Know Your Customer and See Results

Anybody who knows me pretty well understands I am one of the biggest West Wing fans ever. In fact, my first Christmas with my husband, he bought me the whole series. Smart man.

It is a great show with wit, political savvy and inspiration. I digress. How does this tie to “Know Your Customer and See Results?” Well, there is a character that makes an appearance around about the second season, Lord John Marbury (Roger Rees). He is a flamboyant Brit who riles up Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer), and upon our first introduction to Marbury he turns to McGarry shakes his hand and introduces himself. Incredulous, McGarry responds, “Yes. We’ve met…ten or twelve times.”

As marketers, we do this to our customers all of the time. We create emails and communications of all sorts with little to no personalization as if to say, “I’m Tanya Babcock, pleasure to meet you.” And my customer, shocked and dismayed says, “You idiot, I’ve been buying your product for years! How do you not know me?”

It’s not that we are inherently rude. On the contrary, we would bend over backwards for our most loyal customers and most interested prospects, it is our tools. Email programs which are separate from our Customer Relationship Management software. Static websites with word processing type content management systems. Brochures printed en masse.

The tools are evolving. Big Data is giving us nuggets of precious information,  and we need to get out in front so we can quit disrespecting customers and prospects.

HubSpot has been one of the top companies in inbound marketing software, and during their INBOUND 2013 conference in Boston last month, they revealed exciting product updates. One thing which garnered my undivided attention was the Content Optimization System (see HubSpot’s Slideshare presentation below). The system is a dynamic website, blog and landing page software with responsive web design and personalized pages for your customers. Think Amazon, and think about the power you could wield with your returning/loyal customers delivering content on your page you know they want to see each time they visit.

Now my customer feels the warmth of my welcome when they return to my site and sees products they have been researching right on the front page. I can even serve up companion products, or up-sell items to them. I’ve made the buying process a little easier. I’ve given them content they find interest. I’ve even served it up beautifully on their laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

Tanya Babcock, @Brand_Gal, Co-VP of Programming of the AMA and Director of Marketing and Advertising at Brite Computers.