Creative Agency Secrets

Customer data has been an important part of the advice I give most of my clients for a long time - since I worked for Peppers and Rogers I have tended to suggest that it be called Customer Relationship Management or CRM.  

But that time is now moving into the past.  The future is about 'flipping' the control of customer data out of the hands of the corporation and into the hands of the individual.  

You and I both know that many organisations have our personal data - whether it is just logins to websites or fully comprehensive bank account and credit card details from vendors we use online and offline.   Do you have a complete list of these companies and websites?  Betcha don't.  I certainly don't.

 And so when something changes - you move house, for example or you decide that you no longer want your data to be held by a particular organisation or group of companies. you have to write individually to each to 'unsubscribe' or change or amend your customer data profile.  Which is frankly a right royal pain in the bum.

Early days yet - but a possible change is for you to hold all the data about yourself and for companies and organisations that want to have a relationsihp with you to come to a private place online that you control and manage and to"collect" your data there for their purposes - with your permission.  And so if you change something, you update in ONE place.  And if you change your mind about a company and you no longer want their newsletter, you go to one place and change their permissions - maybe letting them know automatically in the process why you did or what they did to make you alter your view of them and their brand.

Sounds good?

It is called Vendor Relationship Management.  VRM.  

And the principles are still being worked out by some of the leading minds of the online age - Doc Searls and Adriana Lukas.  I am working with Adriana on the London end of the project.  

If you want to learn more, read this slide deck from Doc updating his "Cluetrain Manifesto" view of the world 10 years on… and explaining some of the VRM principles as he sees them

And Adriana's One pager about VRM post which states her future-gazing view of the future.

If you are a business here's a possible future for you

Imagine having your customers share with you what they like, want and
think of you. At the moment, you are dependent on market research,
which is like looking through a keyhole at the rich ‘user-generated’
world. Imagine being able to relate to your customers, consistently and
persistently, where they contribute directly to your supply chain where
it makes sense - whether it is R&D, product design, distribution
and marketing. Interaction with them is modular, intuitive and
user-driven freeing much of your resources spent on marketing and
transaction cost.

And if you are a customer here's a possible future for you

The ability to manage and analyze your data will give you better
knowledge about yourself, the kind of knowledge that is the holy grail
of most companies’ customer data management. The awareness of your
preferences, understanding of your needs will help you to articulate
them easier and strengthen your position with vendors.

If you want to learn more about what you can do for VRM and what VRM can do for you - come to this workshop that I'm helping to run 

Tuesday April 15th, the theme is VRM and how it addresses (and
hopefully redresses) the imbalance between individuals and their
relationships with vendors, companies or institutions.

What a disappointment.  I was driven to the O2 website by an advert for their new Bluebook service.

Curious, I watched the demo  and so I signed up.  Seemed a nice idea to keep all you sms updates, photos and phone numbers backed up.  

and then having gone through all the registration process, received a text with a unique code I got the immortal message 

You must be an O2 customer to use this service.

Thanks for your interest in Bluebook. The service is exclusive to O2
customers. The easiest way to become an O2 customer is to visit an O2
shop or click here to shop with O2 on line. (link to http://shop.o2.co.uk/shop/)

You may also try the following options:

• Go back to the previous page
• Go to the O2 Homepage http://www.o2.co.uk/
• Go to the O2 Sitemap http://www.o2.co.uk/sitemap

How blooming irritating is that?  you do the whole registration - they could have told me before that it was only for O2 customers.

I reckon that opening the service up for non-O2 customers would draw a much wider 'net' around potential customers who then might be persuaded to swap carriers because of the fantastic add-on services like Bluebook offered. 

Why is this good?

1. Offer a new service that other providers don't yet offer
2. Show prospective customers the 'inside' line on how wonderful it is to be an O2 customer
3. Create a uniquely receptive audience to switching offers
4. Undermine offers from other carriers by direct communication with their customers

Oh goodness, when will big brands realise that offering something online / digital for free to a wider audience than your own customers gives you an unique opportunity.  But they threw it away. 

And so if you are in a competitive marketplace, can you set up a service to attract new customers who might be persuaded to defect from the competition because of the excellent service you offer (particularly if the net cost to you is low) this could be a winning strategy.

Go for it.

Is it possible?  Can we now use VOIP as a tool for researching and finding new prospects?

I have been using Skype for  a couple of years now and it’s a great way to keep in touch with customers who are abroad using SkypeOut and to have extended conversations with UK customers / colleagues for free.

