According to results from a recent Target Marketing study, 12% of direct marketers surveyed say they intend to decrease direct mail spend in 2013, the largest percentage decrease of any direct marketing method. With fewer direct marketers devoting spending to this category, how can companies that rely heavily on executing direct mail campaigns compete against other firms and advertising channels that are not as direct mail focused? The following is our recommendation of how to establish—and keep—a direct marketing competitive edge.

Sending the Right Offer to the Right Customer at the Right Time

Establishing direct marketing success does not need to revolve around sending a huge amount of messages across a large number of channels. Rather, gaining the competitive edge involves sending the right offer to the right customer at the right time. Instead of distributing “batch and blast” messages, it’s about being smarter and not focusing solely on volume.

Marketers can increase results by sending fewer, more targeted messages. Survey results from MyBuys and the e-Tailing Group highlight the effects of personalized messages on online shoppers’ purchasing decisions. The survey shows 40% of consumers agree they buy more from retailers who personalize messages across all channels. Two-thirds (66%) of consumers say the retailers they favor offer promotions and merchandise tailored to their past purchasing and browsing behaviors. More than half of these consumers (54%) are willing to share information about themselves for a more personalized shopping experience.

To achieve the greatest results, marketers need to gather and analyze as much data as possible to paint a clear picture of their customers, enabling them to deliver relevant personalized messages that appeal to recipients.

Incorporating Big Data and Marketing Analytics

This is where big data and marketing analytics come into play for direct marketers. Gathering information from social media interactions, ad-clicks, email opt-ins, and newsletter subscriptions, etc. present marketers with an opportunity to paint a portrait of their customers and their interests, needs, and behaviors. The use of data and analytics can enable marketers to determine what people are looking for or what they’re likely to be most receptive to, as a means to deliver the right message at the right time, across all channels or simply the channels the customer prefers.

While direct mail budgets and volumes may be declining, many brands are simply using is more selectively—and intelligently—within cross-channel marketing strategies. For instance, direct mail can be used to reach customers or prospects who Continue reading...

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Today, much of the focus on social business intelligence has revolved around marketing and product groups driving innovation and development, identifying opportunity and measuring efficacy. While the marketing application of this intelligence to drive revenue and innovation can deliver tremendous value to the enterprise, there is another side of advanced social intelligence that is delivering strategic, real-time detection of emerging threats and risks to help protect the corporation.

From boycotts, protests, lawsuits and occupations to extortion attempts, hacks, sabotage and misconduct, the volume, severity and complexity of risks and threats facing corporations has dramatically increased with the exponential growth of social networks and open-source channels.

Today, major corporations across a wide array of industries like food and beverage, media, consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals are using advanced social threat detection to identify a wide variety of daily threats to their operations and organizations in real-time.

Widespread Threats

Leading corporations are under fire on a variety of fronts, from isolated incidents to well-organized initiatives. Threats arise on a regular basis from consumers, prospects, influencers and even competitors on a myriad of levels. Some of the more common social threats facing businesses include:

Employee Misconduct (Human Resources / Corporate Communications / Consumer Relations / C-Suite): Whether illegal activities or violations of corporate policy, this is an area that many Human Resource Departments are tracking to mitigate liability and protect reputation.

Product Incidents (Corporate Communications / Risk / Legal / C-Suite): Factual or not, many companies face online posts from consumers claiming quality issues or defects with a product, often with significant damage claims. These can escalate to extortion attempts against the organization.

Reputational Risk (Corporate Communications / Risk/ Legal / C-Suite): This covers a massive area and with hundreds of millions of individuals broadcasting online, there are countless ways to impact the reputation of an organization, which many smart organizations are tracking on a daily basis.

Legal Threats (Legal / Risk / C-Suite): Whether civil or class action, smart Legal Departments are using social threat detection technology to identify potential legal threats against the organization whether from consumers or counselors.

Industry Issues (Corporate Communications / Investor Relations / Consumer Relations / C-Suite): Whether regulatory, investment or compliance in nature, many social crises can arise from employees, executives, analysts or journalists, some of which may be intentional while others inadvertent.

