Monday, 7 August 2017
Retention In Direct Marketing Campaigns
Running a direct marketing campaign without paying attention to retention is like filling up a bucket with a hole in the bottom. You keep filling the top of the bucket with new customers, but if you’re not paying attention to who’s trickling out of the bottom, the bucket will never be full. Patching the leak and keeping your customers in the bucket is the quickest way to maximise profits. This is why retention is one of the most important factors in our direct marketing strategies.
Focussing efforts on retention just makes sense
Existing customers are our favourite kind of customers. They’ve already opted in for your services, they know your brand, and they’ve remained loyal. Unfortunately, circumstances change and making sure that you’re able to anticipate and provide solutions to clients’ challenges requires consistent effort and improved services.
The most important retention strategy is simply to engage with and understand your clients’ situation. Give clients back a sense of control when they understand that they have options and they are not made to feel defensive or embarrassed. Service and product providers are all fighting for a share of their clients’ disposable income, so make sure your relationship with your clients are strong and maintain the value of your product or service.
AVM as a retention strategy
The best method to engage with your clients in a non-invasive and cost-effective way is through Automated Voice Messaging (AVM). Yes, we have all received irritating AVMs through badly executed marketing strategies and at CDA Solutions, we are not fans of using this technology to solicit new clients.
AVM as a “client service and information tool” though, is very effective, if done professionally and consistently. We use AVMs to communicate with our clients should they be at risk of losing valuable cover and we present the various options available to manage their policies. Our AVM technology then facilitates the clients’ selection and manages the process, whether it leads to simply updating client information or facilitating revised payment methods.
The effectiveness of AVM technology
We’ve been using AVM for the last 5 years to enhance our retention strategy and besides also ticking the “Treating Clients Fairly” box, we have found the following:
- By using AVM we are able to speak to 25% more clients than through an outbound call centre and at half the costs of outbound telemarketing.
- Our customer could interact with us using their phone keypad and 40% of the options selected required no further interaction, other than updating information or confirming processes on the system.
- The customer could choose to connect to the call centre and speak to an agent at no cost to themselves, or the customer could request that an agent call them back at a more convenient time.
- We could track exactly who had listened to the message and for how long.
- We can identify who has interacted with us and at which point.
- We are even able to verify that we are speaking to the right person, through ID number validation using the telephone key board
Some learnings along the way:
- Customers respond well to this medium. Most South Africans much prefer to resolve an issue of non-payment without having to talk to someone.
- By giving the customer choices and by addressing the problem with them, you are more likely to get better results.
- We saw a significant improvement in “catch-up” payments once we’ve communicated in this manner and less cancellations compared to the control groups.
- We gave our customers the option to cancel their policy. Where we crazy to suggest cancellations? No, in fact, once a client chose this option, our consultants had the opportunity to ensure that the client understood the implications and gave them the option to downgrade their cover. With the result that only 2% of the clients actually cancel, compared to the 12% who would generally choose this option. They did not realize that they had an option to downgrade and make the cover more affordable for them!
This takes us back to basics: talk to your customers and understand what their challenges are, find solutions for these challenges and give your customer options!
Keep an eye on our articles over the next few weeks and months as we delve deeper into this fascinating topic.
Monday, 10 July 2017
Direct Marketing 101
From destroying
forests and creating litter to persistent and irritating call centre agents, Direct
Marketing has terrible street cred. With all the negative publicity, one would
expect that the effectiveness of direct marketing initiatives would be
dwindling, but the opposite is true and evident by the ever-evolving direct marketing-related
solutions and strategies. Why? Because direct
marketing WORKS!
Direct marketing (DM) can be defined as a
way of communicating specific and personalised messages to those you know will
be interested in your product or service.
It’s just simply a
question of where, when and how 😊
Direct marketing loves data
The hot topic of DATA is as relevant, if not more so, in
DM Strategies. We probably sound like a broken record to our clients, but can
we repeat…. “70% of the success of the direct
marketing campaign is dependent on the quality of the data”. You can have
the best sales agents, the most amazing product, if the data or the “list” you
are marketing to is low quality, the campaign will fail.
The quality of data
can be assessed through some basic analytics and testing based on DM and
industry experience, benchmarks and expertise.
