Retention Case Study

We've decided to start this week off by sharing a case study. We're pretty proud of this one--RRW helped a leading telecommunications client retain more customers and sell those customers more services.

Hopefully, this success story will spark some good direct marketing ideas for you. And, it might give you a feeling for what RRW is all about :)

Situation Overview

Our client, one of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) was faced with the following two marketing challenges:

1. They needed to increase cross-sell and up-sell revenues from their large customer portfolio. Their strategy was to develop a “best product path” approach. They knew that if they could predict what was the next logical (and the most profitable) product to offer to each customer, they could improve cross-sell and up-sell results. Just a small increase in performance meant millions of dollars to this communications giant.
2. The Wireless division was faced with increased churn, especially among their most profitable customer segments. Competition was fierce as wireless carriers fought to grow their market share. They knew that they needed to improve retention efforts and – quickly – implement customer “save” programs.

Solution Review
RRW Consulting recommended a data-centric, analytical approach to help solve both of these challenges. The idea was to effectively mine existing customer data assets, and augment these efforts through the use of external demographic and behavioral data. Accurate and relevant data, combined with effective predictive modeling and customer profiling allowed the communications company to understand:

• What were the common traits of existing customers, considered “gold” customers—those who had at least 3 products (i.e.: caller ID, call waiting and voice mail)?
• What were the migration habits of customers who had become “gold”? How did they migrate from basic local service to become a gold customer? Which products did they buy first, second and third, or did they sign up for all services when they were acquired?

Answers to the above helped us to understand the product migration and allowed us to build the “best product path” approach.

Similarly for the Wireless Division, we examined attributes of profitable customers who had recently defected. We searched for reasons why an individual customer churned and developed a series of predictive models to predict who among active customers was likely to defect, and for what reason.

We then periodically scored the active customer portfolio with these churn models and fed the communications firm files of customers likely to defect. Using this data, the communications firm was able to devise and implement appropriate save strategies that allowed them to communicate with their customers with the right message and offer.

Following is a sampling of the data we analyzed to solve these challenges:

Internal
Data included: Products held, Price Plan, Payment behavior, Activation date, Calls to Customer Service and Handset type.

External
Data indluded: Individual-level data such as age and gender, Telecommunications-specific segmentation tools, Business vs. Personal use of service, Likely switching behavior and Neighborhood-level data (credit/census)

Results

• Retention of wireless customers was improved by 20%.
• Cross-sell and up-sell efforts improved dramatically (actual $ results are confidential).

Adding Social Media to your Direct Marketing Strategy

We've provided a lot of food for thought this week on the use of social media as part of your direct marketing strategy. It's probably quite apparent that we really got a lot of value for the time and money spent at the BlogWorldExpo. If any of the information that we've presented thus far resonates with you, we highly recommend taking part in this conference next year. You get a huge bang for your buck -- that's for certain.

To summarize, here are our key takeaways for your consideration:

• Creating a company blog allows you to demonstrate and discuss your core strengths to both your existing customers, as well as to potential prospects. And it allows them to effectively interact with you -- thus, allowing you to build stronger customer relationships.
  
• You can effectively build your customer base through building a community online. At the same time, you are also building the reputation of your business through an effective and thought-provoking blog.
• You can add to your profitability by effectively leveraging your blog and building your online community.
• Utilizing social media to create open and honest dialog with your online community will help to create credibility for your company. It also can establish you as the company with the expertise that serves a particular industry best.
• Social media is transparent -- so be aware of this. If your corporate culture isn't healthy, sooner or later this will come through loud and clear to your online community. On the other hand, if you have a healthy and positive corporate culture, this will also come through and will be of huge benefit. Through your online community, your customers will have a better chance of understanding what you are all about -- and this builds customer loyalty.
• Finally, use controversy but never use it to evoke anger. Your posts live forever! Don't write anything that you think that -- when calmer minds prevail -- you'll wish you hadn't.

We hope you've enjoyed this social media interlude this week. And, we hope that it will cause you to consider how you can begin to build social media into your marketing strategy. Again, we feel strongly that by embracing this direct marketing channel today, you'll be setting yourself up for success in the future. We already wish we'd begun a few years ago . . . so, keep that in mind.

As you begin to consider this, please let us know how it's going. We'd love to hear your comments of how you are creating success through your online community. And, as always, if you don't agree -- and think that this may be a passing trend, let us hear about that, too. We'll update you from time to time on how our strategy is helping us to build our business, in the hopes that we may be able to spark a Big Idea for you and your business.

TGIF!

