Today’s blog post is from Ernan Roman, one of the keynote speakers at the recent 2013 Customer Engagement Marketing Summit hosted by PossibleNOW. Ernan is a Marketing Hall of Fame inductee and well-known for his Voice of the Customer research.

“I’m in a cold sweat.” So began the call from the CMO of a prominent Fortune 100 company. “We’ve invested millions in new customer engagement technology and just realized that we never actually asked our customers how they define more relevant communications and experiences.”

“I’m in a cold sweat.” So began the call from the CMO of a prominent Fortune 100 company. “We’ve invested millions in new customer engagement technology and just realized that we never actually asked our customers how they define more relevant communications and experiences.”
Perhaps you, too, have had the awakening
that the yield you’ll receive from the millions invested in new technology rests
on your ability to deliver a personalized, preference-based customer experience.
Research conducted by our firm, ERDM, for clients such as IBM, MassMutual, QVC,
and Norton AntiVirus indicates that for many consumers--B2B and B2C--preference
centers presumably designed to engage them are, in fact, alienating them.
This article, the first installment of a
two-part series, provides insights regarding the special role preference centers
play in enabling companies to capture the deep preference information necessary
to drive truly personalized communications. Unfortunately, many brands are
falling short. While conducting our ERDM VoC research, customers told
us they are not receiving the expected value from preference centers. Among
their statements:
»
“Misleading--they are focused on the company’s sales
goals, not on learning the customer’s preferences.”
» “They’re not focused
on my preferences. The focus is on the stuff they want to sell my
company.”
» customer-focused
» comprehensive across
different product lines and channels
» easy to find, use, and update
as customers’ needs change
Insights such as these are helping CMOs
and CIOs realize they need a far deeper understanding of how customers define
preference-driven engagement. This includes understanding how customers define a
value-based relationship with their brands, personalization, and appropriate
questions to ask regarding their preferences.
The Only Votes That Count Come From Your
Customers And Prospects
For today's empowered consumers,
personalization is a basic expectation. To achieve this heightened level of
personalization, more accurate customer data is required.
“For customers, the preference center is
the mechanism to voice how they wish to interact with a brand. For marketers, it
allows them to develop a deeper understanding of their customers,” Jennifer
Downes, Lenovo NA’s director of direct response marketing, told me. “That said,
the reality is that marketers as business people have metrics to meet, which may
be at odds with providing the best customer experience. The key to success is
for the marketer to find creative ways to meet these metrics without creating a
conflict with the customer's desire for relevant engagement.”
Added Diangelo Tyler, director of online
marketing at Thomson Reuters: “Keep in mind that the preference center is for
the customer, and they hold the power of voice. The criteria for a truly
customer-centric preference center is simplicity. As marketers we must honor the
choices of our customers if we want to keep them engaged from that point
forward.”
Satisfaction A Given--Engagement Now The Critical
Differentiator
Our VoC research also indicated that
relevance and personalization is viewed as a service and benefit, not just a
sales tool.
“As marketers, more relevant,
preference-driven communication ensures greater audience engagement and
maximizes marketing efficiency,” Denice Hasty, SVP of consumer marketing at
Comcast, told me. “I think governance and vetting the strategy and tactical plan
across multiple business functions is key. Strong execution requires maximum
coordination. One misstep can cause a really bad experience.”
B2B and B2C consumers understand that in
order to receive more relevant information, they need to share personal
information. Among ERDM clients, we have witnessed preference-based engagement
drives consistent
double-digit increases in response, revenue, and customer lifetime
value.
Takeaways From Execs Who Have Been Through The
Preference Center Experience
In summary, customer-focused preference centers are essential for encouraging
customers and prospects to opt in and provide deep preference information. This
also provides marketers with unprecedented amounts of rich and accurate customer
data, which will drive dramatic increases in response, revenue and customer
engagement.
Here’s what we’ve been told:
• Lenovo’s Downes: “It’s critical that we
enter into the process with an open mind, accepting that we don’t have all the
answers. We must be diligent in asking questions in an unobtrusive way and be
willing to let the customer guide us in formulating a customer-centric
preference center.”
• Thomson Reuters’ Tyler: “We did some
market research ahead of deploying our new email preference center. Our
objective was to determine what was most important to the customer. Simplicity
was the conclusion. It was critical that we make it as quick and simple as
possible for our customers to manage their preferences and marketers to get
access to their permissions.”
• Comcast’s Hasty, SVP: “We are just
scratching the surface of what we can do in this space. As our markets become
increasingly fragmented on interests and needs, delivering the right message at
the right time in the right way will be impossible without a solid preference
management practice. Online, we believe in a value exchange–the best offers
online to our most engaged online audiences, which also provide the best
progressive profiling data to act upon in future interactions.”
In my next article, I’ll focus on specific
tips and recommendations from CMOs and senior execs regarding preference center
functions and experiences that are critical whether you are about to build a new
center or make improvements to an existing preference center.
About the Author:
Ernan Roman Direct Marketing's Customer Experience strategies achieve consistent double-digit increases in response and revenue for their clients, which include IBM, MassMutual, QVC, Microsoft, and Symantec Corp.
As a leader in providing Voice of Customer research-based guidance, ERDM has conducted over 10,000 hours of interviews with their clients' customers and prospects, to gain an in-depth understanding of their expectations for high-value relationships.
he results achieved by ERDM's VoC-based strategies earned Ernan Roman induction into the Marketing Hall of Fame.
Visit his blog at: http://ernanroman.blogspot.com/

Ernan Roman Direct Marketing's Customer Experience strategies achieve consistent double-digit increases in response and revenue for their clients, which include IBM, MassMutual, QVC, Microsoft, and Symantec Corp.
As a leader in providing Voice of Customer research-based guidance, ERDM has conducted over 10,000 hours of interviews with their clients' customers and prospects, to gain an in-depth understanding of their expectations for high-value relationships.
he results achieved by ERDM's VoC-based strategies earned Ernan Roman induction into the Marketing Hall of Fame.
Visit his blog at: http://ernanroman.blogspot.com/
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