markpmsg

Can’t I just use the consulting money to hire an analyst to do my customer analytics? When marketers face the investment in consulting to help with database marketing, a frequent question is, “why must we spending all that money on a one-time analysis from people who are not even in our industry?  Why not just hire an analyst instead?” The decision whether or not to hire a consulting firm or a permanent analyst is a significant one; the answer can have dramatic impact on the timeliness... Read Full Story

Why spend money on a consulting firm when IT can do the customer analysis for you? Our clients often must justify the necessity of  investment in an outside firm to do their customer analysis.  One of the most common alternatives suggested is to let the internal IT department do the work instead.  It sounds cheap, easy and fast — “why not let the internal guys get it done rather than spend all that money outside?” But the truth is that letting the IT department work on your customer... Read Full Story

A recent article by Joe Cordo in E-commerce News identifies the increasing need for customer insight. With customer data increasing by almost 1000 percent, marketers now have the chance to understand and improve revenue driven from marketing campaigns, which is critical to marketing accountability. While Joe recommends analyzing customer dashboards to gain this marketing insight, many of our clients don’t have any dashboards to drill down on. How do you start understanding customer behavior... Read Full Story

How do you value Facebook? Today, in Fast Company, Andrew Robertson wrote about the value of Facebook to brands, in terms of real financial benefit. As he researched it, companies are valuing Facebook friends at anywhere from $3 per friend to more than $130. Clearly there is a wide difference in the approach that these firms are using. If you are not trying to measure the value of your Facebook audience, however, you had better be doing so. The pile of money invested in social media over... Read Full Story

Recently, several of my clients have gone to their senior management with goals of creating a customer-centric retail environment. The benefits, they say, will include increased retention and profitability, and reduced marketing costs. In addition, the customer-centric positioning will be challenging for competition to match, given their focus on solely bottom-line results. What did they discover? Their management is also unwilling to risk bottom line results for a “culture” HR-like project... Read Full Story

In a recent American Express survey, close to 70% of respondents said they would pay an average of 13% more for excellent customer service. That result is a significant increase from last year, as customers become more frustrated by customer service from the companies they patronize. At the same time, over 85% of respondents believe that American companies are not increasing focus on customer service. Who will be the first in your industry to take that extra 13% in revenue and all those... Read Full Story

Many companies are flocking to Groupon, lured by the promise of soaring sales and lots of new customers. Yet nothing is as good as it seems. A recent study showed that customers brought in on a Groupon promotion are less loyal, less likely to repeat and spend as much money as regular customers. What is more, 1/3 of companies using Groupon do not make any money from the promotion at all. Finally, the surge in traffic and transactions due to Groupon can negatively impact relationships with... Read Full Story

Image by xcode via Flickr You come into the office one morning, and within minutes, your stomach starts to get queasy.  You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something is wrong.  Are you losing customers, especially best customers? Before Sales starts grumbling and the CEO comes by for an explanation, look for these 7 key warning signs that you may be losing customers: Revenue is increasing. but margin is falling. One of the key symptoms of a change in your customer base... Read Full Story

We have always known how important it is to communicating well internally in order to help make the sales and operations teams more customer-centric. You can do all the data-mining in the world, develop stunning, game-changing insights, and it can all fall flat in the field (and often does). This analysis, from South Africa, is the first I have seen that quantifies the value of effective internal communications on employee engagement and the impact on the bottom line. In terms of return to... Read Full Story

Image by Mecaniques via Flickr In the past week, three of my clients have told me about an acquisition that their organization was making.  Apparently, this is a good market to add scope and resources, since the some of the industry leaders are turning around and looking to improve their short and long-term profits by buying some of the competition. Would you believe that customer data never came up during the acquisition discussions for any of these clients at all?  Yet a seamless... Read Full Story