| Experts Corner |  Communicating intelligently with existing customers is critical, and marketing spend is heavily weighted towards this pool. But businesses cannot afford to neglect prospecting activity. So, what techniques can businesses adopt to ensure that the search for new customers is both targeted and cost-efficient ?
David Jefferies, Marketing Director, Pitney Bowes
Read more... |
|
| Highlights |
 Getting Off on the Right Foot: Avoiding Common Master Data Management False Starts
Companies wishing to start a master data management (MDM) project may be unsure where and how to begin. After all, MDM is a journey and success or failure at the first step either defines or dooms the further evolution of the project.
by Ravi Shankar, Director of Product Marketing
Read more... | |
|
|
|  |
|
| |
| Abstract: Over the last decade email has not only evolved into an entrenched medium for personal and business communications, it has also been widely adopted as a channel for customer service and support – with 92 percent of Web sites offering email for customer support as of the third quarter of 2005. Apart from Web sites, organizations also provide email contact addresses on their brochures, annual reports, products, packaging, and various other corporate communications. |
| CRM Methology:
CRM Strategy | |
| | |
|
| |
| Author: By Kate Leggett, Director of Product Management & Knowledge Management |
| Company: KANA |
| Doc Type: Article |
|
|
|
| |
| Abstract: I often wonder why knowledge management takes such energy to adopt, while other collaboration methods, such as social networking over instant messaging have taken off like wildfire. |
| | |
|
| |
|
| |
| Abstract: All direct marketing analysis is focused on postcodes. Geodemographic modelling could not exist without postcode geography. Geodemographics is the marketing science based on the “birds of a feather flock together” premise. In other words, people clustered in a small geographical area tend to be of broadly similar means (predicated on their house price/rent), have broadly similar family structures (predicated on housing type) and therefore behave in broadly similar ways, with fairly similar spending patterns. Census data is aggregated to provide an ‘average’ household description for each small postcode area. Of course, because census data is compulsory, it is also confidential, so only these average descriptors are released for commercial usage.
The key factor, for analytical and segmentation purposes, is the number of households represented by the smallest area that each system can express. To give an idea of the disparity of detail that emerges, the lowest postcode level in the UK represents, on average, around 15 households. In other countries, the lowest level can denote anything up to 1,000 households. Therefore any idea of pan-European campaign or CRM strategy integration has to be very carefully thought out.
Nevertheless, once this is understood, a level of cross-border integration can be achieved. The country whose smallest postcode unit has the highest volume of households is taken as the common denominator. Countries with finer postcode units have to be aggregated up so that volumes per unit are roughly equivalent. In this way apples are compared with apples. A number of segmentation companies have developed international geodemographic systems that allow this scale of postcode geography to be compared cross-border.
Analysis then takes place using this common postcode unit size. The findings and segments that are revealed by the analysis cannot, however, be immediately pressed into action. Where a country has postcode units smaller than the common standard described above, then one has to reapply the segments to this finer geography in order to see whether the patterns seen at the larger unit level remain consistent when broken down into smaller units.
If segments are seen to be consistent, then each country can then implement their campaigns. However, although they are using common targeting criteria, they each run their segmentation and selection at the finest (smallest) geographical level that they can, and taking notice of local marketing, data protection and suppression regulations. Response
modelling goes through exactly the same process. |
| | |
|
| |
|
| |
| Abstract: With the world focusing ever more closely on the customer and an improving business outlook encouraging investment in technology to drive growth, companies continue to look at customer relationship management (CRM) solutions as the answer to performance improvement. |
| | |
|
| |
|
| |
| Abstract: A decade ago, ‘customer is king’ was an almost universal corporate mantra, yet one observed more often in the breach than the observance. By contrast, in today’s highly competitive IT markets, products have become more commoditised and, as a result, real differentiation must increasingly come from superior service and support. This means that companies now take this area of their operation seriously and no longer simply pay lip service to customer service quality, right? |
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
by Document Type
