One strategy is to focus on the knowledge and experience of the firm’s employees. I recently wrote about the importance of selling what you know (your smarts), not what you do (your services) to effectively market a professional services business.

There’s another factor that can help differentiate your company in a competitive market: How your employees make your customers feel. Case in point: My UPS delivery guy, Tom.

What can smart marketers learn about marketplace differentiation and customer retention from a UPS driver in Cleveland, Ohio? Here are some tips for your smart marketing strategy.

Delivering Packages and Much More

I opened a UPS account almost 20 years ago when I started a marketing consulting business from my home near Cleveland. A driver named Tom was assigned to my area. Later, when I moved the business to a nearby office building, Tom’s route covered my home and business.

Tom’s been serving us in both locations for many years. Like most UPS drivers, he’s smart, courteous, and efficient.

But Tom delivers much more than packages. He provides an exceptional level of personal service that you won’t find in a job description for a delivery truck driver. As the competent, caring face of the company, Tom helps ensure our loyalty to UPS.

Here are five principles of customer loyalty and retention that Tom practices every day:

1. Know the customer. Tom figured out quickly that my home was also my business. From the very beginning, he treated me like an executive, even when my office was 10 feet from the kitchen. As we grew, he came to know our whole team and what our business is about.
2. Value the customer. Though ours is a small business, Tom gives us the same respect as a large client. Our packages seem to be just as important as the ones he’s delivering to the biggest tenants in the building.
3. Anticipate the customer’s needs. If there’s no one available to sign for a package, Tom will deliver home-bound shipments to our office and vice versa. That may not be in the UPS rule book, but it gets important packages to us without delay and we love it.
4. Know your own business. Tom can answer almost any question about shipping via UPS. We can consult the UPS website (and we do), but it’s nice to get the right answer from a real person.
5. Delight the customer. When my business was home-based, my children helped answer the door. Tom brought them Dum-Dum lollipops and Tootsie Rolls. All these years later, he still leaves treats for my dog. Is this a corporate strategy to protect UPS drivers from dog bites? I doubt it. I think he’s just a genuinely nice guy who cares about the people he serves.

Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

If you’re marketing professional services, you’re selling what your people deliver. Promoting their expertise is essential, but so is promoting how they exemplify your commitment to great customer service.

Here’s how to make customer service excellence a core part of your brand and your marketing:

• Hire and train employees who make your customers feel so good about your company that they wouldn’t consider switching vendors because they place so much value on your team.
• Ask customers to help you tell your story in marketing campaigns through testimonials and case studies. Feature employees alongside customers in your advertising.
• Never forget that business is about relationships. Building great relationships with customers – who have the power to refer you to new prospects – is the smartest marketing strategy of all.

But having permission to market to someone isn’t a license to bombard them with marketing messages. In fact, not knowing when to shut up is a classic marketing mistake.

Here’s how over-marketing can kill a customer or prospect relationship and 7 ways to avoid this costly error in your smart marketing strategy.

We’re Not Friends Any More

If marketing is about building relationships with customers, over-marketing is the best way to kill the relationship and send the customer or prospect heading for the door.

The Social Break-Up, a fascinating study by ExactTarget, provides clear evidence of what happens to customer relationships when the marketer comes on too strong:

• 91% of consumers have unsubscribed from permission-based marketing emails;
• 81% of consumers have either “unliked” or removed a company’s posts from their Facebook news feed.

The biggest reason people break up with companies? Too much marketing. The study showed that:

• 54% of consumers unsubscribe when emails come too frequently;
• 63% of customers have “unliked” a company on Facebook due to excessive postings.

The Cookies are Great, But Enough

I often send gifts to colleagues and clients of my marketing consulting business in Cleveland, including Cheryl’s Cookies. Cheryl’s is an Ohio firm and their cookies are great, so I’ve been a repeat, though not a frequent, customer.

But last week, I blocked their emails. I was fed up with receiving promotional emails multiple times a week, even though I only order a few times a year. The messaging was out of proportion with the relationship.

