation activities (39%) followed by branding/advertising/PR (28%) and product development/launch/introduction (10%). However, it is rather surprising to see that so little attention and focus is being applied to improving relations and collaboration with sales (7%).

On the sales side, it’s no surprise that sales groups are clearly focused on attaining their revenue growth target (35%) followed by increase/grow revenue from existing accounts (27%) and cultivate new accounts/segments (18%). However, it is rather concerning to see so little attention is being applied to improving sales efficiency and productivity (8%).

It appears that despite their willingness to help their counterparts be successful, marketing and sales are focusing on “more of the same” rather than improving what they do and how they do it.

Lead Generation: Since lead generation and development are key areas of integration between sales and marketing, we asked respondents about their efforts in these areas. The majority of respondents admit that their sales and marketing groups spend less than half of their time working together as part of their lead process (56%).

Expectations are a key part of the equation. We asked sales professionals about their expectations for marketing’s contribution as a percentage of pipeline, the responses reveal that dependence on marketing contributed leads runs the gambit. Most interesting are the more than 15% of respondents that expect marketing to contribute more than 41% of the sales pipeline. SiriusDecisions research indicates that for most companies, that expectation is unreasonably optimistic and can lead to a poor view of marketing if it fails to deliver. Perhaps with such high expectations of marketing‘s contribution to the pipeline, it is not surprising that almost two thirds of respondents rated their marketing group’s efforts as less than good.

The end results of efforts are dependent on skills, resources, processes, and collaboration. Many of marketing efforts and subsequent results can be traced directly to an organizations’ demand creation strategy. The data collected indicates that there is plenty of room for improving respondents’ lead qualification and handling processes. It is not just a matter of getting more leads into the sales process, but getting better qualified leads into the hands of the sales force.

Campaigns: With such high expectations for marketing sourced leads, why do more than two thirds of respondents commission less than five lead generation campaigns each year? But the end goal should not be only to run more campaigns. Sales and marketing must work together to segment and target their efforts to result in better lead qualification and conversion rates from first inquiry to closed sale.

Customer Buying Process: The old approach still in place at many organizations is to align efforts, knowledge and collateral to specific stages of the selling cycle. But increasingly, best practice companies have shown that understanding and aligning with the customer’s buying process is far more important. When asked about this, more than 75% of respondents reported that their selling process is not fully aligned with the customer’s buying process. Just as there is much work to do around the lead definition and management process, and better target campaigns, sales needs to improve their understanding of an alignment with their customers’ buying process.

Recommendations: Based on the analysis of the data and information collected from this survey, we present the following 5 key recommendations:

1. Sales and marketing Integration will only work with buy in and leadership from senior marketing and sales management.
2. Alignment begins by identifying the strategies, processes and systems which must work together.
3. Organizations need to reconcile their current sales process with their customer’s buying process. Use the customer buying cycle as a tool to communicate with marketing.
4. Sales needs to agree with marketing on the lead types that need to be created, the lead definitions, and the actions sales will take with leads provided to them.
5. Organizations need to focus on improving campaign and program efficiency. Improved sales and marketing effectiveness can benefit from collecting proven, effective processes and best practices into marketing and sales playbooks.

Stop placating me and make a decision!

Don't you just get so furious when you have an issue, contact customer service, and the front line staff is wonderfully sympathetic and apologetic but cannot make a decision to resolve your issue?

I am tired of the placating and no decision making to fix my issue. I am tired of escalating to a Supervisor, then a Manager and having to wait for call backs to resolve my issue!

I was reading a thought provoking article by Graham Kingma, in April's edition of the Contact Management Magazine entitled, Empower Your Frontline Staff to Boost Profits. In it Graham talks about allowing your frontline staff to make decisions to resolve a customer's issue. What really resonated for me was that empowering your frontline staff should be viewed as allowing them the confidence to effectively resolve a customer's issue (once trained and given the tools). Empowering your frontline staff will boost profits as acquiring new customer's costs more than retaining them.

I had a recent experience at a well known telecommunications retail outlet that made me think that frontline customer service people need to be more empowered to make decisions to retain customers, enhance the customer experience and stop giving customers the run around! Customer Service people are smart, resourceful and care about helping people, so why don't companies give them the tools they need to truly be of help?

