Do Business Well

Purchase History

<FIRST PURCHASE DATE, LAST PURCHASE DATE, PURCHASE FREQUENCY, PURCHASE VALUE (ACTUAL PURCHASES OR AVERAGE PURCHASE), PRODUCTS PURCHASED, PURCHASE DRIVER (WEBSITE “WALK-ON,” EMAIL RESPONSE, BANNER CLICK-THROUGH … )>

Because past purchases are among the leading predictors of future interest, you should use the information contained in the customer’s purchase history to determine the timing, offer, targeting, and personalization of your promotional communication. If, for example, you bought book from BarnesandNoble, you’ve probably been identified as someone who’s interested in high-tech business books, which means there’s a good chance you’d be interested in Geoffrey Moore’s Inside the Tornado. Continue Reading »

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I wish I could offer you five principles of advertising that would be as likely to produce results as the sales principles I’ve offered.

Unfortunately, the “science” of advertising is of much more recent origin, and is constantly evolving.

What I can list for you are the fundamental aspects of advertising—those factors that should always be considered before placing an ad:

1. Purpose. In advance of any advertisement, promotion, or trade show involvement you should always determine what you want to accomplish with this resource.

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There are dozens of methods of contacting prospects. The following are the most popular methods:

Over the phone

The quickest and most cost-effective way to get around is by phone. Although this has a down-side — you can’t see the customer, his face or his expressions — the phone should be used to obtain interviews where you can sell the opportunity.

Just bear in mind that a telephone call can be unwelcome. You are intruding on the prospect’s time. So make what you have to say short, relevant and of interest to the prospect. Your phone call must, within seconds, convey a benefit which will be of interest to that prospect.

Do not try to explain networking over the telephone. This rarely works. You want a face-to-face interview lasting just 10 minutes with the prospect to drop off material. If you can obtain that, and the prospect is interested, you can be sure that your appointment will last considerably longer. Continue Reading »

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A further challenge suggested by the Forrester research is achieving the delicate balance between frequency of campaigns and response. Finding the right touch strategy is important to maximize the value from an e-mail list while at the same time not annoying customers or losing response owing to too high a volume of e-mail.

Consider the example where a retailer is broadcasting a fortnightly e-mail and finds that, through running a test, increasing the frequency to weekly also increases sales. It then rolls out at this frequency to the entire list, but over time the negative impact is felt with decreased sales, increased unsubscribes and a negative perception from list members. What approaches can be used to resolve this dilemma? Here are some suggestions: Continue Reading »

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1. Applications. These are various types of productivity software that run on higher-end mobile phones which run the Symbian operating system or Windows CE. They can be used in a business-to-business environment for inventory and order tracking, as well as time management.
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Through combining some of the techniques above, such as offering mobile content for incentives and text messaging for communications, mobiles can be a useful element in a wider CRM initiative. It can help build relationships with consumers who don’t have ready access to e-mail, or who simply find mobiles more convenient. The cost per message makes mobile CRM quite effective too, varying from 3p to 10p per message, according to volume.

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