7 Ways to Avoid Over-Marketing in Your Smart Marketing Strategy

How do you know when you’re marketing too much? It can be a fine line, but here are some principles to guide your marketing planning:

1. Ask your customers. The best way to understand how customers and prospects feel about the frequency of your promotions is to ask them. If most tell you the frequency is “about right,” you’re on target.
2. Measure your opt-outs. Count the number of people who are cutting off their dialogue with you by unsubscribing to emails, unfollowing you on Twitter, and unliking you on Facebook. If the numbers are escalating, over-marketing could be why.
3. Understand your customer relationships. A customer who orders rarely or sporadically has a different relationship with your business than one who orders all the time. Regular customers might welcome frequent promotional emails with special deals, but sporadic customers are more likely to be turned off by too much marketing.
4. Follow your own firm and see how it feels. Opt-in to your own promotions to put yourself in the customer’s or prospect’s shoes and find out what it’s like to be on the receiving end of your promotional messages. If even you get tired of hearing from your company, you’ll know it’s time to turn down the volume.
5. Deliver more value and less promotion. People may opt-in in hopes of getting deals from you, but a lasting relationship between a brand and a customer goes beyond special promotions. When you deliver content, insights, access, and other exclusive advantages that only those who have opted-in can receive, you create real reasons for the relationship to flourish.
6. Coordinate your efforts. If you have multiple units in your company sending emails, Tweets, and Facebook posts to customers and prospects, lack of internal coordination can create permission-based chaos. Set some boundaries and coordinate your efforts to avoid over-promoting.
7. Compare your permission-based marketing to your competitors’. Review the marketplace to gauge the pace of permission-based marketing in your industry. If you’re marketing much more frequently than your competitors, you could be the smartest marketer in the bunch or the one people hesitate to start a relationship with because you talk too much.

The Bottom Line: Treat Permission to Market as a Gift

People opt in because they want to hear from you. But if you disrespect the relationship by coming on too strong, customers and prospects will flee. Treating your customers and prospects well is common courtesy; treating their permission to market to them as a gift is a smart marketing strategy.

But what’s most fascinating about this new research is the window it opens on the habits of the 46 million Americans who check social sites several times a day.

Who are these habitual social media users? And what can marketers learn from their extraordinary level of engagement with social networks?

Here’s what this important study shows and three takeaways about social media for your smart marketing strategy.

Facebook Dominates, Twitter Gains Ground

According to the research, which was presented at BlogWorld on May 25 by Edison’s Tom Webster, more than half of Americans ages 12+ have a profile on a social networking site and 51% of Americans are on Facebook.

Facebook is by far the dominant way people connect with brands and companies on social media. It also is the leading social network for influencing buying decisions.

Though Facebook’s supremacy is clear, awareness of Twitter is extremely high and the level of engagement with Twitter is growing rapidly. In 2010, 47% of Twitter users posted status updates daily; in 2011, 70% did.

The Mobile Phone as “First Screen”

The study showed that nearly all social network users – 91% – have mobile phones. Even more important, for frequent social networkers, a smart phone is their “first screen.” Sixty-four percent of those surveyed would keep their smart phone over their TV. Edison says that “for those with the social habit, the mobile phone is a true convergence device.”

On Social Media, All the Time

But what I found most interesting as a marketing strategist were insights into the millions of social media users who check social networking sites multiple times a day. According to this research, habitual social media users:

• Skew younger and more female, though about a third are aged 35 or older;
• Own smart phones and use their phones to update their status;
• Contribute more content through social media;
• Are more likely to connect to brands and companies on social networks;
• Are more likely to be activated by mobile promotions;
• Are three times more likely to use Twitter.

Here’s another important fact: The number of habitual users is climbing fast. Just two years ago, 18 million people reported using social media sites several times a day. Today, the number is over 46 million.

