Customer Love is Good Business
The eMail messages keep rolling in response to my thoughts on corporate love. There are two general themes expressed so far.
First , that it is too idealistic to execute in the real world, but we should at least keep trying because it is the right thing to do. As you might guess, I believe it is the right and moral thing to do. It is also good business. My premise is that if we care deeply about our customers as individual people, we will be more effective at serving their needs, at delivering value that they want and will pay a premium price to get. That is the promise of contextual marketing. Because it is good marketing, we should be guiding our companies in this direction.
Second, several of you are saying: “Good idea, Dale. But marketing cannot get that personal until it reaches the individual sales rep who is talking with an individual customer.â€? What this tells me is that you have not yet seen how one-to-one marketing communications is becoming a reality. Mass marketing has great difficulty in delivering “corporate love” in anything but high-level corporate ad and pr messages. But mass marketing is not where the future is headed. Personalized, one-to-one contextually relevant messaging is where it is all headed.
Let me share a hypothetical example for how you can use marketing communications to get down to the individual level where you can demonstrate to customers that you care about them. This is an example of using your website to listen to individual customers and respond to them in a more contextually relevant manner … one that shows your love.
1. You conduct an online survey in your customer eNewsletter and on your website to discover the major kinds of pains your customers are dealing with.
2. Then post a promotion with multiple offers that address or reveal each of the major pains that your customers might be experiencing … offer a series of whitepapers or checklists that help them in achieving these primary objectives.
3. Be helpful before you try to convince they that your product is the best thing since sliced bread.
4. Capture which offers they select and record this information in the customer profile.
5. Eventually this profile reveals their needs or interests and you can focus additional marketing resources that are contextually relevant to helping the customer, on building trust and mutual respect and eventually on winning the customer … all because you cared enough to go the extra mile in helping (in loving) the customer.
Compare this contextual marketing with traditional marketing. A lead gen mailer is sent out, the prospect replies and your sales rep calls for an appointment to tell them how wonderful your company is. No listening. No customizing. Because the attitude is the customer is there to serve the company.
Big difference.
Please share other examples — real or hypothetical — for how you can deliver corporate love to individuals.
3 comments
2/2/2005 at 4:22 pm
Ashley_m_c
I think I was one of those who said you could not get that personal until you reach the individual sales rep, but after reading your example, I definitely see what you are saying.
In your example you say that they show corporate love by tailoring the information and marketing towards each individual customer depending on their needs and preferences. By putting the extra time and effort to cater to the customer, you are showing them love.
Your example made me think of something I have heard of before in another class. Don’t some companies use animated figures on their website to help direct the customer to what they need? I can’t remember the exact example I have seen, but the goal was to make the website more consumer friendly.
Another example I thought of is the clothing websites that allow you to enter your specific proportions and create a model of yourself. Then you can actually try the clothing on the model and see how it would look on you. I know Lands’ End does this and I think others have caught on to the idea as well.
I’m not sure if these examples are really what you are looking for, but I think they at least show they are trying to cater to their customers.
2/2/2005 at 7:56 pm
Helon B
Dale,
As I read your post I kept thinking about what my teacher from Case Studies told us about individual channels. She told us that in any situation one-to-one channels are the most effective in building and maintaining relationships with publics. She was talking about from the PR aspect, but the idea also applies to marketing. I agree that a company can better serve its customers if they understand what needs the customers have and the best way to do that is to communicate on a personal level. Your post gave helpful ideas and tips for ways to do just that.
2/3/2005 at 9:24 pm
Lara
Dale,
I think corporate love is a great technique to create customer loyalty. I remember a story my teacher was telling me about Saturn and how they are very customer oriented and focus a lot of time on their customer love. He mentioned that at a company gathering almost 70 Saturn customers attended. Saturn has created a great image for their company. I think that becoming personal with customers if even through surveys to figure out customer complaints can do nothing but better a company’s image and future.