Transformers - Colloquy

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C O L L O Q U Y / Volume 18, Issue 1, 2010
C O M M U N I C A T I O N S C U R M U D G E O N
After the Rains
Strategic planting leads to
bountiful harvests
B Y B I L L B R O H A U G H
MY GRANDFATHER WAS A FARMER, and
learned his profession on both a
practical and an academic level. A
bit unusual for the time and for the
family, he attended the University
of Minnesota School of Agriculture,
and at one point he wrote an article
for his hometown Wisconsin
newspaper about what he learned.
I have a clipping of that early 1900s
article in which the senior William
Brohaugh described a concept he’d
studied: Crop rotation. Change the
crop planted in particular fields in
successive seasons to avoid wearing
out the soil.
I bring up this point as I clear my
email box of a fresh batch of emails
from a retailer I first transacted
with about two years ago. I get two or
three such emails every week, each
with some big offer of a discount,
a break on shipping, or an enticing
package of related items at a group
price. They’re great offers. I think.
At least they were at the time that I
stopped paying attention to them.
Marketers and communicators have
a couple of things to learn from the
profession of my ancestral name -
sake. Crop rotation was adopted in
the agricultural world to combat
resource depletion. Planting only
one crop over the years sucks the
same nutrients from the soil,
ultimately weakening the ground
below, sapping production and
speed ing erosion. In fact, lack of
such rotation likely contributed to
creating the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
To that retailer, I am such a figurative
dust bowl; the sales have dried up.
After my first couple of transactions,
the retailer began planting the seeds
of future sales with the same types of
offers over and over again, seemingly
at random. And then the rains came,
email upon email in a determinedly
erosive wash.
This retailer could have prevented
eroding previously fertile soil by
changing the offers, based on my
interests and preferences—the sort
of information that loyalty programs
deliver so efficiently. Such offers
might have been related to
transaction-data analysis, though
I’ve seen no communication that
clearly reflects such data points as the
category of my initial orders or the
timing of the orders.
Or the offers might have been tied
to my preferences or motivations
gathered from me directly. Relevant
and enriching offers can be cultivated
with what we at COLLOQUY call
“drip dialogue.” Quick and simple
questions in emails or during
website interactions, posed one at
a time, can build an actionable data
foundation for future freshness. Ask
specifically about category or brand
preferences to allow you to discuss
what your customers want to hear
about. Ask about planned projects
or activities to allow you to tell your
customers how you can help them
accomplish their goals. Or ask
something as simple as a birth date,
so you can not only offer annual
celebrations but also extend offers
that help customers deal with or enjoy
major life-stage changes.
My grandfather would cheer the
kind of gentle drip of informational
nutrients that allow marketers to
reinvigorate customer engagement
in these ways:
Rotate the crops. Make a range of
offers based on preferences and
needs revealed by transactional data
and continual dialogue. Vary the
content of offers rather than the offer
type for greatest effectiveness. In the
emails I’m clearing out, for example,
I see offers of 60% off one day
and free shipping plus 30% off two
days later. That’s not crop rotation,
that’s propeller blade rotation.
Plant in season. Key your offers
to your customers’ personal seasons,
which can take the form of purchase
cycles (especially if offering
consumables or renewable items),
life stages (related to age groups,
family status, and so on), and
seasons, holidays and events. In
any of these cases, don’t try to slap
relevance on haphazardly by slipping
into clichés or forced connections
(“Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a
lovely bunch of coconuts!”).
Don’t try to slap relevance on haphazardly by slipping
into clichés or forced connections (“Celebrate St.
Patrick’s Day with a lovely bunch of coconuts!”).
Give the soil a rest. Three emails a
week makes me feel like I’m standing
in a field of unwanted weeds rather
than in a comfortable country garden.
Let the customer step back from
your offers with appropriate spacing.
On the other hand, test frequency—
perhaps three emails a week deliver
pure profit for this retailer. Still, I
would hope that my lack of response
to the deluge would land me in a
segment that the marketers target
with other tactics to quicken my
return, engaging me in the very sort
of nutrient dialogue I’ve just
described.
As grandpa might say, keep your
customer engagement fresh with
that new-fangled crop rotation,
and nurture it with gentle rains,
one drop at a time.
Bill Brohaugh is COLLOQUY managing editor.