SOI Direct Mail: Multichannel Management:
David Pogue, the technology columnist for The New York Times, recently made an observation that really rang true with me.
He wrote: "Things don't replace things; they just splinter. [...] TV was supposed to kill radio. The DVD was supposed to kill the Cineplex. Instant coffee was supposed to replace fresh-brewed. But here's the thing: it never happens. [...] Things don't replace things; they just add on."
This insight has powerful implications for the printing industry and, in particular, for customer communications.
The simplest days of customer communications, when a letter, phone call or trade show booth were the only available channels, are ancient history at this point. Today, businesses can communicate with customers by phone, mail, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, mobile apps, text messages or over the Internet. In fact, customers expect the companies they do business with to communicate through all these channels and, more recently, are demanding the power to choose which channel to use for communication based on the customer's needs at any particular moment.
As the world shifts from purely physical communications to increasingly digital communications, companies must respond. The number of channels to manage is increasing, competition is more fierce and marketing budgets are, at best, flat. These conditions beg for a system that will reduce costs and simultaneously create more engaged customer relationships. Any company can build its own version of that very system by following four important steps.
Step One: Recognize the emergence of a new, important discipline—Customer Communications Management (CCM). There is nothing as valuable to a company as a satisfied customer. Not only are satisfied customers more loyal to your brand and products, but the cost of keeping them engaged is far lower than the cost of acquiring new customers. I believe it is imperative for companies to invest in communications that help keep customers engaged.
There are five key elements to CCM, and they all work together as a system to create positive customer interactions. The elements include:
• Conducting a solid analysis of your current customer database to recognize distinct segments and their buying patterns
• Preparing customized communications to each customer or segment based on this analysis
• Distributing these messages through physical, digital or both channels
• Managing the inbound responses to your communications
• Analyzing customer responses, which you then feed back into your overall customer database to enhance your next round of communications.
It may sound complicated, but it is a set of activities that most companies already are engaged in today to varying degrees. Few, however, are seizing the opportunity to make CCM a strategic advantage over their competitors.
Step Two: Identify your strengths and weaknesses in CCM, and make a plan to improve. Some companies have excellent customer data, but don't know how to leverage it for insights. Others are very good at managing inbound responses, but lack the ability to create customized outbound messages. Still, others have a multitude of communications channels, but have not yet tied them together strategically so they appear as "one company" to the consumer.
Data is often the "root of all evil" for companies. The quantity of data isn't the problem. It is that most of the data is unclean, has been duplicated and needs to be enriched to make it more valuable. The term data also now includes geospatial data, which can provide fresh insights into customer behavior based on location, demographics and other specialized industry information that makes it more valuable.
It's important to understand how sophisticated an overall CCM system is, and where it may need to be improved. One source of insight is your customers, who will be more than happy to tell you the ways in which they feel your communications can improve. Take the time to ask them how they want to interact with you. Likely, many of them will prefer less expensive and less cumbersome channels. That is an opportunity to save money and create more engaging relationships with your customers.
Step Three: Scan the marketplace for companies that can help you meet, or exceed, your customers' expectations. Thanks to the lightning-fast pace of technology innovation, companies have a dizzying array of choices to make when it comes to enhancing their customer communications. It can be hard to know where to begin.
One piece of advice is to try not to stitch together your own solution in a piecemeal fashion. CCM, at its best, is an end-to-end, integrated set of activities that combine customer data analysis and profiling, physical and digital document creation, multichannel distribution and multichannel response management with response analysis. It is important to work with technology companies that have expertise across these different areas, and that can help integrate them so they work together and reinforce each other. This approach helps with accountability and reporting, and reduces finger-pointing among different suppliers.
Also, stick with companies that are going to be around for the long term. If you purchase your CCM solutions "à la carte," you increase the risk that at least one of your suppliers will disappear or discontinue support for its products. You should work with large, established suppliers that have a strong track record, good financials and an integrated approach to CCM.
Step Four: Identify solutions that are as easy for your customers as they are for you. The potential for multichannel CCM is very exciting. But beware, there are likely to be many failures there before successes. The failures are most likely going to fall into the trap of being designed for the ease, convenience and benefit of the companies, without much thought to the actual lifestyle of the busy consumers who are supposed to be the end-users. This is understandable because it is the mailers who will pay for CCM solutions, and will therefore disproportionately influence their design.
Nevertheless, real success will only come when solutions enter the marketplace that are as easy for consumers to use as any iPhone or iPad application available today. These solutions will be free to the consumer, have world-class security built into them and give consumers the convenience of single-password sign-in to access all their accounts. For mailers, the best systems will allow them to keep their own brands front and center, as well as providing them the chance to generate customized special offers or other marketing information that leads to greater sales and loyalty from their existing customers.
An integrated physical/digital CCM strategy offers significant rewards to any company that crafts one. At its best, superior CCM can help attract new customers, onboard them more effectively, retain existing customers and identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for them based upon knowledge of customer past purchase history and similar customer purchases.
That's a powerful payoff that anyone can get excited about.
About the Author:
Murray D. Martin is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Pitney Bowes Inc., a multi-billion global leader of integrated mail and document management solutions headquartered in Stamford, Conn. Pitney Bowes helps organizations manage the flow of information, mail, documents and packages, delivering technology, service and innovation to more than two million customers worldwide. Under Martin's leadership, Pitney Bowes has produced major technological innovations in the mailing industry including a number of active patents with applications in a variety of markets such as printing, shipping, encryption and financial services.