StrateScapes - 3 Products. 3 Mailings. 1 Day.


		Excerpted from StrateScapes - Volume 6, Number 1

3 Products. 3 Mailings. 1 Day.
A prominent financial powerhouse recently sent three distinct direct mail offers to an existing card-holder. What’s the problem? They all arrived in the mailbox on the same day..

Intuitively, everyone understands it: Bombard your customers with too many cross-sell and upsell offers, and you’ll turn even the most loyal ones into ex-customers.

Sometimes it’s not so much a quantity issue as it is a quality issue. Blasting mailings without forethought can annoy customers more than if the letters are personalized and solve a problem the customer currently faces. A little strategic thinking and smart targeting can go a long way toward shoring up stronger customer ties. So before you launch your next cross-sell campaign, take the following steps to ensure your customers don’t cross you off their list.

The art of knowing how much is too much when it comes to your cross-sell efforts.

Look inside your company
Find out what else is going on in your organization. Talk to other product managers to see what offers your customers are receiving. Otherwise your so-called “valued” customers could get three offers for three different products from your company in one day. That’s precisely the situation a well-known financial services powerhouse recently created. One of its credit card customers in Denver received cross-sell mailings for a dividend MasterCard and a rewards MasterCard. (The fact that these mailings had the same opening sentence only made matters worse.) In addition, this customer received a balance transfer offer for her current card. Better list management would have prevented her from being selected for all three mailings … and from getting particularly steamed.

Or maybe it was a problem of product managers not being aware of what the other hand was doing. In that case, Commerce Bank could teach them a thing or two. Last summer, the bank realized that its debit card mailing was going to hit in the same month as a welcome letter to new checking customers, touting the same product. To solve the problem, the CCG team recommended merging the initiatives into one mailing, which also saved the bank the expense of 40,000 pieces of mail.

“You can’t always merge messages,” says Greg Sultan, CCG VP/national marketing. “But in this case it made sense, because the messages were very similar — a debit card and checking product go hand in hand. It’s like when you buy a car and the manual for the radio is included in the owner’s manual, rather than coming under separate cover.”

Of course, merging isn’t always the answer. But once you’re aware of your organization’s other marketing efforts, you can come up with a win-win solution — one that works well for you and your best customers.

Look outside your company
Looking at your database won’t give you a complete picture of your customers. A 30-year-old who owns a home may have much different priorities than a 50-year-old homeowner — even if they have the same checking account balances and purchase behavior. So why would you send the same letter to both of them?

Think about lifestage issues and other differentiators that can help make your message more relevant to individual customers. By the same token, timing your mailings with current events or trigger events, such as a marriage, home purchase or retirement, gives your customers the feeling that you know them individually — as long as you’re sensitive to customers’ privacy concerns.

When you do initiate a cross-sell offer, make it about your customer rather than your product.

Focus on the customer, not the product
“You need to open a meaningful dialogue with your customers,” says Sandi McCann, CCG VP/national sales. “If you’re only communicating with them to sell a product, they are going to be turned off.”

And when you do initiate a cross-sell offer, she adds, try to make it about the customer rather than a product sell. This may mean bundling a couple of products to eliminate one mailing (and reduce costs), as Commerce Bank did. Or it could mean bundling products to present solutions for a particular goal, such as debt consolidation. For example, promoting a home equity loan and line of credit at the same time may be more effective than sending separate product mailings over the course of a campaign. From a customer standpoint, you’ve presented different options for solving their problem in one package.

Hibernia National Bank, Louisiana’s largest financial services provider, took a similar approach in 2001 when it moved from a product-based model to a customer-segment-focused one. Rather than managing particular products, such as CDs and online banking, Hibernia’s segment managers oversee customer segments and decide which solutions and messages are most appropriate for their groups.

Get creative
Your winning package may have gotten stellar results in the past, but your customers will get tired of hearing the same message over and over. If you were establishing a relationship in your personal life, would you tell the same story every time you spoke with that person? Showing the different facets of your brand helps entangle customers, just as sharing facets of yourself deepens personal relationships. Mix up your creative to become a company your customers want to interact with.

In many ways, the art of cross-selling is common sense — treat your customers just as you would an acquaintance you’re trying to get to know better. But it also involves a well-planned strategy that maximizes quality of touches — through tactics such as segmenting and personalization — not quantity of touches. Become a master of that, and you’ll be the most popular company in their mailbox.

CCG helps Fortune 1000 clients develop strategic cross-sell and retention programs every day. Call us at 1.800.525.0313 to strike the right balance with your cross-selling efforts.

STRATESCAPES and STRATESCAPES SUPPLEMENTS are published by Customer Communications Group, Inc., a full-service agency specializing in relationship marketing and customer communications. Our comprehensive, turnkey services include data analysis, customer segmentation, strategic consulting, account management, creative execution, print production and multimedia solutions.