Junk mail dead - premature?
Many companies are continuing to send direct mail to large audiences who have not opted in to recieve it.
Read this if you want convincing about what the ‘average’ consumer in the UK does with it.
And if you want to see the future do some research into VRM. Vendor Relationship Management or the ability of the consumer to pre-select the brands they will allow to communicate with them.
Definition: VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties.
CRM systems until now have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for both vendors and customers — in ways that don’t require the former to “lock in” the latter.
The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.
For VRM to work, vendors must have reason to value it, and customers must have reasons to invest the necessary time, effort and attention to making it work. Providing those reasons to both sides is the primary challenge for VRM.
Be scared, be very scared if you company is a heavy DM user and has not started to work towards an adapted / altered database marketing strategy - your world is dying a slow, lingering death and your brand’s marketing budget will go with it.
Learn more by subscribing to the Harvard ProjectVRM updates; James Burke does a good summary here and Read Adriana’s blog (link is to all her VRM articles). And if you want to move towards database marketing using a cost-effective, laptop based database package, have a look at Honeycomb.
Tags: CRM, DataCentre, Honeycomb software, rebecca caroe, VRM