3 Takeaways for Smart Marketers

As a marketing consultant who helps clients develop marketing strategies, I see three key takeaways from this study:

1. Social media is where engagement is happening. The depth and frequency of engagement is what’s driving social media’s importance for marketers. Habitual users not only check social media sites more often, but they are more connected to brands, more responsive to promotions, and contributing more content.
2. Smart phones are the gateway to the most engaged social media users. If you’re targeting a demographic with high social media use, you need to be using mobile marketing. Your website and social media pages should be designed to deliver a great experience – and offer meaningful ways to interact with your brand – on a mobile device.
3. Social media belongs in every smart marketer’s strategy. The widespread use of social media and the growing number of habitual social media users proves without a doubt that every marketer needs to be using social media in their marketing plan.

Click here to see the full presentation  from BlogWorld.

In my last post, I shared the story of how a new B2B sales rep nearly destroyed a 10-year client relationship with my marketing agency by making six crucial mistakes in the first meeting.

But transitioning a legacy client to a new sales rep doesn’t have to be a sales minefield.

In fact, when handled well, assigning a new rep to a key account can be an opportunity to increase the client’s satisfaction and boost sales.

Here are the top 10 things a new sales rep can do to ensure a successful transition and earn a long-time client’s trust:

1. Be timely. Meet the client as soon as possible after the transition is announced.
2. Get educated. Research the client’s relationship with your company before you meet. Be especially aware of any negative history that could still be fresh in the client’s mind.
3. Be empathetic. View the change through the client’s eyes. Is this transition a good or bad thing from their perspective? How do they feel about their old rep’s departure? They might be eager for a new account manager and welcome you with open arms.
4. Be credible. You’ve been assigned this account because you’re qualified to handle it. Show the client why (without bragging) by demonstrating your knowledge of your company’s product line, your industry, their business, and their needs.
5. Be eager to learn. Show the client that you’re sincere about wanting to understand their business and become a valued business partner, not just a vendor. Ask how you can learn more about what they do so you can recommend helpful solutions.
6. Anticipate the next sale. Every face-to-face meeting with a business decision-maker is a chance to promote another product or service. Think about the client’s potential needs and be ready to suggest ways you can address them.
7. Update the client’s contact data. Business titles and addresses change constantly. Ask the client to confirm their contact data and ask if there are other people your company should be communicating with at their business. This one step can expand your marketing database and lead to new connections and referrals.
8. Connect on social media.  Before the meeting, follow the client on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media. Read their blog. After the meeting, invite them to connect with you on social media, especially on LinkedIn, and to subscribe to your blog if you have one.
9. Create a reason to follow up. Go into every meeting with a plan for a next contact.
10. Be curious. Give the client a chance to tell you something about themselves that’s not on their business card or in their LinkedIn biography. The first meeting is a great chance to start getting to know the client as an individual. That’s how relationships are built — and  great client relationships are essential to a smart B2B marketing strategy.

But when a trusted rep moves on and a new one is assigned to a long-time client, there’s potential for big trouble if the transition is handled poorly.

Case in point: I recently met with a new sales rep from a company I’ve done business with for more than a decade. In less than 20 minutes, he managed to break six cardinal rules of effective customer relationship management and came very close to jeopardizing a long-term business partnership.

Here’s where this salesperson went wrong and what you can learn from his mistakes for your smart marketing strategy.

A First Sales Call Goes South Fast

My marketing consulting firm in Cleveland, Ohio has been a client of a large company for more than 10 years. Though this vendor recently was acquired by a competitor, we remained loyal. Our former representative was promoted and a new rep assigned to our account.

