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The Tasks of
Database-Marketing:
What is a relationship with the
customer?
Before we can talk about
"building a relationship" - we first of all
should agree upon a common understanding of a
"relationship". As a relationship we
define:
an
interaction between two parties (who perceive each other
as being relevant) with the goal that both sides benefit
from this interaction
The important words in our
definition are:
- "interaction
between two parties"
which makes sure we do not have a
"one-way" dialogue but a real
interaction from both sides, that means: also the
customer should feel the need for activity
- "relevance"
which tells us that it will be imposible to build
a relationship if only one side perceives the
other as not being relevant and finally:
- "both sides
benefit from this interaction"
there should be a clear value for both sides to
decide to participate in the relationship. So it
should not be only the business but also the
customer who should be able to gain some
additional benefit which otherwise would be
hard/impossible to achieve.
You may have noticed that within
the definition we did not only concentrate on a
business/customer relationship, but also include
prospects and even non-customers (since somewhen you
might be able to convert non-customers into buyers).
So why would you want to build a
relationship?
It is a common mistake for even
professional marketers to be too focused on getting new
customers into the businesses portfolio, but neglecting
to keep the existing ones. This is what we call the
"revolving-door effect" - while trying to pull
new customers through the door, the existing customers
walk away. And all this although it seems to be a common
knowledge that on the average it is about 6-8 times more
expensive to gain new customers than selling to the
current portfolio.
So businesses have to invent methods to make customers
stay longer in the portfolio or at least stay in the
customer's (or prospect's) mind. So that if
this person is ready for the buying decision he will
think of your business in the first place. And one
approach is to establish a relationship which makes it
harder for the person to leave since he can obtain
additional benefits if he decides to stay, or build such
strong positive attitude towards the product that
emotions will keep the person from switching.
The vehicles to build or grow such
a relationship are manyfold:
- "thank-you"
letter
telling your customer that you appreciate that he
bought your products is definitely the cheapest
method (but still one of the most effective ways)
to establish a relationship and will certainly
help to reinforce the buying decision.
- birthday cards
celebrate with your customers, but make sure that
you have accurate data!
- gifts
certainly the most widely used way of staying in
the customer's mind
- reminders to rebuy
many researches on customers who left a portfolio
have shown that they often complain about not
having received enough attention from the
business. A simple reminder to rebuy the
corporation's products can help to prevent them
from leaving (and increase sales as well!).
- card of business
anniversaries
let the customer celebrate with you - why not
tell the customer about special days on your
side?
- information on related
products/services
with the goal to extend the customer's lifetime
value by cross-selling related products
- newsletters,
magazines, booklets
which prospects or even only
customers/"members" receive - keep the
people informed about what is going on at your
side. Since you can directly target people
interested in your products/services this will be
cheaper than spreading the information in
advertisement
- loyalty cards
critical for this appraoch is that it may
overemphasize the rebate feature too much
- clubs
certainly a highly sophisticated way of
relationship-marketing, although certainly
requires special management skills to obtain a
distinct positioning from the other ten-thousands
of clubs out there
Your advertising agency certainly
can recommend the proper mix for your business but you
should always consider that relationship costs money and
you will only want to spend if you can expect an
additional profit.
Envolvement - the key to success?
The key issue for a relationship is
simple - just use any opportunity for a contact
with the customer. And if you currently do not have such
a chance, then you may start to invent such events:
- events during the year
St. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day,
Easter, summer closing sale, winter closing sale,
... This list can be extended massively.
- product lifetime
events
if your product/service has a clear lifetime (or
at least you may evaluate such a lifetime) then
you may use events around its life - start of
product (introduction letter), end of product,
several months before/after end of product's life
- lifetime events of the
customer
birthday, marriage, birth of a child, new
appartment/house, passed exam of driving license,
...
Usually you will tie your product
around these events (maybe even extended with some
special features) and try to point out the
usability/strength of it for this particular event. By
doing so you generate:
- a consequent presence in the
customers mind and
- create a different perception
of your product (not only will it be perceived as
a solution for the specific task that the
customer initially bought the product for, but
from a more wholistic point of view - as a
flexible, multi-purpose product)
and this way your chances of being
chosen again will increase dramatically.
Or you may want to choose a
completely different approach and go the "professionalist"
way:
consequently provide additional information about the
usage or professional implementation of your product,
preferably from other real-life customers. You may even
offer pre-built solutions for special cases. By making
your customer as firm as possible with the usage or
handling of your product, it will become increasingly
difficult to change to a product from a competitor.
For example consider the software
industry: many companies have absolutely no copyright
problem with copying their software as long as it is
definitely for private usage only. The idea behind this
is to make the user get used to the software so that
whenever he gets involved into a buying decision this
person will be a lot more likely to vote for that product
which he had already been using successfully.
For building a relationship there
is only one clear target:
=> Make Your
Customers Feel They Are Part Of The "Family"
And
That You Truely Care About Them And Their Problems!
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