Milking it

What's in a name? It seems quite a lot.

Researchers at Newcastle University have published a report claiming that cows given a name produce up to 284 litres more per year compared to cows which remain anonymous.

As the leader of the research team said ‘just as people respond more to the personal touch, cows also feel happier and more relaxed if they are given a bit more one to one attention’.

And seemingly such strategies also work for pigs and sheep and for poultry.

Maybe this learning might also be applied to others of the animal kingdom.

Us.

Can lessons learnt on the farm be applied to us and the customers we are privileged to serve?  I believe they can.

Firstly the more we can get up close and personal to our customers, the more productive they will be to our business. Now this does not mean that we need to try to be their best friend but does mean we should recognise them as individuals with an identity; that we should speak to them across all our human and written touch points in a way which is warm, human and adult; and wherever possible show that we know them, who they are and we understand the nature of the relationship we have with them..

There are some simple things we can do to give our customers that personal touch. We can stop addressing letters ‘Dear Customer’ and ending with an indecipherable corporate squiggle. People deal with people and like doing so

We could also show a bit more warmth and emotion.

It so annoys me when calling a call centre when the first thing you get asked for is an account number. I heard recently of one case when someone called their insurance company after an accident for their policy number.

How about a name? How about even asking ‘are you alright?’ These are the human responses.

And how about using active verbs and personal pronouns when writing our customer facing material.

Hardly radical or difficult stuff but simple to do and a start on helping make our customer relationships as productive as the cows down on the farm.

And there’s more.

For what works with customers and cows, might also work with our people.

Does something happen when we cross the threshold of our business that stops us being

Again why is it that the first thing we always get asked for us is our employee number rather than our name? Why is it that our business communicates with our people and us like we were androids?

Again the use of some personality in our communications with our people may go a long way to humanising the businesses we work in.

Do we take time out to say thank you, to celebrate individual and team success, to remember significant events in the lives of our people? It may come as a surprise that are people are exactly that- not staff, not human resources, not full time equivalents.

Again not difficult, not radical, not rocket science.

Maybe it’s not just about extra milk, rashers of bacon or chicken nuggets. Maybe we should look closer to home for the real benefits.

Hail to the Chief

I have a geek-like obsession with the workings of American politics. And this unhealthy obsession has left me with a great love of ‘West Wing’. I even thought ‘Lincoln’ was a great use of my time!

About a year ago I came across a profile for a man called Harper Reed.  This is someone you will probably never have heard of; a man prone to oddball pronouncements like ‘this morning is a red fang type of morning; and a man who was critically Barack Obama’s CTO or chief data scientist.

And it was because of this guy and the teams he led that Barack Obama is still America’s Commander-in-Chief.

For the past 12 months I have been following with rapt attention the work of Mr Harper and anyone wanting to develop a world class insight led marketing programmes can learn much from his work to re-elect Obama.

This man and his team raised more money from more people than anyone had ever done before, signed up more volunteers than previously and far more than his enemy, and registered more people to vote. Not too shabby then!

Most importantly they got their man elected again with 51% market share compared to his enemy’s share of 48%, no mean feat in a struggling economy and with the jobless rate touching 8%.

There isn’t enough space here to do justice to this work so for the moment I have picked out what I believe to be the three key lessons that us mere marketing mortals might learn.

Lesson #1 CRM is a strategic differentiator

Obama saw his CRM programme as a real strategic differentiator and as a result derived huge benefit at so many levels from his programme, something organisations like Tesco in the UK have done. Too often businesses use data and their so called CRM programme as tactic to drive e-mail distribution rather than placing it at the heart of their business strategy. 40% of Obama’s headquarters staff comprised data and technology geeks drawn from the data and analytical elite of Silicon Valley, academia and Fortune 500 businesses; digital and analytics sat alongside the political staffers at the top table; and analytics in particular grew 5 times over 2008 and was used to improve aspect of the campaign. How many businesses use their customer data analysed to within an inch of its life to improve and optimise their business from top to bottom?

