Attention on Retention
Howard Lake | 17 December 2007 | Newswire
Pitney Bowes Survey Assesses Relative Merits Of Vertical Sector Retention Campaigns
A new survey from mailstream technology specialist Pitney Bowes identifies those vertical sectors that are producing the most effective customer retention marketing campaigns.
In today’s business climate customer retention is critical. Many sectors are experiencing unprecedented levels of churn and the cost of replacing defectors is recognised to be significantly higher than retaining existing customers.
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The Pitney Bowes survey creates an index by measuring consumer attitudes to campaign quality across five vertical sectors against the current level of customer churn in those sectors. Thus, a sector with high churn rates must produce campaigns that consumers find highly effective in order to suppress further attrition.
The index reveals that it is the Charity sector which is way ahead when it comes to enticing repeat business from donors, coming only second in the table to the Travel and Holidays sector. Certainly, Charities can be seen as a more personal, moral buying experience but the index reveals that charitable organisations in this sector are not resting on their laurels when it comes to marketing to existing customers.
David Jefferies, Marketing Director, Pitney Bowes, comments:
“Any sector below the average on our scale should look hard at its marketing practices.
“Customer retention campaigns need not be about glossy, dynamic creatives. Customers also respond positively to accuracy, timeliness and documents that are obviously relevant to their particular circumstance.
“Those underperforming could look to affinity partnerships with best-practice sectors in a bid to stem unacceptable levels of churn. Combined with relevancy and colour, businesses of every size and from every sector can achieve dynamic mail marketing that encourages customer retention.”
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.