Last week, I wrote a piece about how poor digital marketing practice is damaging our industry. At the heart of this is not just how brands are failing to build meaningful relationships with their audiences, but the fact that they're often actively disengaging them. Like many areas of marketing practice, addressing the basics is not rocket science, but it does take work. Putting yourself in your customer’s shoes will help ensure they’re truly engaged [...]
Something very odd has been happening in the crazy world of marketing. Over the last few years, big brands have been focusing heavily on their Customer Relationship programmes. Our wallet-full of loyalty cards means we don’t actually feel loyal to any of them, so they’re desperate trying to build a more ‘meaningful relationship’ with us – wading through all that ‘big data’ and begging us for feedback after every online purchase or restaurant visit. (Suzanne [...]
As a companion piece to my last blog (Time to Address the Relationship Disconnect), I’ve written a handy ‘how not to do customer service’ checklist. Poor customer service is now so commonplace in the UK that comedians build entire routines out of it; the curse of the unexpected item in the bagging area, the endless ‘your call is important to us’ messages while they leave you sat on hold and the never-ending IVR menus. (“Press [...]
Much has been written about the incredible success of Groupon; named by Forbes magazine as “the fastest growing company, ever”, and valued at $13bn with 83m subscribers in 43 countries. Eye-watering numbers achieved in just 3 years, for sure – although not without acres of accompanying column inches bemoaning the shoddy way Groupon treats some of its suppliers, and the shoddy way some suppliers treat their customers (without any recourse from Groupon). But putting all [...]