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February 27, 2010
Creating Relationship
Relationship building seems to be a topic at every marketing conference on earth, so I thought I would do a little research, evaluating the activities of some companies I buy from at a business and consumer level.
I started with Lands' End. I had ordered some items in January so I thought that was a good place to start. I have 18 e-mails from them since February 11 - that is an average of more than one per day! By my measure, not a single one is personalized or shows any effort to make me feel like the loyal customer I am. So, "A" for effort, "D" for execution (too much stuff), and "F" for relationship.
Dell was next. We have been buying their equipment at work for years. They send me a generic e-mail nominally tailored to my market segment, plus some sale direct mailers. Weak effort nets a "C-".
How about banks or brokers? For both business and personal accounts, nothing from my local bank, Bank of America or Webster Bank except solicitations for new credit cards. E-trade sends me transactional mail plus constant solicitations for new services. "Epic Fail" on all counts.
Grocery stores, nothing.
AT&T or Verizon for my corporate or personal accounts? Nada.
Cable company? Just my bill.
You get the point..companies are still making little headway cracking the relationship building puzzle. Just like junk mail, e-mails arrive and I throw away 90+% without ever opening since I am conditioned to know more will come the next day anyway. Most companies have very weak efforts at prompting users to move online...and abysmal or non-existent efforts to tailor content.
Building relationships means becoming attuned to people's preferences, interests, likes and dislikes. It means committing to helping them tailor their interactions with your company. For example, look at the MyIBM links on IBM's Web page. They let users create custom bookmarks to speed repeat navigation through their site. They offer lots of tools for specifying interests and they use the information to parse what is communicated. They are not perfect, but their efforts at least create tangible evidence of trying which a customer can appreciate.
Relationship building is a process, not a product you can buy. Every interaction with a customer presents an opportunity to ask a question, gather another small piece of information, and build out the profile further. The process means interpreting, adjusting and adapting as you go. If you are waiting for the perfect toolset, you are missing the point that learning how to gather and use data is not a one-size-fits-all protocol, and that learning what works for you takes time and commitment.
Enough...it's time to go back and delete more e-mails.
Posted by jcioban at February 27, 2010 11:46 AM
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We have read your blog and wanted to let you know that you are able to reduce the amount of emails you receive from us to just one per week. You may reduce you emails by clicking here: http://bit.ly/LEnewsletters. Click on unsubscribe and you will be prompted to choose once a week or unsubscribe. We do not want our newsletter to harm our relationship. Customer service is our top priority at Lands’ End, which is why we appreciate all of our customer's feedback, and value your insights.
Posted by: Lands' End at March 1, 2010 1:46 PM
Thanks. First, your quick reply is a great example of advanced service policies and strategy. Perhaps my comment is a reflection of the challenge. You obviously want to be in someone's Inbox when it is time to buy, and presumably your analytics justify the high frequency which is common with multiple catalog marketers. But as a consumer, I have only so much time to configure e-mails, and since rarely do marketers ask the question about frequency upfront (I know...it suppresses signups), we often get pounded first, then we have to adjust our preferences. Since I need to look that up, I get frustrated first, then act...sometimes to Unsubscribe. I love Lands End and your service policies are to be commended, so I sympathize (and empathize) with the challenge.
Posted by: Jim Cioban
at March 5, 2010 8:13 AM
