Live From List Vision: It’s all about Attitude
Attitude is a key leg missing from a three-legged stool driving successful database marketing.
And while behavior and demographics are the other two important components, without folding attitudinal characteristics into the mix marketers will have difficulty recovering relationships and driving lift and productivity moving forward, J. Walker Smith, president of marketing consultancy Yankelovich Inc., said during a keynote luncheon speech.
The reason for the attitude adjustments?
Consumers just aren’t who they used to be. Their attitudes and behaviors are rapidly changing in profound ways. “Things we took for granted are not going to be true of consumers in the future,” he said.
For example, American shoppers have grown out of the must-have-everything materialist hoarders of the 1990’s, into quality-conscious consumers searching for intangibles like community, family, integrity and security. Smith cited a USA Today study that found that when American’s with a net worth of more than $2.5 million dollars were asked what they would be willing to pay for, the answer was not a garage full of Bentleys but “a place in heaven.” At a price, by the way, of about $640,000. “People have all the stuff they need, they don’t want anymore stuff,” Smith said.
Consumers are also disengaged, distracted and resistant to marketing programs largely because the offers no longer resonate with consumers on their level due to a lack of understanding attitudes, Smith said.
And they are very unhappy with the amount of offers they receive. In fact, a recent study conducted by Yankelovich in partnership with DIRECT Magazine that looked at how consumers think about DM and how that affects their behavior, found that 85%of consumer respondents said they get too much unsolicited mail. But it works, Smith said, because 54% responded to a DM offer in the last six months and 40% made a purchase. “On the one hand people hate direct marketing, and on the other hand they use it in large numbers,” he said.
Another problem lies in the fact that the consumers who respond to DM are the ones who dislike it the most. They don’t want irrelevant offers or to be overwhelmed by solicitations.
With declining marketing productivity ranking as the No. 1 challenge facing DMers, part of the answer to the problem lies in understanding these changing attitudes and applying that data to marketing efforts. “We need to add a deeper understanding of attitudes and motivations and how they relate to behaviors and transactions,” he said.
For example, Newport-news.com was identified as the 16th highest selling e-tailer in a recent survey, a surprise in beating both Lands’ End and J. Crew, Smith said.
He attributed the success to Newport News’ understanding of its customers’ attitudes. The e-tailer shunned the typical display of matching coordinating merchandise (pants with a shirt), to show merchandise that had nothing in common expect brilliant colors.
In the study, purchasers described themselves as smart, confident, creative, well-educated and talented. The biggest difference between purchasers and nonpurchasers was an attitude of optimism. Those with optimism were 30% more likely to purchase through direct marketing in the last six months. Respondents also reported a tie in the No. 1 thing they didn’t want to carry into the new millennium: Jerry Springer (73%) and telemarketing (73%).
“The way to stand out against the blur of messages is to identify ways to engage information about attitudes into database and to resonate more strongly with consumers to get an edge in today’s marketplace,” he said. “If direct marketing doesn’t reflect this trend, marketers will find it increasingly hard to get the same responses they have in the past.”
Yankelovich introduced a suite of lists yesterday, Lists with Attitude, a targeted segment of the population that are likely to share a similar attitudinal or motivational trait. The files include 3.5 million adventure seekers, 11.2 million control seekers and 10 million trend setters.
