The new interactive marketing technologies – sustaining a frictionless dialogue with customers.

First published in the New Zealand Marketing Association's DLB magazine in 2007 

People can fall asleep watching television.  They can fall asleep reading a newspaper or magazine.  Ditto radio.  By contrast though, people generally don’t fall asleep in mid-conversation or when they’re surfing the internet. The difference?  Dialogue – two way communication.

Advertising still works.

Brand advertising is still important to make your products known.  It moves prospects from awareness through to trial of your product.  

That’s when the real work begins. 

Advertising in all its forms though is very different to dialogue.  Creative for the two way dialog on the web needs to be done differently to that produced for the one way media of television or print.  The adverts you put online are a substitute salesperson.  The acid test of whether your online ads are on target is to ask – “how does my ad sound as part of a sales presentation delivered by a salesman on the shop floor?”  A good example of the genre done well is the banner advert pictured here for Saturn – a Carlson client in the USA.  The banner’s language is the same a salesman in a Saturn showroom might use. 

The sale is only the start

According to Tom Peters “All business success rests on something labelled a sale, which at least temporarily weds company and customer”.  What happens after that wedding; whether it be customers repeating that initial purchase or upgrading the first purchase to a premium product purchase over time is up to us as marketers.  

Theodore Levitt’s view is that “The sale merely consummates the courtship".  

Then the marriage begins.  How good the marriage is depends on how well the relationship is managed by the seller”.

Their schedule – not yours.

Whatever technologies you choose, expect to work at higher speeds than ever before. Many next-generation techniques reward immediacy—but that can be difficult to achieve in large companies with regulatory and organizational hurdles to clear.Companies that plan to use RSS, blogs, and podcasts as a more real-time way to reach customers, whether in the aggregate or in tightly focused messages, will need to redefine nimbleness on a corporate wide

 level if they want to move beyond traditional legal department and marketing communications department approval and turnaround times. 

Listen as much as you communicate  

The internet allows dialogue.  Data capture and analytics, though critical, need to be augmented with what is

 learned in dialogue for a softer more qualitative take on latent needs.  Lester Wunderman promotes going back to the “Listening Departments” of the 1950s.  These days the technologies supplant this function and blogs, communities and wikis allow unstructured communication and dialogue

 augmentation of the data and analytics.  

Globally there are some great successes.  On MySpace, the recent movie “X-Men: The Last Stand” has over 2.6 million “friends”.  It may seem rather unusual to invite customers to become “friends” of your brand through the likes of MySpace or FaceBook but the rate at which customers are signing up for this friendship shows they’re after the dialogue that comes with these communities.  Victoria’s Secret recently launched pages on both FaceBook and MySpace focused on its PINK range of underwear.  These sites already have 320,000 and 215,000 friends respectively who, on their own personal pages,  (now some 535,000 pages in total) carry the Victoria’s Secret PINK collateral.  

We also know that 55% of the target market for this range of underwear visits MySpace daily. 

These cases also illustrate another important distinction between advertising and dialogue: marketers have to cede some control of their products and brands to their customers when in dialogue.  Whilst this may seem counter-intuitive, there are some clear benefits.  Our research shows that customers most trust email that they have opted into receive over any other form of media including TV and print.  For them it’s a dialogue that they’ve initiated (Interestingly - they least trust celebrity endorsements). 

At the same time, some 90% of customers regard word-of-mouth as the best source of ideas and information.  The interactive technologies now available to us as marketers are only making those in-built and existing social mechanisms more frictionless for us.  

Realistically in New Zealand today – no marketer can really claim to have these technologies at the centre of their marketing strategies (though many of our clients are starting to install first generation versions of these solutions into their customer dialogue).    

Without exception though, every marketer in New Zealand has a steadily maturing, website based, online strategy in place.  There are good, demonstrated precedents of web-done-well globally.  In 2005 Kia Motors was spending 85% of its advertising budget on television.  Analysis of customer data and research led to a change of strategy

 pushing the bulk of their USA marketing online.  Traffic to Kia.com is up 27% year on year and it’s producing 15% more leads for dealers.  In fact some dealers claim that 75% of their business comes through this channel. Recently Kia bought space on Yahoo’s home page to launch a new car model.  According to Kia’s CMO “it blew the back off the servers and the model had instant name recognition”.  