Building an Online Community

So, now that we've looked at some successful corporate blogs and some ideas around building profitability using your blog as the catalyst, let's focus on another great session that I attended at BlogWorldExpo: Building an Online Community. This session was led by the two extraordinary entrepreneurs and bloggers pictured here: Wendy Piersall of eMomsathome.com, and Dave Nalle of The Republic of Dave. This was yet another outstanding session. I've capsulized some of what I learned from these fine folks in this post.

As direct marketers, we understand the value of effectively targeting your customer base to build loyalty and long-term customers. In the world of Social Media, this happens through the connections that you make online with like-minded people. By building your online community through a company blog, you are encouraging -- if not downright enlisting -- your valuable customers to participate in conversations that you bring up about your company's core competencies. The best thing about this is that you have the ability to get open and honest feedback about your offerings from those who mean the most -- your customers and online community participants.

So, how do you go about building a successful online community? Some of the ideas here have already been presented in the BlogWorldExpo-specific posts this week . . . and once again, it all starts with good quality content that is both thought-provoking and relevant to the community. Here, again, controversial points-of-view will help to drive comments. And comments really drive traffic.

Let's start with a few words about comments . . . did you know that most blogs get an average of 3.2-3.3 comments per post? If you start to get some repeat commentators and they are adding good insight and provoking more comments, you should invite them to become blog contributors. This helps you to bring in a variety of differing opinions and adds a little thought-diversity to your posts. Plus, repeat commentators are oftentimes members of other online communities, and their posts may attract other communities to yours.

When managing comments, try to guide the discussion in a positive way. This way, eventually, the good comments will override the negative ones. Another sure-traffic driver is having a comment snippet side bar on your blog that features recent comments. Both presenters of this session, do an excellent job with this concept on their blogs. Not only do they both feature recent comments, Wendy also features "Top Commentators" on her blog. This rewards top commentators with a widget. Cool stuff!

Dave features a "welcome mat" on a sidebar for new visitors. So, when you visit Dave's blog, you can see a few people who have recently been there, and provides the new visitor with the opportunity to join his community (this really works because I did it!). The sidebar tells a little about the blog and gives contact info in case visitors have any questions. According to Dave, this can also help visitors feel comfortable, and encourages them to comment.

A final word on comments -- 15-20% of people generate all of the comments, so you really want to reward your top commentators, as both Dave and Wendy do on their blogs.

In terms of post content, while controversy does bring people into your community, you need to be careful not to put people off -- or just make a bunch of people angry. Mark Cuban put it best last week in his keynote when he said that your blog posts live forever -- even if you try to delete them. If you put something out there that you come to later regret, you can bet it'll rear it's ugly head at a most inappropriate time somewhere. That's just life.

A definite do is to use humor. Humor engages people and allows them to see part of your personality. This attracts people to your community.

As you are focusing on building your community, make sure that you provide relevant content in your blog-posts. Make sure that your content speaks to your community and that it demonstrates that what you are providing as content is for the benefit of your specific community. There's that value-add that all of us direct marketers are always striving for in our campaigns -- so that our piece or ad or whatever, truly speaks to the prospect or customer. It's the same with online communities. In order for them to take the time to participate in your community, participants need to feel that what you are doing is for them.

When you join with a group of like-bloggers (bloggers with the same or complimentary content), you'll not only build your community but you can all benefit from a larger combined community. If you decide to monetize your blog with well-placed ads (see yesterday's post on this subject), this provides another benefit -- increased profitability.

As a part of this, you can also become a sort of "blog critic." Here, you provide content that points your readers to the other blogs in your bloggers community. Thus, your community starts to spread the word for you. If all of the bloggers in your community do this, you can imagine all of the various mentions that you, your product/service and your blog will receive online. This tactic will boost your placement with the search engines, too -- Google is always on the lookout for how often you are mentioned. And, proper blog etiquette states that you should always throw a good mention out to a person who mentions you!

In tomorrow's post, look for a summation of my learnings from the BlogWorldExpo. I hope you are all enjoying learning from what I've learned. And don't forget, this is all about marketing -- social media is the future of where we are going as direct marketers. Those of us who are embracing this shift are going to be in good shape as we go from Web 2.0 to Web 10.0!

Blogging and Profit Potential -- Want to Start a Controversy?

At BlogWorldExpo, there was an entire track devoted to maximizing the profit potential of your blog. Each session was pretty dang interesting for the simple reason that, as bloggers, we tend to be purists. We want to be different than regular old public relations people. We want to be completely honest and open. For example, there were those who were solidly against ghost-blogging because it wasn't really truthful -- and blogging is all about truth, right?

Well, right, unless it's all about profit.