Lesson #2 Follow the data

You won’t get anywhere without data and Obama went to great lengths to capture through his supporters’ customer journey as much data as he could lay his hands on. Data is the fuel for intelligent marketing programmes and you can never have too much. Obama gathered 4 levels of data:

·         Volunteered: data provided by his supporters

·         Borrowed: data fused from other sources like voting data; shopping patterns; etc

·         Derived: driven by observed behaviours like response to e-mails and website interest

·         Social: by linking to individuals social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn Obama    was not only able to improve the profiles of his database but also obtained access to his supporter’s networks.

This was data capture and management on an industrial scale feeding a voracious Single Customer View enabling a joined up understanding of and communication with supporters and prospects.

Lesson #3 Torture the data

Data never gives up its secrets willingly; it must be tortured to do so.

Obama may have stopped the torture of terrorist suspects but this does not extend to data which was tortured ruthlessly for insight and understanding. Few other CRM programmes have the same level of ruthlessness and ambition.

He developed predictive and propensity models that were run in real time and updated overnight; every interaction was personalised, and this just wasn’t about using the respondents name but about the content and from whom it was sent; and 18 e-mail variations were tested with just about every variable probed and dissected to optimise response including day of week, time of day, subject line, content, author and so much more besides. Impressive stuff.

It is not suggested that everyone out there managing a CRM programme has the ability or the resources to do ‘an Obama’ but we could at least learn from him and ponder what we can apply. 

A recent IBM report suggested that 40% of senior marketers saw Big Data as their ‘next biggest challenge’ but only 71% felt ready to deal with it.

For marketers genuinely wanting to turn information into intelligent insight, Barack Obama and his team are a great source of ideas and inspiration. Hopefully it won’t make you prone to oddball pronouncements but maybe they will be singing ‘Hail to the Chief’ to you’.

Prime Location

On a scale of 1-10 how frustrating do you find trying to find a parking space when in town? And then when you do find an unoccupied space it is reserved for some special purpose or other for which you don’t qualify?

If you are anything like me your frustration-o-meter will be off the scale.

I ask this question because last week I was driving in ever decreasing circles around Britain’s Second City looking to park and I was struck by the number of bays reserved for the charging of electric vehicles. And all sitting there unused.

''What a waste of space?'', I thought to myself.

And then I had an epiphany and the penny dropped. They weren’t there to be used.

This might seem strange but it is a great example of the workings behind Behavioural Economics.

As you know there are people out there worried and concerned about the effects of so-called ‘man made’ climate change on our environment. And as a consequence all of us are being constantly implored to switch to a more sustainable lifestyle less reliant on hydrocarbon power.

Of course the car and car owners are like Public Enemy Number One and so car manufacturers have been rushing headlong to offer us greener cars including cars that run on electric power. This is not the place to debate the green-ness or otherwise of such vehicles but when it comes to electric cars the manufacturers have to persuade us to break the habit of a lifetime and to switch from buying a nasty polluting car and to make the electric car our default vehicle of choice.

And this is where Behavioural Economics comes in.

We have identified the behaviour we want to change but what stops  us changing our behaviour. After all in so many ways electric cars are the rational choice-cheaper to run; good for the planet; and since most journeys are less than 5 miles the chances of running out of ‘fuel’ are remote.

But we do worry about running out of ‘fuel’. It is irrational but it is emotion and irrational factors that keep our bad habits firmly entrenched.

And so someone out there thought ‘I know… if we create a significant number of highly visible parking bays with charging points to send a signal that charging is convenient’.  And if consumers can be persuaded to think like this then this reason not to switch is removed.

Have you noticed how these spaces are illuminated with an eerie blue light. This does nothing except make these spaces difficult not to notice.

Brilliant.

In the jargon nudge interventions like this are known as priming-cues that work on our sub-conscious to influence behaviours. In this case the highly visible charging point is the priming cue.

All of us in marketing have the opportunity and the need to change behaviours, to break habits. Often we do this through pricing cues. But there are other ways to break the habits and change behaviour.

What do you want to prime your customers to do?