Businesses facing skilled staff shortages are turning again to the internet to improve efficiencies. In recent years the increased take up of Broadband internet access and the deeper penetration of e-mail and SMS into common use has made the once elusive goal of web based automation a very real possibility.

The recent implementation a government departments of an online event registration process for example have transformed the way the department manages such events.

Where previous processes traditionally involved fax and mail campaigns over a matter of weeks, the transformation to e-mailed out pdf documents was deemed revolutionary. That was until the idea of sending out html emails linked to intelligent online registration forms was proposed. A recent trial made for a strong case.

The HTML Email was sent to the departments database. Within less than 24 hours the event was filled. Within 72 hours enough registrations were captured to fill the event twice. And all this without a fax or even a keystroke within the department. What previously took several weeks of sending out invtations, making phone calls and gathering data is now reduced to a fully automated invitation, registration and e-ticketing process online.
The result astounded even the most optimistic proponents of the idea. With a projected saving of 20 man hours per event the way forward is very clear.

Think about the restaurant scenario.

If I start looking at menus, I must be hungry. I am qualified.

If I check out your menu, then your restaurant has in some way managed to emit the right values such as good lighting, looks about the right price and the background smell of cooking from the kitchen is great. I am showing interest in your product.

However if you set a person to stand at the front door to tout then I would most likely cross the street. I would never get close enough to smell the cooking or read the menu ( your proposition).

Your e-newsletter is that shop front. You are sending information to people that have expressed interest in having a relationship with you. You present yourself appropriately, clean, clear and direct.

The lesson is don't oversell.

By all means stand back and watch the behaviour of your e-newsletter visitor. Observe what they read and understand where they are coming from. This shoud be the cornerstone of your e-marketing strategy. Watch, learn and utilise the knowledge.

Provide the right content and leave the door open as a clear call to action.

Don't shout! Don't sell. Just be there with the right proposition and your customers will thank you with a purchase.

Using the traditional TV or newspaper ad as your company’s primary marketing tool just won’t cut it with today’s time-poor, low-attention consumer who demands to be entertained and carefully selects their media consumption.

Generation Y, who account for 4.5m of the population, have grown up in front of the internet and a number of studies show this group enjoy ads as long as they can choose if and when to watch them. According to the author of Generation Y: Thriving (and surviving) with Generation Y at Work, Peter Sheahan, this age group wants to “customise their media the way they customise their coffee”.

As a result, there are companies springing up which are paying people to view ads online. Online marketing firm Pure Profile has a database of 150,000 clients who can choose to keep payments for themselves or donate it to charity.

Next month the group plans to launch a ‘reverse search engine’ to allow marketers to target potential customers according to their profile on the database.

The internet is also a popular medium to refresh a tired brand and generate a buzz around a new product launch. Take for example Mitsubishi, which has been seeing the beauty of the web in the lead up to the unveiling of its flagship new model the 380 (to replace the Magna) in October, using it to interact with customers.

In the past few weeks the group has been conducting a teaser campaign online, directing people to its website to register to receive information about the new car via email. More than 5,000 people signed up in the first three weeks—not bad for a company which last year 80% of consumers in a survey believed would shut down its Australian operations.

Or take Carlton Draught, which launched its epic ad ‘A Very Big Ad’ online at the end of July. The company reported that within less than a week the ad was viewed more than half a million times, as far afield as Germany, India and the UK and also generated widespread mentions on blog sites and on programs including The Footy Show, A Current Affair and Weekend Sunrise. That was before the radio, outdoor and point-of-sale ads had even been launched.

In a world where the internet can now be used to send SMS, mobiles send emails and surf the net and TV is interactive, marketers need to integrate marketing across media to ensure their brand stands out.

Amanda Swinburn is the editor of Professional Marketing magazine.
Email: Amanda.swinburn@reedbusiness.com.au

Before going into those reasons I should probably define personalisation – I’m not talking here about simply including the addressee’s first name in a form letter. Customers expect that these days. The personalisation I’m talking about is adapting your business to the needs and desires of each individual customer.

On to the reasons; the first major benefit of personalisation are the significant savings to your marketing budget and increased profitability to your bottom line. Put simply, personalisation increases the effectiveness of your marketing spend. Personalisation targets your marketing at the right customers in the most appropriate way, increasing conversion for the same or less marketing costs.

The second major benefit is meeting customer expectations and reducing customer churn. In today’s multichannel, multicontact marketplace, customers expect companies to understand their needs and know which communication channels they prefer for different products and services. Many customers will become frustrated if you not understand what they want and will ultimately defect to your competitors.

However life wasn’t meant to be easy and personalisation is not only a fundamental component of customer centric strategies, it is also the most challenging to implement. To truly deliver personalisation, a company must be able to record all customer interactions, understand a customer’s preferences and needs, then change the way it does business so that it meets those individual needs. No simple task.