Throughout the conference, there were definitely two different schools of thought regarding creating profit through your blog. In a session that I attended called Good to Great: Blogging and Profit Potential, Jim Kukral gave us his ideas on this subject. Kukral is an award winning blogger and online marketing guru who specializes in helping businesses make money online. He is also really smart and quite creative when it comes to getting himself noticed. As a matter of fact, he got the attention of Mark Cuban with domain names such as www.markcubanfundmycompany.com. As you can imagine . . . he got Cuban's attention. Plus, he got to introduce him at his keynote at BlogWorld!

Kukral's vision is that you can make money with your blog through the use of memorable images and the use of ads and video on your blog. These things, along with his "secret sauce" is a sure fire recipe for success. Consider his equation for creating profit through your blog:

A Highly-Targeted Niche + High Quality Content that Solves a Business Problem + Good Ad Placement = Profit.

Pretty interesting, huh? And, it makes perfect sense. Now, those purists out there could argue that you could build profitability with the first two components of the equation -- leaving out the ad piece -- in other words, make money from your field of expertise as opposed to advertising links. However, Kukral would counter (I believe) that if you have well placed, conservative ads, you can make money from the links, too, without "selling out." And, he cited several folks who have made a bunch of money using this tactic.

So, how do you do this? One key (along with the above equation), according to Kukral, is figuring out the problem that has to be solved. . . then using that as the title of your blog, your domain name, etc. He gave the example of www.askthebuilder.com as a blog that does this really well.

In addition, to further build credibility and traffic, another important tactic is to use videos -- this is the new frontier of blogging (we heard this several times throughout the Expo). The idea is to put those videos out on a site like YouTube or Google, then also blog about the subject matter. Kukral believes that you can easily double the number of pages and ads viewed (if you use ads) if you utilize this approach. Moreover, you can place your videos on YouTube for free and can easily put your videos together for little cost (using a simple digital camera -- "The Flip"). Kukral indicated that he's done this and gets about five calls per week for marketing consulting (his core business) using this approach.

Finally, Kukral advises that to get more comments, you need to be a little controversial on your blog content. Controversy gets you lots of interaction. In browsing Mark Cuban's blog, he definitely does this . . . and I know, Cuban is a celebrity, too. However, he does put up some controversial topics on his blog -- and he gets a ton of comments from both sides of the controversy. Interestingly, Cuban (in his keynote address) stated that he is a blog purist and doesn't like the idea of ads on his blog. So, there you go -- the two different schools of thought again.

Interesting food for thought for us bloggers. I'd love to hear comments from you all on your thoughts about creating profits from blogging. Let's start some controversy!

More From BlogWorld: Corporate Blogging

As promised, here is more from our learnings from the BlogWorldExpo. Again, we think that blogging and social media participation will become imperative to your successful direct marketing strategy.

One of the first sessions that I attended was on CEO and Corporate blogging. Needless to say, this was a very interesting session. Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, did a great job of moderating the session. Corporate bloggers on the panel consisted of Jennifer Cisney from Kodak, Pete Johnson from HP, John Earnhardt from Cisco and Paula Berg and Brian Lusk (AKA BlogGirl and BlogBoy) from Southwest Airlines. So, all in all, a good cross-section of Corporate Bloggers.

Here are some of the key learnings from this session -- and we think, excellent ideas to consider when pondering whether or not to start a corporate blog.

• Blogging is the beginning of a new revolution. Those corporations not jumping into it are not doing so because they are either fearful of losing control or of being criticized. Those who are should not be . . . the bottom line is that you set the rules for your blog and can control it. Think of it as your editorial channel and a great way to get the good word out about your company. In addition, you are providing an excellent opportunity for your customers/potential customers to not only get to know your company but to actively engage them to participate and interact with your company.
• CEO Blogs rarely work -- except for Mark Cuban's (see yesterday's post). This is because many CEO's simply aren't the best writers and/or communicators. However, you can definitely highlight your CEO in your corporate blog by including his or her insights or interviews with them from time to time on your blog. Some even ghost-write for their CEO's -- and anyone at the conference can attest that this is, indeed, quite the controversial topic.
• There are different ways to go about creating a corporate blog -- and all are equally effective. For example, HP has over 50 blogs. Anyone at HP who wants to do a blog within HP can. They are careful to keep it to a technical discussion of their products and keep customer service out of it (i.e., they refer customer service questions to the customer service department). Cisco also encourages employees to host a Cisco blog in order to participate in meaningful discussions with their audiences. And, here, the Cisco CEO does both participate and see the value of this -- he does one video blog per week. Kodak does it somewhat differently -- they have employees post poignant stories of how they've used Kodak products. You can imagine it -- how getting your photos out when your house burns down helps to ease the pain of loss, the pictures taken during the birth of your children, etc. Very cool blog. Southwest uses their blog to run ideas past their customers -- trust me, I'll be commenting on their latest numbering system. It turns out that I was a big fan of the cattle call.
• Moderating your blog is a must to protect your brand. Most companies allow people to post pretty much anything -- but most moderate the comments to get rid of swear words or personal attacks. In addition, if your company issues a press release, it's a good idea to blog about it so that people have the opportunity to comment about it. Southwest did this for their new seating idea and immediately got 700 comments -- they got immediate and passionate feedback from those who vote with their dollars -- their customers. How valuable is that? Talk about direct marketing -- this is as direct as it gets!
  