Unfortunately, his first meeting with us was a disaster because he made six crucial sales mistakes:

1. Taking too long to reach out to us: Reassuring existing clients is essential if your company is in transition. Our new representative was assigned to our account several months ago, but only recently met us face to face.
2. No credentials: Who was this guy and why was he qualified to take the place of our prior account manager? The new rep didn’t present his experience or qualifications.
3. Failing to research our company before the meeting: Our new rep had many opportunities to become knowledgeable about us before walking in our door, including at a minimum, visiting our website. He knew little about our marketing agency and we had to educate him on what we do.
4. Limited understanding of our relationship with his company: Despite having access to more than 10 years of our client data, he appeared to know only the basics about our relationship with his firm.
5. No plan to cross-sell:  This salesperson should have thought about our potential needs before meeting with us and been prepared to recommend a new, problem-solving service. Instead, he offered nothing new.
6. No next steps: Our rep had no suggestions about a next contact as the meeting concluded. “I’m here if you need me,” he said. We might, but given his performance, we might not.

Next post: What a new sales rep SHOULD do: 10 tips for a great transition

But when a direct marketer gets it right, with a highly personalized, data-driven message, a compelling offer, and a warm invitation to re-engage, it’s a thing of marketing beauty.

Here’s how a major women’s retailer – Chico’s – nailed it with their customer win-back direct mail campaign, and six lessons from their direct marketing success story that you can apply to your smart marketing strategy.

Come On Back!

Chico’s is a specialty retailer that sells sophisticated, casual-to-dressy clothing to women via catalogs, the web, and more than 1,000 retail stores. Like most retailers, Chico’s has a customer loyalty program to track buying behavior and spur additional sales.

I’ve shopped a lot at Chico’s, but not much lately. To win me back, Chico’s sent me this direct mail package.

It’s an 8-3/8”x 10-7/8” package with simple mail panel copy: We’ve missed you. On the back of the envelope is a short message that succeeds both in positioning Chico’s as a fashion leader and acknowledging my absence from their store: 

“We’ve been seen in Harper’s Bazaar, Redbook, Real Simple. We’ve been seen online at Vogue.com. But we haven’t seen you in awhile. Look inside for a few welcome-back offers…and come back to see us soon.”

A Friendly, Flattering Message Driven by Customer Data

Inside the envelope are the latest catalog and a brief letter from Cinny Murray, the company president.

This letter is a case study in how to use a customer’s purchasing data to create a high-impact, one-to-one message. Here’s the friendly, engaging lead sentence:

“I love our new spring collection and thought it was the perfect time to connect with you.”

The letter then pivots brilliantly to my individual interests by talking about what I’ve purchased at Chico’s in the past:

“I remember that you love our Travelers collection,” the letter reads, describing the current Travelers line as being “reinvented as a chicer-than-ever collection.”

The letter invites me to meet with a “Style Expert” who is “always on hand to help you look and feel fabulous” and concludes with an invitation to come back: “Please come back into our boutique soon to see our latest Travelers styles and the rest of the new spring collection…”  The president also provides her email address and “personal customer hotline.”

The Icing on the Cake: Customized Offers

This is a great letter: Brief, sincere, and highly personal. But where this direct mail package really shines is the offer.

Attached to the letter is a second page with three lasered coupons: 15-30% off on the Travelers collection, $10 off on a necklace, and 50% off the highest price item when I spend over $100.

This offer is exactly what smart direct marketing is about:

• It’s tailored specifically to my previous purchases (the Travelers collection and jewelry);
• It’s designed to get me to spend at least $100;
• And it has a short deadline to get me to act now.

Six Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

Here are six takeaways from this direct marketing success story that you can use to reactivate your lapsed customers with direct mail.

1. Write warm, engaging copy with a sincere, “me-to-you” message from a real person.
2. Show the customer what they’ve been missing and get them excited about what they’ll experience when they return to you.
3. Tailor the copy to the customer’s buying habits by using transactional data.
4. Treat the customer like someone special by making multiple, high-value offers, including offers tailored to their prior purchases.
5. Place a deadline on the offer to spur the customer to act now.
6. Make the customer feel important by using the company president as the letter author.

