Author Archives: Anthony Nygren

The Mobile Marketing Opportunity of Behavioral Routines

An article recently posted on the Mobile Marketer web site urges marketers to think longer term about what they can and should be doing to nurture a relationship with someone who clicks on their ad from a mobile device. While I certainly agree with all of the advice (and assertions of missed opportunity) in the article, I think that this doesn’t push far enough. There’s something more that should added to marketers’ thinking about interactions with customers and prospects on their mobile devices: routine behaviors.

Some time ago, I signed up to receive Groupon daily offers and, as a result, wake up every day to find my Groupon email waiting for me in my inbox. And every day, I read the email. I’ve probably bought 2 or 3 things in the 18 months I’ve been subscribed, but that lack of conversion hasn’t stopped me from checking that email every day. The reason? It’s part of my daily routine. Wake up, make breakfast, check email—including that day’s email from Groupon. The combination of the variety of the offers, the programmed consistency of delivery, and the fact that I always have my mobile device on hand has ingrained checking that email into my morning behavior.

While it may not be the case that every marketer pursuing every type of customer should think in terms of establishing a presence in the audience’s daily routine, the increasing ubiquity of mobile devices makes it an opportunity every marketer should be considering. To aid in this consideration, below are some scenarios that would make “behavior integration” a strategy worth pursuing:

  • A highly competitive battle for mind share and audience attention
  • A need to expand the target audience’s understanding of the range of product, services, or solutions offered
  • Under-utilization of a rich collection of thought leadership resources

In any of these scenarios—or, most of all, in environments in which more than one of these scenarios are combined—a strategy to foster a behavioral routine that leverages the particular usage profile of mobile devices is worth exploring.

The Vinaigrette Moment: Marketing and Sales Integration

Drip olive oil and vinegar onto a plate, and you end with little pools of each, unmixed, only really able to be enjoyed with some effort by manipulating your fork to get just the right amount of each to adhere onto the lettuce. However, if combine olive oil and vinegar in a receptacle and whisk them, you end up with a lovely blended vinaigrette. This description of basic salad dressing chemistry is a useful metaphor for bridging the divide between marketing and sales – a topic that was the subject of a panel in which I participated at the recent Tech Marketing Summit in Santa Clara.

Fundamentally, there is a lot about marketing and sales that is different:

  • Marketing tends to be more project (campaign) oriented while sales is more process (ongoing, repeated effort) oriented.
  • Testing and educational failure is (or should be) valued by marketing but is not really part of the sales lexicon.
  • And, most obviously, sales has revenue targets while marketing typically does not.

Oil and vinegar. But, with a little effort in the form of enabling technologies like integrated CRM/Marketing Automation systems, and some shared and defined objectives, the two can work separately but harmoniously to achieve good results.

Where things get really interesting, though, is when the two set aside their natural differences and really cooperate and collaborate. For example, if marketing interviews salespeople and finds that 15-20% of their time is spent creating presentations and doing customer research, there is a huge opportunity to give those sales people another 7-10 hours of sales time every week by creating presentation templates and a customer intel portal.  Likewise, if marketing and sales work together to analyze win/loss rates in certain segments, a picture can emerge of latent opportunities to pursue new markets or better allocate marketing investment to maximize the revenue opportunity. It’s only with this kind of collaboration that you get true go-to-market optimization.  And that’s the vinaigrette moment that produces real results.

Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium: Maximizing opportunities with customers who switch banks

At this year’s Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium, J. Michael Beird of J.D. Power and Associates and Becky DeGeorge of U.S. Bank illuminated some important trends around customers who switch their primary bank. The number of customers doing this has increased for the second year in a row – in spite of the fairly high level of effort required to switch to a new primary bank.

How can banks take advantage of this trend?

An obvious response might be to ramp up prospecting efforts – but the speakers pointed out that the reason a customer selects a bank is highly relevant to their long-term profitability. J.D. Power and Associates has found that customers who choose a bank because of the bank’s community involvement are the most loyal and tend to give that bank greatest share of wallet; customers who switch to a bank based on a promotion are, unsurprisingly, at the opposite end of spectrum.

Graph: Value Drivers Associated with Primary Purchase Triggers

Banks looking to reap the benefits of the current turbulent landscape through prospecting must understand who they are targeting as their leads, as it should drastically change their acquisition strategy.

What’s even more important than acquiring new customers is maximizing their relationship with your bank once they’ve come in the door. How can you avoid repeating the mistakes of the competitors that drove these customers to switch banks in the first place?

The speakers outlined the necessary first steps for onboarding customers: satisfaction of a new bank customer is optimized if they receive a thorough needs assessment and a follow-up phone call within 2 days. This initial interaction has direct impacts on loyalty and share of wallet.

A complete needs assessment gets at what led the customer to switch as well as how they operate on a daily basis:

  • What were they looking for in their last banking relationship that they weren’t getting?
  • What don’t they like about their last bank?
  • What other accounts (aside from the one they originally came for) do they need or use?
  • How many checks do they write a month?

Such an assessment provides the customer with a positive first impression of the bank, and reassures the customer that they have made a correct decision in switching from a bank where they’ve had bad experiences.

From there, having the person who opened the first account with a new customer call within 2 days to say thank you enhances that customer’s first experience with your bank. It’s a simple step that, according to J.D. Power and Associates, does make a measurable difference in customer satisfaction.

To build on the speakers’ insights, banks targeting customers who switch institutions need to extend and support the customer experience throughout the life of the relationship. How can you use the insights gained from the needs assessment? Are there other simple actions, like that first phone call, that build loyalty in your customers?