I went to this well known retail establishment (of which I am a loyal customer) to upgrade a piece of my equipment (my internet, long distance, Blackberry and digital TV are bundled into this "great deal" to save me money). Low and behold, they had a special promotion for new customers, and I, a loyal customer, had to pay almost double for the same thing! I expressed my concern and the Associate and the Manager were wonderful; they apologized, empathized and tried to explain the rationale of the new customer promotion. At this point I was livid; I proceeded to give them the following analogy:

"Imagine you are going to a wedding of a long time best friend and that best friend made a recent friendship with a cool, well connected person. You arrive at the wedding and you are sitting in the back close to the kitchen and the newly acquired friend (the cool and well-connected person) is at the head table. How would you feel?"

I felt used and taken for granted. They both got the analogy but still no decision could be made; they continued to apologize and offer kind words; lots of placating, but no authority to fix the issue.

I told them I will call head office and sort it out (one would have thought one of them would have made that recommendation and not make me do work). Inany event I called head office and got what I wanted with one phone call.

If frontline staff are empowered to make decisions it is great for the customer, employee and shareholder. As Graham said in his article; "they (frontline staff) won't give away the farm." In most cases they will make great decisions that meet the need of the customer and the business.

I sometimes think the reason most customer services jobs are not highly regarded is that most people in this role are not allowed to problem solve and provide a resolution to customers issues. I'm sure it's as frustrating for many of them as it is for the customer. If you cannot solve the customer's issue then you cannot effectively service them.

In this day and age of instant information, gratification, and busy lives, there are few organizations that ensure their frontline people are well equipped to make a decision and truly provide service, not platitudes!

How to Create a "Seeing Culture".

The mission of innovative marketers today is to open up a continuous dialogue with customers. For them, focus groups and quantitative research are outdated methodologies. They have begun to add "idea partners” who act as catalysts for discussions about new ideas. These are the people at a dinner party who make sure everyone is having a good time.

Is the time ripe to create your panel of experts and idea partners? I look forward to your feedback on the value of deeper customer engagement.

Research by Arcus shows that on average, only 27% of customers are advocates for a company's products and services. The link between higher customer satisfaction and higher revenue growth is clear. To that end, companies need to develop customer engagement processes to measure the revenue at risk for a company based on the levels of satisfaction across customer clusters and whether its products and services excite customers.

Engaging customers to share ideas on how to improve the business is critical to today’s leaders in innovation. An example is Starbucks. According to Starbucks chief Howard Schultz, the company’s customer engagement processes have resulted in surprising ideas. One customer wants Starbucks to make ice cubes out of coffee so when they melt they won't dilute cold drinks; 7,660 fellow customers agree. Another wants the chain to install shelves in restrooms—where else can you put your drink when you've drunk too much? Although some customers are repelled by that suggestion, Starbucks thinks it's a "sleeper idea" worth considering. More than 10,000 Starbucks fans wish for something to plug the hole in lids to prevent sloshing. Starbucks listened and just introduced reusable "splash sticks" to do that.

Why a Customer Advisory Board makes sense

A customer advisory board is like a think tank and sounding board for initiatives that could impact your customer base. Marketers need to pioneer the concept of a customer advisory board to senior management at their companies. Increasingly, it has become important for managers to have an in-depth understanding of issues related to products, services, sustainability practices and customer support. A customer advisory board acts like a board of directors. In this case they provide feedback on broader issues at a high level. This is corporate democracy in action. At the month-old MyStarbucksIdea.com, customers can make suggestions, other customers can vote on and discuss them, and Starbucks can see which ideas gain popular support.

The process has been implemented by several Fortune 500 companies. Several others have set up "panels of experts" or "Think Tanks" for specific initiatives such as sustainability practices, engaging boomers, and retirement plans etc. For example, Bank of Montreal has set up an advisory board to advice managers on retirement related business initiatives.

The idea partners also act as advocates for customers' suggestions back at their departments, so that customers would have a seat at the table when product and brand strategy decisions are being made. To close that loop in an authentic way, a company must make a commitment to building those ideas together with customers. They need to adopt the ideas into their business process, into product development, experience development, and store design.

It's key to plans of innovative companies to invigorate their marketing. Another example is an initiative pioneered by Michael Dell, who returned to Dell Inc., a year earlier and launched IdeaStorm.com to gather and act on customers' ideas. Dell has implemented a score of suggestions, including the introduction of computers running Linux instead of Windows.

How would you achieve deeper customer engagement? Let me know.

