On the heels of encouraging business owners and marketers to Know Thy Customer in last week’s post, I stumbled upon a Forrester Research Inc. study from July of last year entitled, “Marketers: Stop The Abuse! Adopt Preference Management.”
It explores the importance of knowing customer preference before building email, direct mail and telemarketing campaigns. In it, Forrester researchers wonder how “80 percent of marketers can claim that customer preference is a key factor in determining which message is sent to customers when only a handful even ask how often customers would like to hear from them.” The report shows that:
* Only 33 percent of marketers capture customers’ preferred method of message delivery;
* Just 29 percent capture the type of content that customers want to receive;
* A mere 12 percent capture customers’ preferred frequency for receiving marketing emails;
* 8 percent capture preference for receiving direct mail and telemarketing calls;
* And just 30 percent of marketers who capture at least one type of preference data take no action based on that preference.
Ouch. Sadly it appears that many marketers are merely guessing at what their customers are thinking, and what we should all be doing is asking!
Do you have a customer database? What data do you track? As your business grows, consider how you can move away from one-size-fits-all marketing towards programs based on relevance and preference. You may never be able to achieve total customization, but I’m willing to bet you’ll learn great insights just for asking.
