(Direct) Some marketing activities are more onerous than others. Take those of East Ascension Telephone Co. (Eatel), which had been pitching customers various service offers on its billing statements.
But when Hurricane Katrina hit, the Gonzales, LA communications firm stopped promoting its local and long-distance telephone, TV, high-speed Internet and Web hosting services in Ascension and Livingston, LA. Marketing right after the storm not only would've been insensitive, but the U.S. Postal Service wasn't delivering to many of its customers.
The answer was Exstream Software's Dialogue, a personalization application that triggered Eatel's database to suppress mailings to the hardest-hit areas. Customers whose neighborhoods weren't completely washed out received details of out-of-service credits. They also got a note from Eatel saying it was halting late-payment fees since its New Orleans pay-by-mail center was flooded.
Dialogue incorporates data from several formats — a critical factor since Eatel recreated its files from various backups — and does the job fast. By the end of September, Eatel's marketing essentially was back to normal — not to the New Orleans metro area, but to most of its customers, who live west of Lake Pontchartrain and hadn't been affected quite as seriously by the storm.
Eatel again is tailoring customer solicitations based on the products they subscribe to. Using Dialogue, Eatel customizes a 3-inch-by-3-inch area on its monthly statements to tout bundled services or seasonal promotions, such as TV packages during football season.
The space may be small, but there's a lot of data behind it. This summer, Eatel ran a telephone survey that revealed media use and household demographics for a sizable portion of its service area.
During a billing cycle, Eatel may send between eight and 12 unique messages based on actual and likely product use (such as when the number of teenagers in a given household exceeds the home's installed phone lines) or ZIP code selects.
The focus on locking up customers has become more urgent since Eatel began working with Exstream: Cox Communications recently began serving the area and is chipping away at Eatel's customer base.
“We're trying to develop a win-back strategy, and we'll incorporate billing messages into that [plan],” says Sandra Kowalski, Eatel's billing systems manager.
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