What is our philosophy?

Most companies optimize their communications at a campaign level. But taking marketing to the next level – optimizing communications at the customer level – can dramatically increase the return on marketing investment. By reallocating marketing investment across your customer portfolio you may have the opportunity to increase revenue and profitability while maintaining or even lowering marketing spend.

By optimizing marketing spend at the customer level instead of the campaign level, marketing spend was reduced by 25% with only a 5% impact to revenue. Turn that around – before optimizing marketing investment the last 25% spend was driving only 5% of revenue.

Two customers may, on the surface, appear to be identical, but looking at them slightly differently can show dramatic differences in future behavior. Once we identify those differences, communication strategies can be tailored to the “shining stars” and the “dogs”.

After diving deeper into the performance of new customers, a pocket of customers that had purchased a specific product were found to return at a 30% lower rate than the average new buyer. By shifting acquisition efforts towards products with higher retention it was possible to increase overall new buyer retention by 8%.

In order to maximize impact, communications need to be relevant to your customer. You can drive gains in performance by understanding what your customer is thinking. We can help find opportunities to drive stronger customer relationships through targeted communications based on customer behavior.

We realized that customers making a significant investment in a given product were overwhelmed by the choice of add-on products. By developing a multi-channel campaign to educate customers on the benefits of complementary accessories, post-purchase attachment increased customer revenue by 21%.

Your customers are your most valuable asset. By measuring and understanding their behavior you can identify areas of risk and opportunity and develop strategies to maximize the impact of your marketing communications. We can help develop a framework to understand trends in customer performance.

After identifying a trend of declining transaction value in a given customer segment, a marketing strategy was developed to emphasize products with above average purchase rates and slightly higher price points. The result was a 10% swing in average transaction.

Direct marketing is about asking the right questions and then relentlessly pursuing the answers to identify the next strategic opportunity. There is no single right answer, so by continually questioning what you know you develop an evolving strategy to address the changing needs of your marketing strategy.

Your customers provide you with a wealth of information – geographical, transactional, seasonal and psychographic. By analyzing this information and the relationships between them, you can uncover hidden opportunities to drive customer growth.

Another key benefit of direct marketing is the ability to minimize risk. Too often the next great idea failed because it was rolled out without testing. It took the Wright Brothers 13 years of testing, learning, reacting and testing again to achieve first flight. Customers aren’t nearly as complicated, but we can learn from Orville’s and Wilbur’s example.

Carmot Marketing strongly advocates a strategy of relentlessly testing and learning to drive growth and manage risk. Continuously adapting your strategy based on recent learnings eliminates the high-risk “all or nothing” approach.

Think of it as going into the water at a pool. First you dip you toe in the water, then you wade in, and once you’re ready you dive into the water. Even then you continuously monitor the situation and adapt. It’s never finished.