My Free Marketing Advice to Chico’s

Since I often advise clients of my marketing consulting firm on how to create effective direct mail, I’d advise Chico’s to add two things to this package: A reminder of the location of my local store in Cleveland, Ohio, with a map, and a P.S. The P.S. is still one of the most-read parts of any direct mail package and they missed an opportunity to remind me that the offers expire soon.

But these are minor quibbles. Compared to most retail direct mail, which is written for the masses with generic coupons full of redemption restrictions, Chico’s and its marketing agency deserve praise for a smart marketing strategy and direct marketing effectiveness.

But a smart lead generation marketing strategy goes well beyond the creation of the marketing campaign.

If your goal is to build a relationship with a business prospect, increase your sales conversion rate, and maximize the value of your sales resources, you need a careful plan for what happens after the lead comes in.

Here are the seven steps you should take with a marketing-generated sales lead to achieve success:

1. Verify it: Check the accuracy and completeness of the data the prospect provided to be sure you have the information for an ongoing sales dialogue. If the lead is from a web form, all contact information (name, title, company, address, phone, and email address) should be required fields.
2. Enter it:  Get the lead data into your prospect database. Your data entry process should have well-established quality control standards to ensure data accuracy.
3. Qualify it: Not all leads are of equal value. Ideally, your response device included a few qualifying questions to gauge the prospect’s needs, interests, timeframe, and authority to buy. If not, or you need to know more, call the prospect to find out. Use this information to route the lead into the right sales queue for the next steps in the conversion process.
4. Fulfill it: If your marketing campaign made an offer to the prospect – such as a free report, gift, premium, or product sample – deliver what you promised and use the fulfillment step to demonstrate your interest in a relationship by responding quickly and personalizing the fulfillment messaging.
5. Distribute it: Leads get cold fast, especially in today’s world of instant communication. It’s essential to get qualified leads to the sales team who will be doing follow-up as soon as possible. Set up a system to flag extremely well-qualified prospects for immediate contact by your best sales representatives.
6. Source it: Use promotion codes to identify the lead source, so you can measure the results of your lead generation marketing campaigns and pinpoint which mailing list, offer, or marketing tactic produced the response.
7. Nurture it: The business buying cycle can be lengthy and complicated. It may take a long time for even a highly qualified prospect to become a customer. Create a marketing communications plan to nurture leads over an extended time period by sending prospects a steady stream of high-value content, special offers, invitations to events, and other outreach tailored to their interests.

Networking is essential to building and growing a business, especially for business-to-business (B2B) marketers who participate in professional associations and trade shows.

But it takes skill and experience to feel confident in a networking situation, and it takes careful planning to capitalize on the value of networking for lead generation.

Here’s what I’ve learned about personal marketing and successful networking at B2B events, and 21 tips you can use to make networking a powerful component of your smart marketing strategy.

Before, During, and After the Event: How to Network Well

When I started a marketing consulting and creative services business in Cleveland nearly 20 years ago, I was new to Northeast Ohio. So I began attending business networking events sponsored by regional advertising and marketing organizations to meet colleagues and vendors who might become clients, referral sources, or collaborators.

Participating in networking events where I didn’t know anyone forced me to step up and market myself. I soon discovered there were many things I could do before, during, and after an event to be a better networker.

Before the Event

1. Choose wisely. You want to be at meetings with people who will share your interests and value your capabilities. Study an organization’s website to see if the meeting topics relate to your expertise and its members are people that someone in your business should know.

2. Set your objectives. Decide the outcome you want from each event. For example, your goal might be to meet two prospects, identify a potential collaborator, check out a competitor, or evaluate opportunities the group offers for boosting your visibility and generating leads. Keep this goal in mind as you prepare to chat and circulate.

3. Scope out the attendees. If registration is online, review the LinkedIn, Facebook, or Evite guest list in advance to see who’s coming that you want to meet. If you can’t view the attendee list online, get to the event early and scan badges on the registration table to see who you know and who you want to know.

4. Prepare your pitch. Think about the one thing you want everyone you meet at this event to remember about you and your business. That’s your elevator pitch. Practice it until you have it down. Tailor your pitch to the organization if appropriate.

