Tag Archives: customer service

Keeping Customers Happy

This blog post is the third in a series of four on how customer lifecycle marketing works for marketers and organizations seeking to increase revenue and grow loyal customer relationships. Last month, I shared with you a marketing love story to help explain the difference between the traditional marketing approach and customer lifecycle marketing. Then, I shared […]

8 Simple Things That Quickly Lead to Customer Loyalty & Retention

I can’t think of a single company that couldn’t improve their customer relations and loyalty programs.  True, there are amazing examples of world-class customer programs out there.  From Zappos to Zingerman’s, there’s plenty to observe and emulate. But generally, I find that companies either completely under-invest in the customer side of marketing (vs. acquisition marketing), […]

Creating Content to Keep Customers

There seems to be an increasing focus when dealing with content creation on engagement, and rightfully so. To be blunt: Creating uninteresting content is a waste of time and money. However, engagement can’t be the end all be all of content creation goals. Your content has to help you retain audience, and keeping audience helps […]

Sales and Marketing 3.0

Sales cycles are complex and the era of the greasy used car salesman is no longer applicable in today’s market. Sellers need to be more sophisticated to survive. The focus doesn’t lie in generating more leads – the 80’s style antiquated sales funnel. The funnel is dead, so to speak. Marketing tactics around the funnel are still applicable […]

TweetChat: Customer communication preferences

How does your customer want to be communicated with? It sounds like a rather simple question but it’s not easy to answer. Simply described, customer communication preference management is when customers opt in or out of an organization’s communication methods (i.e., email, SMS and social media updates). However, it’s much larger than that. Customer communication […]

Tips for a Successful Year in Marketing

As we embark on a new year, full of opportunity and optimism, it’s in marketers’ best interest to explore new ideas and question old strategies. That is, after all, how change is made. However, most marketers may have more than just a couple of changes they would like to make in their overall strategy. How […]

WestJet Earns Major Marketing Win

Earlier this week, like many of you, I watched the five and a half minute video from WestJet dubbed a Christmas Miracle. I’ve read numerous reviews of the video all suggesting this was money well spent for the Canadian airline. Of course, I need to weigh in as well and break the video down into the […]

Authentic marketing through storytelling

As consumers we want to connect with brands we believe to be real, engaging and honest. Everyone wants what I like to refer to as the “Norm Affect.” There’s something special about walking into your favorite coffee shop, boutique or restaurant and the staff knows your name. I discussed in another recent blog post the […]

Groupon CEO: What His Departure Can Teach Us About Data and Building Customer Relationships

Groupon’s CEO, Andrew Mason, was fired by the company he helped co-found, but it’s Mason’s farewell letter to his employees that’s been generating a lot of discussion. Mason wrote, “If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest […]

Are Quality Interventions in Customer Engagement Beneficial?

Is the drive to apply quality management tools always a good thing? Not always, as many organizations have found out the hard way. Most of the popular quality matrices, such as Six Sigma, focus on standardization and averages. While this makes sense in a factory or plant layout when dealing with inanimate materials, application of […]