The Age of Entitlement

According to a recent issue of The Financial Times, it was Yankelovich - the market research company - that claimed to have invented the term 'baby boomer". Generation Ageless, a book written by the research company's senior partners, explored the way today's grown-up baby boomers differ from previous generations: their refusal to grow old gracefully and, indeed, their conviction that they are not growing old at all.

They certainly have no plans to make way for anyone else. As the book says, these are people who, their entire lives, have "revelled in the attention like babies at bath-time". Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1978, can wait.

In the heat of the U.S. Presidential elections, we need to remember that the two Democratic Party Candidates vying for the Democratic ticket are both baby boomers. Barack Obama is a trailing-edge boomer while Hillary Clinton is a leading-edge one. Bill and Hillary Clinton were, in fact, the White House's first baby-boomer couple. As the oldest of the baby boomers enter their sixties, their values, disputes and, above all, sheer numbers are still with us. The Clintons represent much of what the baby boomers stood for, and still stand for.

Former broadcaster Tom Brokaw's book - Boom! Voices of the Sixties - Personal Reflections on the 60s and Today - looks at baby boomers then and now reminds us what a time it was. The 1960s have led to today's advances for black Americans and for women. The current showdown between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would have been unthinkable without the 1960s. Women now account for half or more of the students in American medical and law schools.

Although we're not Americans, the 1960's touched us all. Companies everywhere in the world now need to know what and how to sell to baby boomers. The Financial Times suggested that the answer to this is:
home offices and multi-generational cruises (for the ‘sandwiched’ boomers); easy-grip cooking utensils, higher chairs in shoe shops and cars with bigger dashboard displays. I've also blogged about fashionable hearing aids and 'tall' books. Baby boomers are getting older, whatever we think - just don't remind us!

Online video isn't the future, it's the present

Google Canada hosted a showcase last week in Toronto, complete with recent case studies and numbers from YouTube.

The following stats had several jaws hitting the floor:

• 10 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds
• YouTube contributors produce 3000x more output than Hollywood
• Hollywood would need to premier 57,230 feature films a week just to keep up
• YouTube currently boasts 200M+ worldwide unique visits a month
• 25% of surveyed registered YouTube viewers watch more video content online than they do on TV

YouTube Demographics


• 55% suburban, 26% urban, 19% rural
• 71% employed, 15% students
• 47% married
• 69% college educated
(source)

Several case studies were featured, including a YouTube, HP and Fox Searchlight program called “Project Direct”.

Other highlights;
Mark Nicholson from ING Direct presented the Canadian Superstar Saver Search,
Paul McGrath from CBC presented some digital strategy including “The Hour” channel on YouTube

Here’s a little Advertising on YouTube primer to get you started:

The Marketing Talent Pool – Running on empty?

THE REALITY

Census Canada recently released a report that “Management and professional occupations lead the retirement wave” with 55% of the workforce 40 or older. This is a terrifying statistic and leaves us to question what this will mean for Canadian Business in the next 10 years. Ultimately the traditional way of staffing up an organization (not to mention how we structure these organizations) is going to change. The Y generation is already throwing temper tantrums and demanding better work life balance. So what happens when that 55% retires? Does this mean that the workforce mix is going to change? Historically sticking with one company for life was of the norm. That is certainly not the case in today’s market. Will there be more freelancers and consultants? Will the age of retirement evaporate? Or will senior management be comprised of part timers making full time salaries just so the company can retain higher calibre talent? One thing that is sure to be noticed is that the immediate economic crisis has hiring in check. .. so when hiring is frozen and workloads boom... what does a marketer do to manage marketing resources(MRM)?

AN ALTERNATE ROUTE

What if a corporation knew they had a service that gave them access to high quality resources in marketing that were available quickly to address interim needs of the department to meet demand. This resource would eliminate the need to hire an additional Full Time Employee (FTE) or build additional resources and/or to farm the business to the costly advertising agency. This would in turn positively affect speed to market and address work life balance issues. This is not a new concept.

ACCOUNTING VERSUS MARKETING

The concept of bringing in skilled workers for short term assignments is not a new idea. Companies such as Adecco have made a huge name for themselves delivering generalist / admin temps on an as needed basis. However, when exploring the more senior and professional calibre roles, companies are far more reluctant to entertain temporary employees. The most common objections stem from concerns of the learning curve, because the common belief is ‘their business is so unique’, to more proprietary worries about confidentiality. Both these issues are easily overcome which has been clearly demonstrated by one company who started providing temps to the vertical considered most sacred… Finance. Accountemps has grown to become the largest and most successful financial temporary staffing firm in the world. It has since become very common to see firms that specialize in outsourcing/consulting for IT, HR, Supply Chain/ Operations and Creative services. Marketing however has not been a part of the temp renaissance.

