CRM - November 2007 - (Page 30)

Without customers, marketing efforts obviously fall on deaf ears. But without the right customers, you likely end up with the same results anyway. Almost every business relies on a healthy—and hopefully hefty— customer list; but raising a list in an increasingly customerdriven world has forced marketers to adjust their approach. Consumer information—too much information, in many cases—is available everywhere, so it’s up to the marketing department to sift through the available data and find the best fit between what its company offers and the audience it should be targeting. Businesses often tend to take the easy way out and favor quantity over quality when it comes to building their customer lists. “It’s hard to be targeted,” says Elana Anderson, an independent consultant and former analyst with Forrester Research. “It requires analytic skills to reach the right people.” She adds, “Tactics like TV have a lot more glamour associated with it.” Television commercials also strive to reach a large audience—and when the landscape was dominated by The Big Three networks, TV used to be a fairly definitive form of mass marketing. Unfortunately, the literal meaning of “mass” marketing no longer exists. “If anything, it’s used as a pejorative term,” says Richard Hren, director of product marketing at analytics firm SPSS, “for ‘anything that’s less than finely targeted.’” (The closest relative, he adds, would be buying a general 30 Nar ow MARKETERS CAN’T AFFORD TO TARGET EVERY FISH IN THE SEA. WITH BETTER AIM AND FINELY HONED TOOLS, THEY CAN TAKE MORE TIME TO INVEST IN THEIR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS TO CREATE HIGHLY COMPATIBLE LISTS. BY JESSICA TSAI Net CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | NOVEMBER 2007 CAST list where each recipient is listed as “Occupant.” Still, even this method involves some sort of targeting, such as location.) Today, however, with several hundred cable TV channels— and target audiences for each one growing increasingly narrow— companies have to be selective about where they put their ads. It’s unrealistic for marketers to want to reach everyone, everywhere. Fortunately, they’ve realized that attempts to attract just eyeballs are not only a waste of money and resources, but also a guaranteed way to transform potential consumers into a frustrated audience. But Anderson says the supposedly negative results aren’t entirely the fault of the marketer. “If you look at the way marketing organizations were measured, many marketers, even today, are still measured on overall reach as opposed to conversion of leads,” she says. With those evaluations being counterintuitive to effective marketing strategies, it’s no wonder marketers are facing a serious dilemma. “As long as that metric is in place, marketers aren’t encouraged to be more effective,” Anderson says. Most businesses likely realize they could benefit from targeting but lack the “organizational discipline,” according to Suresh Vittal, senior analyst at Forrester Research. But for companies that are willing to take a step back and invest the time and energy into data mining, analytics, and foresight, experts say, there will be an eventual payoff. While the mental grunt-work of analytics is understandably less appealing than the glitz of TV, A

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - November 2007

CRM - November 2007 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity Have You Caught It? The Mother of Enterprise Information Market Focus: Technology: The Simple Truth about Complex Manufacturing Q&A: Gianforte Talks CRM Required Reading Predicting Profitability Checking the Pulse of the Contact Center Cast a Narrow Net Modern Times, Modern Methods Primos Hunting Calls Snares Efficiency Nailing It Down Moving in on Mortgage Delinquencies RDS Delivery Delivers on Service Secret of My Success Re:Tooling The Tipping Point Pint of View

CRM - November 2007

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