I had a chance recently to hear a presentation by Tro Burke, President of Right on Interactive. He discussed the benefits of a using customer data as the foundation of a life cycle marketing strategy.
The concept is so simple, every business owner will understand it, but the execution is tough. As prospects try your product, become customers and even fans, they need different information. Instead of a one-size fits all cookie cutter approach to email marketing, he advocates, segmenting your list, and delivering very appropriate, targeted messages to different groups of clients.
His take-aways were good advice, not just for on-line marketing, but off-line as well
- Clean up your data bas. How many incompelte records do you have? How many inaccurate emails or phone numbers are clutterig your records. Don’t wait till you need information to discover you don’t have it.
- Create segments – Learn more about your customer then just age, income, gender or business size. Separate customers by type of user, how often they use your product, or lifestyle, values and personality.
- Align your Front Office -It is not enough to send custom messages. You must have a system to support these clients when they call.
- Automate the process whenever possible.