How Do I Love Thee, ROI? Let Me Count the Ways.
No one in his right mind would mistake the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning for a direct marketer. She took way too long to deliver an offer. (Fourteen lines? C’mon. Get real.) But marketers today would do well to adapt the message of her most famous sonnet to the challenge of improving response rates and driving up ROI.
Everyone, it seems, appreciates the importance of targeting prospects who are likely to be the most profitable, selecting the best channels for reaching them, and combining a compelling offer with a must-read message. I’ve delivered innumerable speeches and written stacks of articles on the strategies and tactics involved in acquiring the right customer at the right price.
But courting new customers is just the beginning of the love story of you, your customers and your ROI. Only after you’ve acquired a customer does the ROI maximization process truly begin. Just as a successful marriage is the product of constant attention and effort, driving your ROI to blissful heights is the product of constant focus on retaining your most profitable customers–and winning back customers who have what’s known as “a high second-lifetime value.”
While it’s not necessary to, as Ms. Browning put it, “love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach,” it is wise to constantly ask yourself, “How do I up-sell and/or cross-sell my customers a second product, and a third, in order to realize their full lifetime value? How do I employ the various channels at my disposal to ensure that my customers develop and maintain a positive relationship with my brand? Direct mail? E-mail newsletters? Social networking? Webinars? Other events?”
Retaining customers involves many of the same skills that go into acquiring those customers in the first place–including the development of compelling, stop-‘em-dead-in-their-tracks offers. But it also involves constant encouragement as they shop, buy, visit, comment, endorse and generally refer to your products. And I do mean constant. Let up, and your ROI will go down. It’s all about engagement. Just ask Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
For a more prosaic–but no less rewarding–discussion of the subject of retaining customers, open a copy of Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers – and Keep Them Loyal by Jill Griffin and Michael W. Lowenstein. You can find here.
Tags: Marketing, Strategic Marketing Blog
Categories: Strategic Marketing