So how do you go about implementing personalisation? A lot of companies have failed in the implementation of a personalisation strategy because they do not have the basic foundations in place. Before implementing personalization, you need to assess if you’re in a position to implement it successfully. The foundations of an effective personalisation program include:

1) Reliable customer data
It is common for organisations to have a lot of customer data - however it is usually inaccurate, outdated or incomplete. As a result, the information is not able to be utilised effectively to analyse customer needs and create customer profiles. A recent Forrester research study (“Personalizing Financial Services”) reported that 68% of the 50 financial services firms interviewed said “getting good data” was the biggest challenge in personalisation.

So the first step is to evaluate the reliability and quality of the customer data to which you already have access. If you don’t have perfect data, and no-one does, don’t despair, all is not lost. Start with what you have by identifying the data sources, determine how often they get updated and find the overlaps in your data sources. Then simply ask your customers for the information that you need to start building customer profiles.

My biggest tip on the data collection front is to use the softly, softly approach: ask your customers a small number of questions in each contact but ask often. Over time you will build a comprehensive picture of each customer.

2) Defined customer’s needs
Only through detailed profiling, will you have the ability to analyze and focus on your customers’ needs and wants in order to deal with customers “where, when and how they prefer.” In profiling customers it is critical to use needs based segments not product based segments.

For example, a bank may change its segmentation from those defined by the number and type of products held to a needs basis. The new segments might include “beginners”, youths with the future potential of high incomes or “empty nesters”, couples with children that have left home, want to invest for their retirement and have the available disposable income.

3) Set objectives and success criteria to monitor progress
As Peter Drucker says, “If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it”. In the long term, the successful implementation of a personalisation strategy will ultimately result in higher profitability for your company. However, short term success metrics need to be created in order to determine whether the implementation is on the right track to achieve the overall objectives.

Every company has a different set of indicators and you need to develop a some that are relevant to you and your business but some examples that show you’re moving in the right direction include:

Has the spend per customer increased?

Have costs to service customers been reduced?

What improvement in customer retention rates have been achieved?

4) Build a cross functional team for implementation
For a personalisation strategy to be successful, it must be consistent and unified across all customer touch points. All areas of the organization need to be involved from the beginning of the implementation to ensure consistent implementation. The first step in this process is to identify and bring together a team of stakeholders and implementers from all the business silos so that together they can define and implement the personalisation strategy.

Personalisation will have a real impact on your business and my last suggestion is a reoccurring theme for me. Don’t try to do it all at once – it just wont happen. Pick some smaller achievable goals and give it a go, you never know how successful you can be until you try.

Contact Adam by email here. Or visit Genroe website for more articles and free whitepaper downloads.

Founded in May 1905, The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland’s centenary is this year. To celebrate the RACQ gave a free car seat to every baby born in Queensland on its birthday, May 31.

Many of the younger parents may not have been RACQ members as the organisation acknowledges that its membership skew in recent years has been toward older members.

In response, the club looked at introducing a youth program for 17 to 20 year olds.

In 2001 RACQ launched it youth program “free2go”. The program offers the first year of membership free for Queensland year 12 students and 17 year-olds, and half price membership for the next 2 years.

In planning the launch of free2go RACQ realised their traditional marketing and communication methods were not relevant to the youth market. To counteract this RACQ turned to an integrated marketing campaign with a greater focus on e-marketing.

The program embodies the idea of freedom and uses the iconic VW Kombi Van to help demonstrate this to students at school visits and events – the major acquisition tools of the program.

But like any membership campaign the program also focuses heavily on retention.

The free2go program is supported by an interactive CD-Rom welcome pack, e-newsletter and a dedicated website www.free2go.com.au, with a range of targeted member benefits such as an interactive driving test, car buying info, competitions, etc.

The free2go program also has a large presence at traditional high school break-up week activities throughout Queensland, and each year the campaign is launched via a viral email.

The result is 100,000 new members for the RACQ since the program commenced in 2001, all of them in the targeted 17 to 20 year age band. Even for an organisation like the RACQ with more than a million members, 100,000 new members is a huge number.

“The internet provides us with an opportunity to speak to these members in their environment – online,” said Executive Manager – Marketing, Stuart Sanders. “The Internet is about retention, relevance and maintaining effective touch points.”

After 3 years of membership free2go members are transitioned across to standard membership packages. It is a critical time. “We concentrate on the life-time value of each member, so retention is a key performance indicator for us,” says Stuart.

The Internet is a key relationship management tool for all aspects of this membership organisation. The RACQ has invested in a very good customer marketing database that is maintained by the marketing department. Highly sophisticated segmentation and analysis takes place resulting is carefully targeted communications.

All members are encouraged to subscribe to Club e-news, and from time to time electronic direct mail shots (eDMs) are sent out when and where relevant.

“The RACQ views the Internet and eDMs as an exciting opportunity,” says Stuart. “But we also realise that it requires organisation and resources behind the scenes to ensure effective communications and the maintenance of the RACQ’s outstanding reputation in the community.”

-- The Written Edge