Guest post: Adam Ramshaw at Genroe: Net Promoter Score – how to do it?

Net Promoter Scoring was introduced to the world in a December 2003 Harvard Business review research article.  This article, “The One Number You Need to Grow“, reported on research that had been performed by Frederick Reichheld from Bain Consulting in concert with a company called Satmetrix.

For the last 50 years companies have been trying to find a survey question that measured customer loyalty in order to better understand how and what drives customer loyalty.  Until recently “customer satisfaction” had been used as a proxy for this information.  Reichheld and Satmetrix set out to find if customer satisfaction was the best question once and for all.

It turned out that customer satisfaction was not the best question and the result was Net Promoter Score.  By analysing the results from the question “On a scale 0-10, how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”, they obtained a metric that was well correlated with customer loyalty.

Actually performing Net Promoter scoring is reasonably straight forward.  Survey your customers, ask the “Would recommend” question and then apply the scoring formula. However, what many organisations have found is that uncovering the score is important but not enough.

To be successful in using Net Promoter Score, organisations must put together an internal response processes to use the information and make changes in the business.  Only then will customer loyalty increase.

Net promoter scoring can be used in both business to business and business to consumer companies.

For more information on Net Promoter Score and how/why it works download our free Introduction to Net Promoter Score (NPS).

If you are thinking about implementing Net Promoter Score (NPS) in your organisation give us a call. We can help you to implement an effective Net Promoter Score customer needs survey program for your business.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score and NPS are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

Guest post from Adam Ramshaw at Genroe

Thank you Adam for your guest post on our blog. As always, the team at genroe have delivered highly insightful and ‘on the money’ insight for a single question which has created many-many years of Marketing debate.

I think this is a great introduction to Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Your can learn more about Genroe at their website and Blog.

Integrati Marketing believe that great marketing can be achieved by Small Medium Business, we know it is possible, it is all about accessing the right tools. We’re here to help you access them.

Great marketing really comes down to understanding your customer, your products benefits and how your service and offering is superior to the competition. But a little help with creating great marketing promotions in a few easy steps is a great way to help your business speed up the marketing promotions process and planning.

Childsplay Marketing have a great pack which uses 3 sets of cards to help you play around with different elements to brain storm and ‘blue sky’ think promotions and potential activities for your business. The key is the fact that there are over 125,000 different options to create a promotion from the pack.

The 3 dimensions of the pack are:

1. The audience (who you sell to now or want to sell to)
2. The Offer (what is the incentive)
3. The Vehicle (how you communicate to your target audience the Offer)

This makes up the core decks of cards, the next bit is the fun bit. You can then start to flip the cards in order to start to generate ideas and potential promotions.

It does not take long and can create ideas, promotions and you will even end up with a full promotional calendar of events. The thing we like about the pack is that it has made complex ideas simple, so simple you will be planing your marketing like a professional marketer in minutes.

Easy right!

Yes, it is. We now use the Childsplay marketing pack with our customers to generate ideas and promotions at their planning days.

If you would like to learn more about the Childsplay Marketing pack you can here. Or if you already sold on the idea you can purchase here.

What the Bit.ly is that? a URL shortening service with Puffatude!

Love sharing, love social, we love Bit.ly it tracks our sharing for free!

Great marketing today relies on a simple idea, which is great customer data. When we run direct marketing activities, it requires having up-to-date customer information and their interests or current purchase history do our messages are relevant and timely.

Business today has many different ‘pots of customer data’ in their business. In fact, it is all around their business is a wealth of customer information. The problem can be that this data is in all sorts of different formats, from business cards, emails, letters, faxes, to spreadsheets and many more.

And this leads to the question we get a lot from our customers, “We have a great business but we do not have a database for our marketing. Where will we get our data from?” All businesses have databases of customer information, every single one! They just have not loaded it to a central store.

Customers are often baffled when we let them know they do actually have customer databases. They just have not digitised them so their data can be used readily for their marketing and sales activities.

The problem is that these businesses like these, as yet have not actively gathered up this data from the different databases like, business cards, customer invoices, emails, websites etc, and stored this information in a central repository. So, all business do have databases, it is just not all have created a central database which they can store, update and manage customer data on.

Once we have worked through with our customer how to start identifying customer information the process of uploading data starts. This can be as simple as starting a spreadsheet or an access database to using an online database such as; Salesforce.com or highrisehq.com which are hosted in the ‘Cloud’.

Once the process of collecting information in the business has started the sooner the benefits will accrue from the use of the data. Does your business have its data in order?

Direct Marketing is the most successful when you create a communications piece which
not only captures attention but also creates action.

In the past, this was referred to as AIDA; Awareness – Interest – Desire – Action. Whilst with all theory and specialist practice things become more complex this acronym still works today at a high level.

So, why be Targeted and why be Direct?

Because you want your communications to be relevant (Targeted) to the recipient when
they receive and hopefully open the direct mail (Direct to the reader). By knowing who
you are sending your communications to, understanding what services they buy, or
interested in buying enables you to ‘target’ these customers.  This in effect backs up
the idea of AIDA: your target customer is; Aware of you, they are Interested in what
you sell, they Desire the services you have on offer, they take Action.

To be targeted you have to know or collected information about what your customers or
prospects are buying from you. By knowing what your customers are buying, you can then
look to a variety of ways to increase sales, convert new customers or build loyalty.

Then by being direct, you can achieve a couple of things, which are underestimated
today for effectiveness. By targeting a bespoke group of customers you choose, your
business can create a unique marketing Offer to these people you have selected.

In marketing terms, this is a ‘segment’ from your overall customer data, just like a
segment from an orange as an example.

Now with your chosen segment you can now look at creative ideas you believe or know
will have the greatest impact on these customers. For instance, these customers may
have been with you for a very long time so you may look to running a specific reward or
loyalty offer to them.

By knowing your customers, by creating a unique and enticing creative direct mail, you
are increasing the chances of the letter being opened and read.

This is the biggest battle silently taking place in letterboxes all over Australia. We
are fighting for people’s time to read our messages or offer. The hard part is getting
your customers to open the mail!

Nevertheless, by using great creative, colour and personalisation can all help get your

mail opened. It has been proven that by using information from your customers like,
product preferences, their first name and Offers which match their needs increases
response rates.

Like the best marketing this is all logical – the skill is working with a team that
understands how to apply the logic to your business and knows the in’s and out’s of
Direct Marketing.

So by being having a targeted segment and mailing list you can increase your response
to you campaigns by using direct mail to the customers, this way you are talking
directly to your customer.

Interested in running a Direct Mail campaign to build demand for your business contact us here.