The multidimensional emerging threats facing an organization are not always isolated incidents. In fact, an increasing amount of serious corporate risk is being Continue reading...

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With social media and the Internet of Things, you won’t have to say ‘sorry’

“By the time the phone rings, there’s already trouble. When that manger is called or this department is reached, it’s because someone is disappointed, angry or stuck. Illness, broken promises or a real urgency have led to this new conversation even taking place.”  –Seth Godin

Seth Godin, author of 14 books, every one of which a best seller, publishes a blog post every morning. Each post offers insight into business practices that help organizations breed loyal customers—the key to a thriving business in today’s world. Today’s post, “Let’s start with “sorry’”, provided advice for organizations on the way they conduct customer service. He explains that by the time a customer calls an organization, there’s already frustration and trouble.

Godin makes a great point, as customers, we know that picking up a phone and working through a phone tree to get a problem solved is frustrating. It’s even starting to feel quite archaic as the rest of the world evolves.

No matter what organization you run or belong to—large, small, public, private, B2B or B2C—one priority should be blatantly clear: your customer service needs to evolve.

As so many have discussed, a key tool that can help evolve customer service is social media. Social media grants companies the opportunity to have one-on-one conversations with customers and potential customers. By listening, we can find out what’s off-putting about a service, frustrating about a product or missing from an experience altogether. Over half of consumers now use social media to directly reach out to companies to report satisfaction, problems and ask questions, says Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media report.

But, with social media being an obvious play for businesses, what’s the next step in differentiating customer service?

In today’s world of cutting-edge technology, we can listen even further. We can do that by connecting products, or maybe more widely recognized, by utilizing the Internet of Things. While many have talked about the Internet of Things, few have identified it as a way to better customer experiences—where it really has the opportunity to shine.

By “listening” to products and enabling them to tell the service team when they’re having problems, it’s very possible to avoid the need for a customer to pick up the phone at all. It sounds very futuristic, but it’s very possible to connect products into business processes now.

One way to Continue reading...

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Bitter rivalries, drama-infused scheming and colossal meltdowns are mainstays of reality TV. Shows like “Survivor,” “The Real World” and “The Bachelor” thrive on high emotion and competition; but what happens when business owners participate in a reality TV show? For Samy and Amy Buzaglo, owners of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, Ariz., their appearance on Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” definitely lived up to the show’s title.

The show probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference for the couple if they’d admitted their mistakes and, most importantly, stayed away from social media. That’s not what happened, though. Instead, the couple quickly took to their company’s Facebook page to denounce everyone who said anything negative about them or their restaurant, fueling the flames of Internet hatred and mockery.

Though they’ve made many mistakes while running their restaurant, Mr. and Mrs. Buzaglo would never have had to deal with the national scrutiny and scorn they’re enduring if they’d followed a few basic rules.

Let go of the past

In the first three minutes of the episode, it’s clear that neither owner believes there’s anything wrong with their restaurant; the only reason they chose to appear on television is to receive the admiration and recognition they believe they deserve from Gordon Ramsay. In their minds, Gordon will come in, find nothing wrong and declare their restaurant the Shangri-La of Arizona cuisine.

After meeting Gordon, one of the first things Amy talks to him about — before he even makes it into the kitchen — is the abuse she feels they’ve suffered from people on the Internet, beginning with a one-star Yelp review in 2010. That’s their first mistake. They now see everyone who criticizes them as a malicious Yelper, intent on destroying their brand’s reputation. The truth is, they’re doing it themselves by clinging to an old argument. If they’d just let go and focus on improving their business, they could earn the respect they desire.

Do right by the people you’ve wronged

The couple has fired more than 100 staff members in the past year — Amy even manages to fire a member of the wait staff during filming. After receiving negative comments on their Facebook page, they threw a tandem temper tantrum. Both events show that when confronted with their failings the couple doubles down and attempts to bully their way through the situation.

Instead of insisting that everyone around them is incompetent, ignorant Continue reading...

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