5. Dress for success. First impressions are everything. You need to look like the professional that you are. Invest in clothes and accessories that say, “I’m successful.”

During the Event

6. Get the lay of the land. Scan the room to see how the event flows (food, drinks, speaker, etc.) to determine where you want to be and where you want to sit.

7. Seek out the leaders. Find the president, event chair, or a board member and introduce yourself. Ask for help getting introduced. Saying “I’m new here” makes people want to reach out to you.

8. Study badges. It’s okay to look at someone’s badge and ask a question about it, especially if the attendee’s badge has a special ribbon or pin designating their involvement in the group.

9. Be friendly. Get in the drink line and strike up a conversation with the person next to you. Approach someone who’s standing alone. They’ll be grateful to have someone to talk with and may end up being the best contact you meet.

10. Be curious. Ask an introductory question about a person’s company or title. “Tell me about [company name]. What is your role there?”

11. Be open. Everyone you meet could be someone you’ll want to know later. Be polite and friendly to everyone; they might become your vendor or client someday or talk about you to others.

12. Don’t sell too hard. Describe what you do and how it helps your customers, then back off.

13. Listen more than you speak. People want to talk about themselves. Focus on the person you’re conversing with, not on your sales pitch. Ask good questions and be a great listener.

14. Be prepared. Don’t fumble for a business card. Carry your business cards in your pocket or a case you can easily and smoothly reach. Make sure your cards have your current contact information.

15. Keep moving. Not every conversation should be a long one. To disengage from someone, politely excuse yourself by saying, “I just saw someone come in that I need to connect with. It was great meeting you.”

After the Event

16. Make notes about who you met and what they told you about themselves and their businesses. Add this information to your contact management system.

17. Give more than you take. Look for ways to send business to colleagues. See how you can help the person you just met, instead of expecting help to come your way.

18. Follow through. There’s no point in making a connection, then dropping it; you appear unreliable and shallow. Send a “nice to meet you” email, connect on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter, and fulfill any other next-step promise you made, such as an offer to introduce your new contact to someone else or send information.

19. Be professional. Demonstrate excellence in all that you do. Don’t make typos in follow-up emails. Look like a professional in all your future interactions, especially written communication.

20. Say thank you. Thank colleagues for referrals and references and let them know what happened when they referred you. It’s an essential business courtesy.

21. Read the cues. If someone fails to respond to several polite efforts you make to get in touch with them after an event, they’re not interested in being part of your network. Move on.

A Final Tip

Business networking can be almost as nerve-wracking as public speaking, but the more events you attend, the better your skills will be. Take a deep breath as you enter the room and remember why you’re there. You have something valuable to offer. Be confident about it.

If so, there’s a critical first step you should take for a more effective marketing plan: A thorough assessment of your best customers.

If your company is like most, you have a core group of customers that drive a large percentage of your sales. Here are seven things you should know about your best customers in order to develop a smart marketing strategy:

1. Who are my best customers? Database analysis can help you find out who your best customers are. Identify the characteristics they share and target your marketing to similar prospects. And don’t assume that a high-revenue customer is automatically a best customer. The key measure is profitability.
2. Why did my best customers pick me? What is it about your value proposition that your best customers find so appealing? Why are you their preferred vendor? Talk to best customers to understand why they chose you and what sets your company apart from your competitors. Use this insight to craft your marketing messages.
3. How did our relationship start? Knowing the origins of your best customer relationships – the channel that produced the original sale, the offer that spurred the initial response, and the tactics that persuaded prospects to say “yes” – can help you pinpoint marketing strategies that worked in the past and are likely to work again.
4. Where can I find people just like my best customers? Most of the time, your best prospects are people who look just like your best customers. Think about where these decision-makers seek information and share information related to your products and services. That’s where your marketing messages should be.
5. How am I marketing to my best customers? Every smart marketing strategy includes tactics to strengthen and grow relationships with current customers. Use marketing to engage in an ongoing sales dialogue with your best customers that is highly personalized to their interests and preferences.
6. What am I doing to keep my best customers happy? Best customers are the ones you can’t afford to lose. Develop a customer relationship management (CRM) plan to be sure your most important customers know their value to you and never have reason to doubt their decision to choose you as a vendor.
7. How can my best customers help me sell? Best customers can be your biggest advocates. Ask them to help you tell your sales story to others in testimonials, case studies, and marketing campaigns. Their endorsement can give you credibility money can’t buy.