The North American market for the Marketing Staffing segment has been estimated to be worth 1-3 Billion Dollars. The question that arises is if marketing staffing is such a hot service line, why are we not seeing more staffing firms focused on this segment, especially when there is so much depth in variety for the vertical? Marketing is deep and wide particularly within Fortune 500 organizations. Roles range from database management, brand/product management, Marcom, PR and Event Management, E-commerce and Market Research. The list goes on. So what is holding us back?

THE CLIMATE

Challenges a company faces within the marketing organization are far different from 10 years ago. Corporations are experiencing accelerated growth of core brands by expanding products and marketing programs. The explosion of new channels means that organizations more frequently run into skill gaps. Efforts to drive world class productivity limits bandwidth/resources for new marketing programs. Now add the whole Economy and recession fears to that equation. Efforts to find ways to cover surges of work in marketing departments often leads to outsourcing the load to the advertising agency… at a huge cost. This cost is not only monetary. When work life balance becomes compromised an organization runs into attrition risks. One risk is that overworked staff end up burning out and become less productive and take more sick leave. Secondly the reputation of the organization that becomes known as a ‘sweat shop’ has an adverse affect on ability to attract new good replacement talent. This is fast becoming an issue in marketing departments already!

BACK TO REALITY

When a company is striving to create a winning environment that values work life balance what happens when additional full time hires are not in the budget due to a head count freeze? It is becoming clear that out of the box thinking will be needed for companies to survive over the next decade. Marketing Resource Management will be an integral tool keep in mind for your survival kit.

6 Tips for building and managing consent for mobile marketing

Did you know that you can’t buy a mobile customer list for a mobile marketing campaign?

Unlike email or other channels, if you want to start a conversation with a current or prospective customer, you need their specific permission first.

You need mobile consent.

The downside of this requirement is that it can take more time and more money to reach the people you want to communicate with.

The upside is that response rates tend to be much higher. In many cases, we’ve seen response rates 3 times better or more than other channels.

So where do you start?

1. Leverage your existing customer database. Chances are you already have a customer list with permission to communicate in other channels. Ask them if you can communicate to them on their mobile device next time they reach your call centre or read your email newsletter.

2. Update your terms and conditions policy or statements. Although it can be expensive to update your policies to include a clause that allows you to reach customer through mobile, this is an effective way of getting enough consent to at least reach out once using mobile. Many companies are already in the process of updating their T&Cs to reflect the new “do not call” list law – so leveraging that process to add a clause on mobile would be cost effective…. And if you’re really lucky completely covered out of somebody else’s budget!

3. Update your website. Update your customer profile page to include a line specific for mobile numbers. Many sites have a field for “other” phone numbers but they aren’t specific to mobile. On the same page, give users several mobile opt-in options. For example, opt-in for contest or promotions and alerts or reminders specific to your product or service. You can even have alerts for when content is available in other channels – like a reminder that your cable bill is due and can now be viewed online.

4. Leverage events and sponsorships to drive acquisition. Text and you can win promotions at events are a great way to engage and acquire new customers (especially if the offer is really relevant), so be sure to include an opt-in SMS message after entry. Keep it simple.

5. Create awareness. You can have the best mobile channel offer in the market, but it’s only good for those who know about it! Be sure to promote your mobile services and options through other channels. For example, POS, statement stuffers, website, email and your above-the-line media. Remember when you had to convince your Art Director to include a URL on that Ad? Now that you have that practice, convince them to include a shortcode or mobile web address too - with a call to action. Better awareness will mean more opt-ins…which means it will be easier to justify the investment you just made in mobile.

6. Be sure to deliver exactly what they asked for! Once you have consent, you want to ensure that you keep it. By giving customers or prospects exactly what they opted in for, you can harvest your mobile customer list well beyond your initial campaign.

Leverage Your Data With 1-to-1

Let’s take a magic carpet ride through the space-time continuum.

Fast-forward ten years from now. Will anyone be doing mass advertising? Will there be any value in Television advertising, unless it’s targeted to each household or individual. The future of marketing can only be as good as the technology available, and considering where it’s at now; we’re in for some hardcore one-to-one marketing.

