Reaching the right customer at the right time

Businesses have the ability to do just that by harnessing the power of effective campaign management.

Internal company processes

In the past, direct marketing campaigns would launch many event or calendar driven campaigns each year, and supplement them with other campaigns when the marketing team believed the time to be right. This whole approach was more about internal company processes rather than the true needs and desires of the business' customers, and often resulted in customers getting annoyed and feeling spammed with irrelevant offers and information.

Much in the same way, analysts would select customers for these campaigns by employing very basic selections or exclusions such as choosing groups from certain locations, or excluding only the customers they knew had already bought the product. Needless to say, this 'mud against the wall' approach was less than successful, with a response rate of only a percent or two.

Targeted campaign

Effective campaign management tools offer a very different outcome. A highly targeted campaign allows your business to boost sales and increase profitability by focusing its attention only on high revenue-generating potential and existing customers. A campaign management solution will combine the best of your human resources knowledge and experience, with predictive analytics, to accurately predict customer behaviour and establish the customers most likely to go for an up-sell, cross-sell or retention offer.

Campaign management tools target your clients' specific needs and likes to ensure they are presented with a compelling offer.

This is done by first establishing the answers to some basic questions, namely who should be contacted, what should be offered, when the offer should be made, and how it should be made. In this way, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of customers can be targeted with the right message, over the right channel, at the right time.

Meet the requirements

A good solution must be able to meet certain requirements. It must be able to track individual customer preferences, and be able to design, execute, and measure communication strategies across all of the businesses' channels, speedily and effectively.

In addition, it should develop an ongoing conversation with your customers and potential customers, by using a complete history of all interactions, for example offers presented, context and campaign details, and whether the customer responded or not.