I’m setting up a company that will provide specialist creative and execution of highly targeted, highly personalised marketing communications, integrated across multiple media. People have been working in this area for a while, and there are some fabulous case studies. But there aren’t many of them.
Turns out, that they are quite difficult to do.
Well, actually, they are difficult if you are trying to do them the way you do your other campaigns.
If you reorganise your resources and your structure properly, they become a lot more straightforward, and as a result a lot more fun to work on too. I’m aware that this is a challenge for many companies, but I don’t really understand why. All you need is good people, a clear mission, and an open, enabling culture. Which is not difficult at all, is it …
Periodic updates will follow.
A very large and successful global organisation is wasting untold amounts of money, creating ill-will amongst its customers and prospects, and helping to perpetuate the bad news stories about poorly-targeted marketing. And it would be so easy to fix.
It’s good practice and common sense, when preparing a direct mail campaign, to check the mailing data against reliable suppression files to remove known goneaways and deceased records. There is a cost for running the suppressions, but it’s substantially less than the cost of producing the pack and then posting it unnecessarily.
In this case though, the marketing department does not hold the budget for postage. They are responsible for the creative and production costs, but not the cost of getting it to the consumer. If they run a suppression, then the cost comes off their marketing budget. So guess what, they don’t run suppressions, because it means they can ‘do more marketing’.
I hardly know where to begin.
They are deliberately sending out marketing communcations to some people who definitely don’t live there any more. They are perpetuating all the bad news stories about mailing dead people. They are wasting the company’s money and its reputation.
The company is getting exactly what it measures – more cost-effective campaigns … as long as you measure ‘cost-effectiveness’ as the cost of production, not cost of response, cost of reputation, or cost to the customer service centre of dealing with the fall-out from the distressed bereaved.
What sort of culture must there be in an organisation that prevents the marketing, data or customer service team from doing the right thing? What sort of message does this behaviour give to the rest of the business?
I wish I knew how to find the person in this organisation who has the authority to put it right.