Optimizing Your Contact Strategy
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010Want to make your head hurt? Think about this. You have X million customers, N number of products and Y dollars to spend over some promotion period, say three to six months, and at least three contact channels: direct mail, telemarketing and e-mail.
The smart reply is that why would you want to make your head hurt. So, skip to another article or go for coffee. That’s kind of like what a lot of direct marketers do. They try to keep it simple. This month, they say, I’m going to promote product A, next month I’ll promote product B and so on; I’m going to use Direct Mail or telemarketing; my fiscal plan calls for so many pieces; I’ll sort my customer file on the basis of RFM or some regression or artificial intelligence model, and I’ll mail/call as deeply as my budget calls for. That’s it. Next month I’ll do it all over again.