Reactivating lapsed customers is a smart marketing strategy for every business. It’s easier to reengage a former customer than create a new one.

If you’re using direct marketing to win former customers back, however, you’d better do it right.

Here’s how a major marketer blew a customer win-back opportunity with poor direct mail, and five lessons for more effective win-back direct marketing.

Why It’s Smart to Target Lapsed Customers

It’s an axiom of marketing that it’s easier to sell to a customer than a prospect. Customers know you, and if you deliver a quality product or service, they’re likely to buy again.

It also can be easier to reactivate a former customer than find a new one.  There’s less education needed during the sales process. Even more important, you can use the demographic and transactional data you have on former customers to create highly targeted reactivation messages and offers. That’s why data-driven direct marketing is so commonly used in reactivation marketing campaigns.

But Watch What You Mail

But direct marketing to former customers is a tricky business.

Like active customers, inactive customers expect you to know them. When you clearly don’t, you can end up squandering a sales opportunity and reminding people why they left you.

Case in point: Verizon Wireless.  We cancelled our family accounts with Verizon last year when we got iPhones from AT&T.  But we didn’t leave Verizon just for the iPhone. We consistently had bad experiences with their retail customer service staff and I silently celebrated when I walked out of my local Verizon store for the last time.

Now Verizon has sent me this direct mail package asking me to come back. It’s true to their new “Rule the Air” marketing campaign, but it breaks several cardinal rules of successful direct marketing:

• No personalization: The only direct message to me – rather than every other recipient of this campaign – is the address on the envelope, which they had to use to get this promotion to my mailbox. There’s no letter to me and no reference to the number of lines I used to have or the number of years I was a customer.
• No offer: The copy notes their selection of Android smart phones and an insert touts the Droid X. There’s an 877 number I should “call today.” But why? There’s no special deal or price and no deadline, thus no reason for me to come back right now.
• No reference to my local retail store: There’s a Verizon store across the street from my office in Cleveland, Ohio, but there’s no mention of my proximity to this store, no map, and no personal invitation suggesting I come in and meet the unnamed store manager or salesperson who should be waiting to re-engage me.
• Copy that’s irrelevant: The copy says, “You’re right-you deserve more calling plan options, with more 3G coverage, at a budget-friendly price.” But that has nothing to do with why I left Verizon, so there’s a big disconnect between their message and my interests.
• Design that obscures the message: The copy on the inside of the invitation is printed on a patterned image that significantly reduces readability and the insert text is hard to read because it’s reversed out of red.

5 Lessons for Your Smart Marketing Strategy

Here are five marketing lessons from Verizon’s direct marketing mistakes that you can apply to your next win-back direct marketing campaign and your smart marketing strategy:

1. Use data to personalize the message. Take advantage of the data you have on former customers to deliver a message tailored to their needs and their experience with you. Use what you know about them to relate to them as only you can.
2. Make a compelling offer. Give people a powerful reason to return to you by making an offer they can’t resist.
3. Create a deadline for response. Put a timeframe on your offer so respondents have a reason to act now.
4. Show former customers they have special status. Give lapsed customers something extra, like a bonus, a premium, a gift, or a special price to which only they are entitled because of their relationship with you.
5. Never let design overpower the message. Graphic design always should make it easier, not harder, for people to read, understand, and respond to your message. Your goal is to get a response, not win design awards.