Re-opening your communication lines

I received an email linking to an interesting article about segmenting your contact database and resurrecting early enquirers.

It is specifically talking about email marketing, but the principle applies equally to an offline database of people your business has dealt with.

The article (first of a series) describes how to interact more effectively with different groups of people by simply distinguishing between those who are more responsive and, for those who aren’t, how long it is since they first had information from you. The second article in the series goes on to give examples (both good and bad) of how to resurrect those original enquirers or, alternatively clean out your database. Check out email segmentation framework and the other email segmentation articles.

So is it worth doing this with your offline database? It could be, so here are a few points to consider:

1. Remember the ‘Recency, frequency’ rule. People who have purchased from you recently or who buy from you on a fairly regular basis are more likely to respond to any offers you make. Of course there’s a higher chance of this happening if you’ve kept in touch and they are used to getting your letters.

2. Keeping your database tidy reduces your mailing costs. Why continue to send expensive, printed packages to people who are no longer interested, or are not around for whatever reason?

3. Tidying your database maintains your professional image. If some of your addresses are rather old then the postcode you have may be out of date. Postcodes do change. Having an incorrect postcode rather shouts out that you have not been in touch for some time and raises the chances of your letter being discarded.

4. If you are targeting consumers (rather than business people) you want to avoid any embarrassment, upset and complaints you might receive if the person you write to has moved or is deceased.

Let’s look at tidying up your database:

If you have a mailing house you use for sending your mailshots out they can do this for you, at a cost obviously. But if your customer list is a pretty old one the savings you make on your mailings may justify that expenditure.

If you don’t have access to a mailing house you can do it yourself (or talk to Phil at Direct Mail Service if you are in the UK ). And of course, there’s an expensive DIY way and a more cost effective DIY way.

The expensive DIY way…

Engage a call centre - or set a few days aside for you or your staff - to call the people on your list and check their details. The advantage of doing it this way when your target audience is businesses is you can check if the person you’ve got as your contact is still employed there. However, if you are in the UK be careful. If the company has registered on the Corporate Telephone Preference Service you cannot make unsolicited calls. (Check out Corporate Telephone Preference Service and Guidance for Electronic Marketing (which includes telephone, fax and email)).

It’s even more difficult to do this type of checking with consumers because they are more likely to have registered with the TPS (telephone preference service) to avoid tele-sales phone calls. Don’t think because they bought something from you six months ago you can just call them up out of the blue. You can’t.

And if you do…. you risk £5,000 fine per unsolicited call and a possible jail sentence of up to 6 months for company Directors!

A better way, perhaps?

The easiest way is to let someone else do the work. Alternatively you can use the Royal Mail clean-up services on your database.

However, your database must be structured in a format that the Royal Mail service can use for comparison. So for example, if you’ve got your contact names and addresses laid out as labels in a Word document then you won’t be able to do a direct clean up (and neither would a mailing house).

Royal Mail give examples of why you should clean up your database in Royal Mail List Cleaner. The figures they give for improved response look very attractive, but bear in mind your results will depend upon how good your offer is, how persuasive your letter is and whether your reader is interested.

You can get a free audit on your database to check how accurate it is and then decide if it does need cleaning up. Incidentally the clean up service does not check contact names at businesses.

Breathing life into your list

Once you’ve cleaned up your database you can start resurrecting your older customers.

Work your list backwards. Contact a batch at a time and write to your more recent purchasers first. You’re likely to get a better response if they remember you, even if it was a little while ago that they bought.

When you write - if your database structure allows you to pull the information out - remind your reader of what and when they last bought from you. If you happen to have a note of any feedback they made at the time, you can mention that too to remind them it was a good experience - it was, wasn’t it?

As you reach your older contact records the response rate will probably drop steeply. And at some stage you have to decide that the ROI (return on investment) is no longer justified. In which case simply remove those older contacts from your database and promise yourself to keep the communication lines open more frequently with your existing and new prospects and customers.

~ Carol Bentley