News & Opinions

5 Ways to Keep It Real with Real-Time Marketing

Instant delivery of marketing messages to customers triggered upon customer behaviors in real-time such as page views, clicks, social interactions, location, etc., is at the bleeding edge of today’s marketing tech. Watching all activity generates a lot of data that might indicate customer preferences and readiness to buy something.  But as many marketers have found… Read More

How good are you at keeping customers?

When we talk to customers and prospects about the challenges they face when marketing to their current customers, the issue that never fails to surface is customer retention.  Yet when we press for more details, we are confronted by a paucity of analysis, a struggle to even size the problem, and more often than not,… Read More

How big is your one-time buyer problem?

What’s your gross margin on a typical first purchase? Is it less than your acquisition cost for a new customer?  If your answer is yes (and that’s most companies), you have a one-time buyer problem. Getting the second sale and solidifying a buyer as a profitable customer is one of the toughest jobs in selling…. Read More

The four numbers every company needs to know and that most don’t

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) — The sum of the future money you will get from a customer. Too many companies make the mistake of thinking they can calculate one number for their entire customer population. It’s more useful and accurate to segment a population and then calculate a different CLTV for each segment. This is… Read More

A ‘must-read’ report for savvy marketers

Aberdeen Group has just released a new research report by David White, “Predictive Analytics – Driving Sales with Customer Insights”. I think this is a ‘must-read’ for any marketer struggling to improve revenue. Right off the top I’ll make full disclosure: White’s case study for existing customer marketing describes the work Loyalty Builders is doing… Read More

Recognizing the elephant in the room

How the best customer analytics solution can fail if you ignore what it’s telling you. Many marketers are ignoring the biggest problem with their existing customer analytics based marketing, their large number of one-time buyers. For most catalogers and online merchants, that number is often 50% or more. Are they the biggest segment in your… Read More