Right now, personalization is where TV was 40 years ago. Everybody knows it’s there, but no one quite knows what to do with it yet.

Early response rates on personalization have been very promising – three times the industry average, with many running higher – but there’s not enough of a track record to make accurate predictions. Marketers like to go with what works, and having an X factor can be intimidating. That enchanting unknown territory of “potential ROI” is like the land of OZ.

It seems like a lot of people are getting into personalization, including companies as diverse as Xerox and Canada Post. These companies offer complete conception through production one-to-one services. There are other companies such as Lift Agency that specialize in personalization and have been pulling in impressive results for clients such as Telus and Mercedes.

Personalized mailings aren’t in any way new. Variable print technology has been around for many years. But advancements in client databases and increasing awareness with one-to-one marketing is starting to perk up some ears to the idea of leveraging available data to really speak to customers in a way that resonates and promotes stronger relationships.

So if you have the data, why not use it?!

Dad, what do you think about me getting a job in a call centre?

My oldest is about to complete his first year of university and is thinking about taking a year off. Because I’m in the call centre business he asked me about employment opportunities in the industry and what I thought about working in a call centre. Before I could answer my wife jumped in and said, “I don’t want him working on one of those places. I hate those calls you get at night.” I politely explained that there are a whole range of opportunities in the industry with most of the jobs in roles where you’re handling inbound calls providing customer service and support. “But even in those places you have to put up your hand if you want to go to the bathroom. Who’d want to work in that kind of environment” she said.

So what a great question. As someone who’s been a part of the industry for over 15 years do I think a job in this business is good enough for my first born? The answer is a resounding yes. It’s perfect for him.

First, he doesn’t have a lot of experience which eliminates him from many full time opportunities but he does have retail experience. Dealing with and helping customers in a retail environment transfers well to the call centre business and many companies hiring will consider that sufficient background when they ask for “previous customer service experience”. Second, he’ll get some good training on basic, but very important skills that we’ll stay with him for a lifetime. Managing and guiding a conversation to a successful outcome, dealing with difficult customers, problem resolution, and communication skills, are all areas that he would typically receive training on and get plenty of practice using in a call centre job. Clearly these are skills that will be critical to him, regardless of the profession he finally chooses, and a call centre is a perfect place to hone them.

Even if he decides to try his hand “at one of those places” as my wife called it there is no more valuable skill to learn than attempting to engage someone who you call out of the blue and get them interested in your product and services. Sales skills, no matter what profession you choose, are critical to success in business. It also doesn’t hurt in giving him a little toughness that comes with hearing no over and over again before success is finally realized. That’s a life skill that he must develop and outbound telemarketing gives you a crash course in it.

You’ll notice that most of the reasons that I’ve cited so far are in the context of skills he’ll learn that he can transfer and use when he gets a “real” job. There’s another very important element to this business that I think is one of the best kept secrets in this industry.

There are probably no better environments for career advancement for talented hard working young people than in the call centre business. High turnover is a reality in this business primarily because most people view it as a pit stop along the way in their career. What a few people quickly recognize is that within this environment it can be easy to stand out by simply having a good attitude, showing some enthusiasm and initiative, and really caring about doing the right thing for your customer and your company. These people soon find that they are being considered for the next Supervisor or Team Lead position sometimes after only a few months on the job and often with little formal post secondary education. If my son lands a job in a call centre I am going to tell him to do his best to stand out because he may have the opportunity in a very short time to take on a leadership role and get some outstanding experience in managing people and leading a team that he just couldn’t get in any other environment.

In a recent meeting of the CMA Contact Centre Council I asked my colleagues, many of whom are Vice Presidents of Customer Service for large well known fortune 100 companies, how many of them started out as an agent. Over half of the room put up their hands. Wow. These very bright people figured out early on that by showing some initiative they could quickly work their way up the organization becoming subject matter experts in an area of the business everyone now recognizes as critical to success. That’s why they're earning six figure salaries. Not bad from starting out as an agent making a little more than minimum wage.

So when I’m not around and my wife secretly tells him to look for a “real” job because she naturally doesn’t believe anything I have to say, hopefully he’ll tell her about my friends who quickly turned a job, that she considers unworthy of her first born, into a profession that pays handsome dividends.

Who am I kidding? He’ll probably listen to her. Dad has no idea what he’s talking about.