CRM - October 2008 - (Page 38)

how much marketing is TOO MUCH? WHETHER MARKETERS SEND MESSAGES ACROSS MULTIPLE CHANNELS OR JUST ONE, EVERY CUSTOMER HAS A LIMIT. THE TRICK IS KNOWING WHERE THAT LIMIT IS by Jessica Tsai T H E A L A R M G O E S O F F and you hear cats meowing a tune that sounds vaguely like the Bee Gees. In the bathroom, the side of your toothpaste entices you to try a new orange-malibu-jazz! flavor. Reading the morning paper, pages of coupons from your pharmacy spill out. Heading out, you step on a take-out menu from a local restaurant. Then you catch the gleam of a smile out of the corner of your eye—it’s your local news anchor, zooming by on the side of a bus. Welcome to the modern marketing machine. Experts estimate that the average person gets beaten up by between 1,600 and 6,000 advertising messages daily, but consumers have learned to defend themselves with a simple tactic—they’re ignoring you. In the past, marketing had one tangible constraint: the cost.“Basically, you marketed as much as you could spend,” says Andrew Hally, a vice president of product marketing and strategy at Unica, a provider of enterprise marketing management software. Budget is still a concern, but many marketers are disillusioned by the availability of low-cost channels such as email and Google’s YouTube. This media proliferation is vying for an ever-limited mindshare—and while quality is supposed to trump quantity, no one really knows. Technology has empowered customers just as it’s enabled marketers.“At first they ignored you. Then they blocked you. Now they turn on you,” Hally says. Marketers are clever, though—like water, they seep into any available nook. Next time you watch local news, notice that commercials often air simultaneously on a split screen—rendering remote controls useless. Digital video recorders (DVRs) pose a bigger challenge. Leichtman Research Group reported last year that 20 percent of households used a DVR, up from only 2 percent in 2003. And DVR growth is projected to reach 50 percent by 2011. But customers aren’t stopping there. Bother them enough and they’ll get the law on their side. (See sidebar, “Stop! In the Name of the Law!,” page 41.) TOO MUCH INTERNAL CHAOS Alterian, a marketing solutions vendor, recently released a survey of 852 marketers in North America and the United Kingdom, 69 percent of whom use three or more applications to store and analyze their marketing and campaign data in their daily operations; 20 percent use 38 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | OCTOBER 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - October 2008

CRM - October 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality�Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Sprinting Toward Disaster? SAP�Retains Market-Share Lead in�CRM A�Week of Strong Customer�Service CRM�on Twitter Build a Good Event and They Will Come Required Reading There's No Place Like Home The New Breed of CRM�Consultant The Price is Right...You Hope How Much Marketing is Too�Much? The�Sweet Smell of High-Quality�Service The Next Act! For An Acquisition Some Stories Never Get Old CRM�Eases the Pressure For WIKA�Instruments Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - October 2008

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