Focus:  Customer Contact Frequency- Is your customer    
contact too constant?

I have “opted-in” to receive emails from various companies and several of them send me an email every day. I didn’t sign up for that much contact. I still want to get emails but not one every day. Here are 5 considerations in determining how frequently to contact your customers and prospective customers:

1.     Different customer segments may request and/or require different frequency of contact. Have you considered asking your customers how often they want to be contacted?  How about when your customers agree to “opt-in” to receive information, that they also have frequency of contact options? Perhaps they would also tell you how they want to be contacted.

2.     Prospective customers who have no relationship with your business would have a much different perspective on contact frequency. Don’t forget the people who want no contact at all. Make sure they are removed from your lists for all types of contact.  Refer to the DMA “Do Not Call” and “Do Not Mail” suppression files. Why waste your marketing budget on contacts that will only make people angry?  Perhaps your company should ask different prospective customer segments their preference of frequency and preferred contact methods.

3.     Keep your contact lists clean so you will not be sending multiple messages to the same customer/prospective customer with a nuance of a name difference at the same address.  This seems to be more of a problem with direct mail. Examples would be: J Smith, John Smith, John A Smith, JA Smith, Mr. J Smith, Mr. JA Smith, J Smit etc. I have to add this problem for my mother: her name could be for a male or female and she continually gets mail for MR…and that really insults her.

4.     Different types of businesses/products/services may require different contact timing. Have you analyzed your type of business/products/services and how it relates to the frequency of contact? For example, sports fans during their particular season may want frequent informational updates. However, does your business want to hear from your marketing consultant every day?

5.     Personalize your contacts to see if this is more acceptable to your customers and prospective customers. Test personalized direct mail, catalogs, email messages and PURLS.  Personalization should allow for acceptance of a higher level of frequency especially when the message is relevant to the receiver.