Loyalty Builders Marketing Blog

The secret to cross-sell

Mon, 05/13/2013 - 08:13 - Mark Klein

As more marketers become aware that successful cross-sell requires knowing what products to offer to each individual customer, the question everyone now wants answered is “How do you do that?” If you send out individualized direct marketing campaigns emphasizing cross-sell, how do you determine what products to offer to each customer that they have not previously purchased?

A key part of the answer, the secret to cross-sell, is to build an affinities table similar to the one shown below.

Email’s cheap. But ya gotta love the postman!

Thu, 04/04/2013 - 14:10 - Mark Klein

When companies choose media for direct marketing campaigns, their knee jerk media choice is usually email. It costs so much less to create and deliver than a letter, brochure, or postcard. The process is painless and usually produces results that make the boss happy. So, what’s not to like?

Mail can outperform email

Email is good. But postal campaigns can be better. At Loyalty Builders, we oversee direct marketing campaigns for our customers every day. As we help both B2B and B2C companies, we often see individualized postcards out-perform email. Of course there’s no “always”. And email is sometimes the better choice.

Escape Information Poverty

Fri, 03/01/2013 - 09:46 - Mark Klein

Too many times I’ve heard marketers complain that “I’m data rich but information poor”. They’ve got transaction data, clickstream data, survey data, demographic data, you name it. There’s no doubt they have many data points for each of their customers.

Despite these troves of data, the most common direct marketing campaigns are what we call “spray and pray,” a ‘one size fits all’ approach where all recipients get the same message. This approach ignores the wealth of available data.

You've Got Mail

Thu, 01/31/2013 - 10:20 - Mark Klein

When my wife and I recently re-watched Nora Ephron’s 1998 iconic romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, I was struck by how much has changed about email since that movie was released. Back then, receiving an email was a big deal, and the AOL chime notice when it hit your inbox was a recognized part of pop culture.

Attention Must Be Paid

Tue, 12/11/2012 - 14:56 - Mark Klein

Hearing is to listening as looking is to seeing: the difference within each autonomic-conscious pair is attention. For marketers trying to get customers to listen to their message, to see their offer, to act on their direct marketing communications, the first step is to get that customer to pay attention. In today’s attention economy, that’s not an easy task.

It’s not like attention is something new. My regular readers know I spend time training and competing with our poodle Charley. The key to competition success is getting Charley to pay close attention to my commands, to keep his eyes on my face and ignore the smells on the ground. When I get his full, undivided attention we come home with blue ribbons.