Why don’t you talk to me any more?
An interesting comparison of the reasons why customers vs donors abandon your organsation (in this case a charity) which carries relevance for other noprofits such as arts oganisations. A scarey statistic is highlighted in Mr and Mrs … Kiss Of Death on the blog The Agitator
“53% of donors leave due to the charity’s lack of communication.“
I suspect the issue may be larger than just lack of communication. Loyalty is also compromised by communication that is: impersonal, unpersonalised (that is more than just mail merged <Title> <Surname>), untargeted, untimely, incorrect, irrelevant, and even (as a contradiction) … too frequent.
Stalker award to Cellarmasters Wine Club 
14 May, 2013 at 10:00 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Can we get the answer whether it is a hit or not, via data analysis?
“The same kind of numbers analysis that has reshaped areas like politics and online marketing is increasingly being used by the entertainment industry.“
“Netflix tells customers what to rent based on algorithms that analyze previous selections, Pandora does the same with music, and studios have started using Facebook “likes” and online trailer views to mold advertising and even films.“
For as much as $20,000 per script, former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — ‘the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,’ and a team of analysts “compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?“
“But ignore it at your peril, according to one production executive. Motion Picture Group, of Culver City, Calif., analyzed the script for “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” said the executive, who worked on the film, but the production companies that supplied it to 20th Century Fox did not heed all of the advice.“
“All screenwriters think their babies are beautiful,” said, taking a chug of Diet Dr Pepper followed by a gulp of Diet Coke and a drag on a Camel. “I’m here to tell it like it is: Some babies are ugly.”
Thank god someone will tell it like it is 
However: “Audience research has been known to save a movie, but it has also famously missed the mark. Opinion surveys — “idiot cards,” as some unimpressed directors call them — indicated that “Fight Club” would be the flop of the century. It took in more than $100 million worldwide.“
7 May, 2013 at 10:04 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Art leads youngsters on to harder ‘stuff’?
26 February, 2013 at 12:20 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Email or Mail RoI? It’s Shades of Grey Really …
I was intrigued by this item, An Investigation Into the ROI of Direct Mail vs. Email Marketing.
The post refers to an article published by the Harvard Business Review, Why Email Marketing Is King which analyzes the effectiveness of email marketing compared to direct mail.
- mail and email
- mail only
- email only
Wait for it … the email-only campaign performed 95x times better in terms of ROI.
Email is so much cheaper than conventional mail and it may perform better as documented. Postal services are unlikely to become much cheaper, let alone near the cost of email dispatch, but will email remain better in performance?
31 January, 2013 at 10:10 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
More Cloud Based “Monkey Magic” for CRM
On the subject of cloud based monkey business **, I just came across a great article fom MailChimp. Be a Survey Ninja: How to Mashup CRM Data With Your Surveys
The post does address using MailChimp specific functionality in the form of Custom Variables when integrated with a CRM application, but the basic premise is valuable and possible with many other implementations, whether basic or sophisticated. Take every opportunity to segment communication, monitor response, manage messaging accordingly and gain meaningful feed back using the insight of all the variables at your disposal. I still aspire to the idea of starting with a basic set of information about a consumer that is augmented by each and every communication, contact and transaction and this can be further enhanced by responses to market research over time. That could build a richer picture comprised of a comprehensive set of benavioural, attitudinal and descriptive variables to more accurately predict purchase propensity, value, volume and timing.
Many of you will know will already know what a great EMS MailChimp is. I have used many major solutions in this area, but I have always been impressed by MailChimp’s ease of use, affordability, impressive functionality and accessible help and documentation delivered with a chimp chuckle.
I have been impressed by the granularity and flexibility of the statistics generated by MailChimp while collating email statistics to inform online marketing benchmarks for 39 NZ cultural organisations as part of the Optimiser project for Creative New Zealand. The success of MailChimp in the arts in this part of the world is indicated by the fact that MailChimp is used by over half of the Optimiser participants who use an EMS. A significant advantage of MailChimp over comparable offerings is that it has Google Analytics seamlessly integrated in its statistics whch among other things enables the quantification of online activity with tickets sales in both numbers and value. More Monkey Magic
A notable advantage that MailChimp offers is the success it has had making available an API that has supported integration with a huge variety of different third party software and service vendors. MailChimp supports a great deal of different types of integration by making its API readily available and accessible. It supports a diverse variety of solutions under four main categories:
- CMS
- CRM
- eCommerce
- Mobile
Under the remaining Other category are a large number of different applications such as: SurveyMonkey, Informly, Google Contacts, Facebook, Google Analytics, WordPress, and even ticketing solutions like Eventbrite, University Tickets, Ticketscript and Regtix.
MailChimp supports integration with numerous leading CRM solutions, including (but by no means limited to): Insightly, the open source CiviCRM, Salesforce, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sugar CRM, Zoho CRM, and the amusingly titled Less Annoying CRM.
** Did you spot the obtuse reference to sixteenth century Chinese novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en produced for Japanese TV in the 70′s and translated and broadcaast in Australia as Monkey.
4 January, 2013 at 9:20 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
CRM – 1, 2, 3 Simple Steps to Engage
Mark Knight founder of Right Chord Music in an article 3 things musicians can learn from brands about Customer Relationship Management suggests that CRM efforts all stem from three goals:
- Identify, attract and win new customers
- Retain existing customers
- Re-invigorate relationships with former customers
It is a nice simple way of distilling the market growth challenge, but I feel that it may go a little light on the product and service elements of CRM.
But if an arts organisation just concentrated on systematically achieving these goals alone they would be miles ahead.
I really enjoyed his Bonus Tip: Get Organised.
Just using a spreadsheet to record your customers but segmented into different constituent relationships (relevant for a musician): Artists, Blogs, Labels, Promoters, Publishers and Radio stations.
He then proposes adding the longitudinal dimension that records and defines a relationship – Contacts: : “When, Why and What”
The amount of organisations I see that have not even got this simple information management in place is saddening.
30 November, 2012 at 1:58 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 2 comments
Is the call centre dead?
Is the call centre dead?
“Almost 60% of customers prefer to interact with customer service over email.“
The call centre is no longer the first line of service for an organisation, but it still has a role, particularly for some tasks and certain audience groups. Flavio Martins makes some other equally interesting observations in his article Customer Service Online Matters.
Offensive Customer Service
16 November, 2012 at 10:45 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