• In order to have an effective Corporate blog, you have to have an inside evangelist to take a leading role and convince the leadership that it's worth it. Most corporate bloggers contribute along with doing their real jobs. All panelists seemed passionate about their blogs and insisted that everyone involved really wanted to be involved. They also said that it's important to ensure that your blog is deliverable by email. Sometimes the RSS feeds are behind Corporate firewalls, so those who may wish to subscribe to them can't.
• Your culture is important. If you are like Southwest whose culture allows the employees to take risks, your blog will probably be more successful than a company who is more risk averse. Also, blogging can make your company very transparent. So, if your corporate culture isn't all that great, a blog is probably going to expose that fact. It may be wiser not to blog if this is the case. : )
  

Overall, this session was just full of great stuff to ponder. I hope you've gleaned some good ideas from this post on launching your blog -- Corporate or otherwise. For more on this session, please see another great blog -- The Scratching Post. You'll love KT Cat -- I know we do!

News from BlogWorld Expo

We attended the BlogWorld Expo conference last week in Las Vegas. Surprisingly, this event made national news--who would have thought that a bunch of geeky bloggers together in one space could cause such a buzz!

Nancy and I attended this conference with two goals in mind:

1. How do we add blogging and other social media to our arsenal of direct marketing tools? What can we learn so that we can help your clients in this area?

2. Can we learn new strategies and pick up some good new ideas on ways to grow, as our blog matures?

Well, this conference accomplished the above, and more! Look for us to add video blogging and some other new things that may surprise you. And, we now have some concrete ideas on ways our corporate direct marketing clients can use new media. Exciting stuff!

I wanted to share, today, some tidbits from the opening and closing sessions.

Opening Session: Thursday morning, November 8, 2007
First of all, consider the setting--hundreds of bloggers, sitting in front of their laptops. Many had video cameras, recorders and regular cameras (to best record the event). Most were live blogging from the session--something I personally had never experienced. It was hard NOT to spy and check out what people around us were typing.

The format of the session was a Q&A, with questions directed at Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of Wordpress. Here are some direct quotes from Matt:

• "The future of software is open source."
• "Selling software is dead."
• His goal: "Create a tool so the world can publish, for free."

This session started off the conference on a highly positive note. This young guy, who's been hugely successful STILL believes in providing lots of value, for free. And, isn't that what this social media/new media is all about?

Now jump forward to Friday afternoon. We're basically brain-dead from a combination of days filled with good information (and lots of it), then nights filled with nice meals, good wine and a party or two. Still, the blogging enthusiasm is strong--our keynote is none other than Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. And, more importantly (to this audience) a successful blogger and a true believer in the medium.

I was pleasantly surprised by Mark. He seems like a good guy. Kind of a control freak in that you can tell that he is hands-on in most of the things he does. I don't know how he has enough time in his day... He shared some fun anecdotes about his experience on Dancing with the Stars (including how he solicited fan votes by sending out Facebook messages to all 40,000 of his friends).

He also warned people that what we write in our blogs stays there--it's a historical record. So, be careful that what you write doesn't come back to bite you. He specifically shared how much he'd like to get back at Bill O'Reilly who continues to taunt him, but knows that if he does so in his blog, he'll regret it.

Overall, BlogWorld Expo was a success for us. We're already looking forward to next year!

OK, Last Time On Hard Rock

So, not to belabor the point . . . and maybe it's just all of the new ideas that I have from the Blogworld Expo . . . but yet another great customer service experience happened to us again on the last night here in Vegas. So, we went over to the Hard Rock Cafe, which is in front of the Hard Rock Hotel. We ran into another exemplary customer service kid named Emo-Shon. Turns out we both went to high school in San Bernardino. He's quite the nice young man and a darned good sales person.

So, that's it -- three strikes they win, and we got a free shot glass out of this encounter. After all these blogs, maybe we should have asked for a free room! Have good weekends all!

GO HARD ROCK!