But the lack of a "directory enquiries" function makes this a poor substitute for other resources.  The SkypeFind function is supposed to be for ‘local’ businesses.  This strikes me as inadequate in today’s global reach www world.  Why would I use Skype to find a local business?  There are great sites  like Upmystreet.com for that in the UK.  However, I have, naturally listed Rowperfect and Rebecca Caroe on the off-chance that someone uses this to search for some rowing or sculling equipment or a business development consultant!

Now, a "SkypeCast" is definitley a possibility for some public speaking / seminar / workshop type focus if you can set it up so that a decent number of people sign up to listen at a fixed time.  But this requires good marketing and PR support, much the same as you would do for any marketing event.
[However, at the time of writing, most of the Skypecasts going on were definitely pornographic!]

Now I can see SkypeCast being a good CRM tool in order to offer insight and access to a close-knit group of key customers as part of a relationship management programme.  However, as a participant in webinars and even internal conference calls over the years, I find that the number of people who actually participate is much much lower than the number who sign up to join in.  If you do run an event like this that has a high drop-out rate, always offer people the opportunity to download slides or a summary of the conversation after the event if they missed it.

Any views out there?  Anyone using Skype as an active part of their biz dev?

Hung out at the Salesforce Christmas event last night. ….. Entertainers at the door were probably the best thing there.

But, once inside I met a fellow Tideway Scullers member who now lives in SF and we had a great chat about when they last won the Britannia and what Hugh Williams and Rolf Munding are doing now…… never heard of him before and gave him my card but forgot to take his… think he was called Kirk…

PS why were Google giving out biros?

I met Simon Gill from LBi earlier in the week.  Great conversation.

He has a new theory about digital marketing.  THere are two parallel universes happening online:

1. The "marketing" web
2. The "real" web

the former is just stuff done for the purpose of marketing.  A brand site, a cunning support microsite for a campaign.  Nice but no reason to return or bookmark.

THe latter is where the future of one to one and "conversational" marketing is going.  It is warm, compelling and creates a reason for the customer to return and to possibly ‘get involved’.

And it seems Dave Birss is onto the same track.

Ever since working for Peppers and Rogers Group in the mid 90s, I have been waiting for the day when brands can have individual relationships with their customers.  And the technology to enable it.

MySpace’s Jay Stevens spoke at the Forrester Conference in Barcelona [thanks Jeremiah] here is his slide

Social networking creates influence which is strongest amongst friends.  Therefore social media must be in your media mix using ‘friending’ [ghastly phrase] to promote and recommend thus enabling the brand to start an ongoing relationship with the customer.

Bingo!

I recently met the InHouse team and they told me that they’d secured an interview with my old boss, Don Peppers for their InHouse Village site.

Well, Don is a key man in my life for having jumped onto cluetrain very early and added the dimension that explained the future of direct marketing was integrated…. and that it needed to be supported by a new principle treat different customers differently.
His methodology for CRM was 4-steps: Identify your customers, Differentiate them by value and need; Interact with them and learn; and Customise your offering to their needs.

in his interview (published in short chapters…. two are up right now), he has developed his theme somewhat.

Key quotes

You can’t un-Google yourself
If your dialogues with customers don’t result in spontaneous replies from the customers - they are not authentic [he fails to add that this is PR not dialogue and that you might examine whether your offering is hitting the ’spot’ with customer needs
The key brand trait today is TRUST.  A company should always act in the interest of its customers and not just in pursuit of profit. [nicely put - and a key part of WOM online]
When considering which brands your agency wants to work with, think carefully how many brands actually do hire an agency to work on their marketing.  Most don’t.  Target your approach.
When he was doing biz dev - Don kept a ring binder with one page of notes for each target brand he wanted to work with.  [A great low-tech means of keeping data to hand, up to date and focused.]

So far in the interview, it seems Don is just saying the same stuff about 1to1 marketing but realising that today’s digital world actually enables a lot of his past-10-years-theorising.  That’s fine.  What I want to know is what are leading companies actually DOING?  Now?

Well, thanks to the lovely Janice Cable, I was there.  The debate was hosted in BT’s sumptuous auditorium in their City Business Centre.  Great gig.

Three speakers followed by a formal debate. 
Take-outs from the speakers

Hugh McLeod - Social media is about meaning.
1 - Social Objects are key.  people socialise around objects, church, clothes, technology a.k.a. "sharing devices"
2 - It is cheap and easy
3 - Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies - you can bypass traditional structures.

