CRM

• Data & Analytics

  Search Tips: How You Can Reach a Shifting B-to-B Mindset

  While it is true a great B-to-B salesperson is invaluable, Google and other prominent search engines have made finding new and/or unique suppliers much more efficient, thus altering the way many B-to-B buyers purchase items in their private lives

• Data Driven ROI

  Marketers Overlook “Buried Treasure” In Unredeemed Loyalty Points

  Marketers issued $48 billion in loyalty currency, such as points and miles, during 2010. If patterns hold, customers will redeem only $32 billion of them.

  Don’t count that $16 billion in breakage–unredeemed currency–as a win for marketers, however. Laying right alongside it in the till are missed opportunities to strengthen relationships with customers, as well as generate additional sales from them, as loyalty currency is rarely redeemed without additional purchases.

• Data Driven ROI

  Quick Response Codes Bring Diners Back To Fire + Ice

  Some businesses can survive with a once-a-year customer visit pattern. Swimwear vendors and Christmas tree sellers come to mind.

  Restaurants have a harder go of it.

  “We were considered a destination restaurant,” says Rafael Barbosa, marketing manager for Fire + Ice, a small chain of grilled-at-your-table eateries. “Bachelorette parties, birthdays. We weren’t considered a restaurant you would go to every week, or twice a week.”

  As it happened, even as little as twice a month would have been an improvement.

• Data Driven ROI

  Marketers Ponder The Future of Credit and Debit Card Rewards

  Now that the economy is seeing the other side of the recent recession, financial institutions are starting to wonder about the future of credit and debit card reward programs.

  Several factors are converging to prompt this question. Customers remain stressed economically, while government regulations—including those on fees credit card companies charge retailers—are increasing. With the mortgage and foreclosure crisis still in full swing and consumers cutting up credit cards in favor of cash, banks are struggling to negotiate success as they rebuild their reputations and relationships with customers.

  Because banks are under pressure, cutting the costs of reward programs is top of mind. Some of them treat loyalty efforts as costly burdens simply required to play in the space.

• Data Driven ROI

  Service Data Guides Sullivan Tire’s Direct Mail Efforts

  Marketers who don’t get enough information from recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) analysis can consider adding a fourth metric to their calculations: Tire tread measurements.

  Granted, this metric will only yield useful data for a limited number of companies. But Sullivan Tire Co. Inc. is one such company, and when tires on a customer’s car are worn down to depths 3/32nds of an inch or so, its individualized direct mail efforts hit the ground running. During 2011, Sullivan Tire will expand the mail program fueled by this and other service data, sending out 500,000 pieces, according to database manager Mike Panarelli.

• Data & Analytics

  Detailed Matchbacks Offer Stronger B-to-B Purchase Data

  For marketers, using data to determine which marketing communications contributed to generating a purchase helps guide media decisions. But capturing and incorporating these influences is difficult for marketers of all stripes—those focusing on consumers as well as industrial targets. And within the business-to-business arena, there are additional complexities.

  It is easy—and therefore tempting—to attribute a sale either to the last outreach effort, or the one which actually results in a sale. But there are several hazards in using these methods. The first is that electronic solicitations often result in immediate sales, or have built-in sales tracking mechanisms. As a result, marketers tend to over-credit their impact on sales, while underestimating offline efforts’ import.

• Data Driven ROI

  Microsoft Triples Response Rates via Database Marketing

  A new database marketing model has helped Microsoft lift prospecting email and telemarketing response rates by as much as 300%.

• Data Driven ROI

  Crabtree & Evelyn Revamps Loyalty Program, Boosts Direct Mail Use

  Bath and body products retailer Crabtree & Evelyn is hoping an aggressive customer contact strategy and an updated loyalty program will result in the sweet smell of success.

  At the heart of its re-energized customer focus is “Platinum,” a loyalty program the company launched just over a year ago to replace its “Preferred” scheme. For a five dollar entry fee, members received 20% discounts on merchandise during the first week of each month.

• Data Driven ROI

  The Goldilocks Rules of Data-Driven Targeting: Getting it Just Right

  Goldilocks’ experiences—particularly with too hot/too cold and too big/too small—are meaningful when it comes to using information in marketing. Given the nuances of data-driven targeting, the pressure is on all of us marketers to get it just right.

• Data Driven ROI

  Analysis Of Unredeemed Loyalty Points Offers Customer, Marketing Insight

  There is information in inaction, if marketers know how to analyze it: Segmenting and examining customers based on their activity and unused loyalty program currency can offer insight into communicating with them and building their value. It can also help stimulate redemption.

  This is a double bonus: Not only do customers interact with the marketer, building affinity, but it helps with the books: Loyalty program points are often kept on corporate accounting sheets as liabilities.

  What are the keys to looking at unused program currency? “The first question marketers should be asking is why their members are keeping the points,” says Jill Goldworn, president of The First Club, which offers low-point redemption alternatives for companies running loyalty schemes.