It's all about retention
When selecting data, priority should be given to ensure a pro-active retention approach. This means quality over quantity, based on the propensity to retain the customer for the maximum period of time. This is where the immediate marketing and sales targets compete with the longer-term profitability results.
Warning: when your
initial sales ratios are sky-rocketing, keep the celebratory bubbles on ice,
but first wait for the persistency ratios after a couple of months. Most companies embark on ineffective
re-active retention strategies, when the initial acquisition costs have already
been incurred.
Research, test, adjust, repeat
It is probably obvious that DM is not a one-size-fit-all solution, neither is it an immediate and precise solution. Designing a progressive direct marketing strategy is essential to ensure profitability and sustainability.
One of the key
advantages of DM is that continued testing
and detailed analytics will limit
initial expense and risk while creating the best suited DM strategy for the
relevant product and target market.
Through continually
analyzing, testing, and adjusting our strategy, we ensure that our strategies are
constantly evolving and improving.
Our model:
Data – Product –
Distribute Data – Product – Distribute Data – Product – Distribute
Data without analytics is worthless
Detailed analytics and reporting throughout the DM process is crucial, not only to measure the results against the expectations, but to identify trends and anomalies. The IoT and digitalisation has revolutionised direct marketing with omni-channels being used effectively across different market segments and for different initiatives. Gone are the days of simple maildrops!
With various
communication tools at our disposal, based on customer preference, across
various platforms from telemarketing to digital marketing, direct marketing has
become more relevant, extremely cost effective and above all customer centric.
Ready to start your
direct marketing campaign? Contact us so that we can discuss a strategy.
5 Reasons Why Your Direct Marketing Campaign Might Be Failing
Have you recently launched a direct marketing campaign, but
aren’t getting the results that you expected? With any direct marketing
campaign there are many variables that need to be considered. After years of
running successful direct marketing campaigns, and collecting data every step
of the way, we’ve identified a few checkpoints that could very quickly lead you
to the underlying reason for the failure of your campaign.
Having unrealistic expectations
Always start with the end goal in mind. In order to run a
successful campaign you need to know where you are heading. Set a realistic
expected ROI and then identify ways to work towards that with the resources
that you have available.
Beware of starting with an unrealistic desired ROI. Rather,
calculate the most likely ROI based on the variables of the campaign such as
product, available data, and general customer behaviour in your sector.
Data, data, data and more data
Simply put, the better the data at hand, the better your
chances of success.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
1.
Have you targeted the right market? Have you
taken the time to understand your consumers and determined exactly what they
need?
2.
Did you profile the data? Data profiling is the
process of examining the available data and collecting statistics, summaries,
and conclusions from that data.
3.
How will your data selection affect the
long-term results of your campaign? We’ve found that, especially in the
financial services sector, it can be easy to find consumers who are willing to
buy, but you need to consider whether these buyers will pay the premiums and
how long you expect them to remain subscribed.
The wrong product
If your ROI is realistic and your data is up to scratch, but
your campaign is still struggling, then your product may be the culprit. There
are various elements to consider when deciding on what product to market to
your database.
Most importantly, is it the right product for your target
audience? Defining the right product may include questioning whether your
target audience really needs it, if it comes in at the right price, or if
there’s actually a demand for it.
Secondly, consider whether your product is simple enough to
sell over the phone. Does the product need lots of explaining for the consumer
to see the value? The best products for telesales are simple ones.
Is it your sales consultants?
When it comes down to it, the telesales consultants are the
ones who need to convince your audience to buy. Do they have the right product
knowledge and do they believe in it enough to sell it? Is your sales system
easy enough for them to use?
Train, test, rescript and retrain if needed. Listen to what consumers
are saying on the phone and apply this your scripting and campaign moving
forward.
You’re not reporting accurately
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, data is vital
to campaign success. But so often reporting is neglected. Just keeping track of
sales isn’t enough; you need to collect, analyse, and report on all the data in
order to determine what the root of success was – so that you can repeat the
recipe. Get the right reporting tools and analytics team to identify areas that
need improvement, then test and retest until your formula is spot-on.
If you’ve tried all the above and your campaign is still
struggling, just contact us for expert advice in direct marketing campaigns.
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