connecting the dots for nonprofit and for profit businesses throughout New England

When your interaction with a business makes you feel like they know you, doesn’t it feel good?  Doesn’t your loyalty and satisfaction level pop up when, lets say the service center that works on your car every 5k miles knows your name and knows that you prefer a text message to a phone call when your ride is ready.  Doesn’t it make you feel “good” somehow when you go to a restaurant that you’ve only been to a couple of times and are greeted and treated like you’re a regular?  You feel valued because they took the time to recognize you and how you like to interact.

For me, something as simple as my name can really be very complicated. My preference, being called “Kelley”, “Kelley-Sue”, “Mrs. LeBlanc” or “KSL” varies, depending on what I’m doing and where I’m doing it.  If I’m someplace that I feel very comfortable and very familiar, like when I’m with “my peeps”, then I expect to be called “KSL”.  If I am out with a client, or making a significant purchase with a business I don’t frequent then “Mrs. LeBlanc” is appropriate, anything less than that would feel presumptuous and maybe even rude to me.  The key to that statement was “to me“- because I’m not the same as you, and that’s the point. It’s also the point of multi-touch marketing because there is no marketing multi-pass.

You cannot, in one message, or even one campaign of messaging, touch everyone, the way they most prefer to be touched, using one medium.  Yeah we need social, paid search, print, video, mobile and email but more importantly you need to know who likes which medium and when they like it if you’re going to be able to tie it altogether and develop the relationships that will make your prospects feel like customers and your customers feel like family.

Okay, “Multi-Touch Marketing” sounds fab but you’re a small business and you can’t afford to be everywhere all at once. You have a job to do and there are only so many hours in a week. I hear ya, I truly do, so lets make a system that brings people into your fold gently at certain touch points and talk with your client base every few months to see if the system is working.

Part One

I’d recommend starting with a little research project.

- Ask your customers every chance and every way that you can, use your employees, surveys, and third party tools.
- Ask your customers what and how they would like to be able to stay in touch with you.
- Find out what they are wanting to know and what will make them tune out.
- Ask them about how they interact with other businesses?  Do they get text reminders from the dentist before an appointment, would they like to be reminded by text the next time they are due for an appointment, or a customer appreciation event?
- Have they received updates or coupons through Facebook?
- Would they like to subscribe to a newsletter?
- Have they ever seen those Blendtec videos? What did they think about them?

Make getting to know your customer part of the workflow.  Do they like “Mrs LeBlanc” or “Kelley-Sue”, when is their birthday? What do they like, golf or fishing, nascar or soccer? Once you know your folks, you can really begin to interact with them.  Gaining this insight is part of the fuel that helps  you get better results from each and every marketing channel from telemarketing to email campaigns.

In Part Two I’ll talk about incentives and explore some quick tools to manage direct mail and email campaigns.  Part Three I’ll talk about designing the interaction, the life-cycle, from stranger to evangelist.

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