JP Rangaswami - Enterprise software has 4 pillars

• Search
• Subscribe
• Fulfilment
• Converse

Facebook is this plus community.that’s why it works. 

Chad Wollen - Facebook is putting together all the components to make a marketplace = the Social Graph.  This social graph of value to users provides not much systematic value to advertisers.  There’s a trade-off between keeping it controlled and closed c.f. AOL until recently and opening it up and accepting that spam will happen.

Hugh - This is a ‘political bargain’ the open or closed system.  It’s a compromise

JP - we recognise that the world today does not allow monopoly rents
BT is experimenting using Facebook for knowledge management and internal communication.. it has a group of over 6000 employees online and is the third largest enterprise group.

Sam Sethi - Facebook is an aggregating lifestream. 
Poking someone on Facebook is a social gesture.  It’s like primates grooming each other(!)

i spoke later to Sam and he has some fantastic ideas on where some of these ‘possible futures’ may take us.  I am going to check out his APML workgroup later on…. watch this space.

There was a good debate and some useful discussion but I was mainly looking for take-outs on how businesses can use Facebook.

5 learnings
1 - open up your system and embrace the opportunity in Facebook.  Let staff use it, recognise your employment as part of their lives
2 - Trust your staff not to ‘waste’ time online in Facebook.  Get their ideas about how to use its features to further your business needs.  If BT is trying it out for internal communication and knowledge management, what can you do?
3 - Trust the Facebook privacy statements.  Most of the attendees had fully open profiles and many said they would accept a friend request from their boss (JP has an open door policy and so this is an extension of his normal way of working).  Read the privacy pages and see how detailed you can go with permissions e.g. tagging in photos - you can refuse to allow this.
4 - Look at the possibilities in the advertising.  Now they’ve opened up the opportunity for improved targeting for ad serving, it definitely is something I’m going to try out.  Graduate recruiters are now regularly checking Facebook for candidates both as ‘background’ and to see who else they know
5 - Watch for the un-sexy apps.  There are some neat ones e.g. enabling reading spreadsheets online.  Filter the bad or faddish (zombies) and find those that work for your needs. 

Nice piece on the BIMA Blog from Felix Velarde of Underwired on the 1to1 future predicted by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in 1997.  H rails against the fact that most campaigns driven out are email based and should be much wider.

But this is all based on the use of email as the channel that replaces
snail mail-enabled printed materials. And eCRM should be so much more
than that. A digitally-centred relationship marketing programme -
centred so because of the immediacy and cost efficiency - should not
mean email alone.

Yet again, few agencies are doing the whole picture for client brands.  (let alone for their own business).

I have started work with Honeycomb Software who provide just the centralising database and data management tools for enabling this detailed customer  understanding.  Take a look and let us come and show it off to you. 

But seriously, there are so few brands willing to start this detailed customer engagement which has been technically feasible for the past 3 years that it angers me.  Felix is right, email marketing is just the first step - broaden the customer conversation and deepen their brand engagement.  Then you’ll see if you can sell more stuff more profitably.

I frequently work with clients on their biz dev - as a means of growing a business it is without compare IMHO.

I know my methods and there is a reasonably straightforward base template of activities and actions which then get customised for each situation (depending on experience, cash, skills and time available).

Two of my clients, Wave Creative Communications and Gabrielle Shaw Communications have kick-started their biz dev in the past couple of months.  And, despite knowing that hte base methodology is sound, it is still really gratifying when it WORKS - and when it works fast.

Wave chose to use external resource for appointment setting and after three weeks have two live opportunities and eight future opportunities logged for the next 6-8 months. 

GSC are doing it all internally and in the month of July have WON four new pieces of business - three in one week.  What was particularly encouraging was that we worked hard at pricing the work accruately and sending the right team to pitch and for one client we sent a more junior team to reflect the value of the opportunity and they won it without senior help.  That bodes really well for creating a culture of new business through the whole organisation.

I am so proud of them.

Here’s the base methodology

1. Identify your target sectors and named organisations and research
2. Add to your database
3. Decide how you will go after them and set up the process
4. Have support documentation / literature / credentials / website / direct mail ready
5. Contact by mail / email / voice and record your conversation
6. Do what you promise to do (send stuff, email, call again)
7. Flag future contact dates and have a process to ensure this happens

It isn’t hard to understand.  But what Creative Agencies frequently find is that it is very hard to do consistently when client pressures rise.  What I do is to help set up the underlying process to ensure it happens regardless of other things….. Sometimes it works brilliantly and sometimes I am less successful.

If you want a "healthcheck" for your own processes - call.