Maybe a simple first step for all of us comes from the CMO of Wells Fargo in the USA that marketing’s first task “is to see itself as an integrating force for the customer”.  

Employees are the brand 

"I am convinced that companies should put staff first, customers second and shareholders third - ultimately that's in the best interest of customers and shareholders”.  So said Richard Branson and he’s not alone in this sentiment.  In fact there’s a significant body of research supporting this strategy and demonstrating the resulting customer advocacy it generates and the attendant financial benefits of this advocacy.   

Despite decades of streamlining and adding

 predictive processes to the operations of a company, employees still bring their emotions, dreams, hopes, and fears to work. Smart companies will capitalize on, n

ot quash, those emotions through employee engagement programs that can drive the equation that happy staff = happy customers = happy shareholders.   

It’s no great stretch to understand that customers interact with your front line staff more frequently and more meaningfully than with any of your advertising or marketing.  Employees and staff are the secret weapon – where the long term battle is won or lost.  Employee engagement is the foundation on which all customer dialogue success is based.  

HP, a Carlson client internationally, has gone from poor profits in it’s PC Division 3 years ago to the leading market share in its category today.  Back then HP discovered through research and analysis that, whilst they were getting through initial sale without much difficulty, it was the relationship with HP customers after the sale that was important to their business.  The majority of this customer initiated contact was to staff at HP’s support call centres.  

HP trained its staff to understand the emotional connection between HP products and HP customers.  It has also created the “Voice of the Customer”, an interactive tool much like MySpace for all staff to share customer feedback and insights.  In effect, this is a company-internal deployment of the same tools  companies are using to conduct dialogues with customers. 

Sears Department stores, also a Carlson client, runs an employee recognition and rewards scheme that it can tie back to customer loyalty and financial goals.  A 5 point increase in staff engagement delivers a 1% increase in customer loyalty which results in a 3.4% increase in earnings before interest and tax (EBIT).  

JetBlue Airways in the USA entered the market in 2000 with a similar philosophy to Branson’s “employees first” thinking.  In a market where many airlines have gone bankrupt and most are delivering middling returns, JetBlue’s financial metrics (ROA, ROE, operating margin and gross margin) have all been well above industry averages.  Why?  Engaged and motivated employees deliver the experience and service the JetBlue brand has promised. 

Finally – a word of caution.  Be authentic and be honest in using the new technologies because all these dialogues, like those in the real world, are only sustained by trust.  Be transparent about your motives with both customers and employees.  A 2002 campaign by Sony Ericsson Mobile for its T68i mobile phone and digital camera called "Fake Tourist" involved placing 60 actors posing as tourists at attractions in New York and Seattle to demonstrate the camera phone. The actors asked passers-by to take their photo, which demonstrated the camera phone's capabilities, but the actors did not identify themselves as representatives for Sony Ericsson. 

That engulfed Sony Ericsson in a media furore including a roasting from television’s 60 Minutes and write ups in the likes of the Wall Street Journal.  Maybe they got lucky and people fell asleep watching and reading about it.

They’re not like us.

Originally published in the March 2008 edition of teh New Zealand Marketing Association's DLB magazine - authored by Carlson Marketing

Salvador Dali said that “The problem with the youth of today is that one is no longer part of it.”  

We all know that to reach the youth in the youth market we have to live with the fact that they are creating content faster than we are. The real competition for youth attention is youth generated content. 100 million blogs, social networking sites,

 wikis, forums; there are plenty of online places for any of us to connect with like-minded people. The youth just do more of it.

And unless we are really funny or outrageous with our creative efforts, (not always appropriate) they prefer their own content to ours!

There are ways to harness this desire for connectedness. Two current community-based projects are teaching us that the rules are different, but youth are willing to engage with you if you learn the rules and follow them.

Here we profile two client programs which are both works in progress but are mature enough that some consistent themes are being repeated.  We share these nascent learnings for us all to benefit from.

Stop smoking by widget

The issue : Scary images or tar filled veins and cancerous lungs are questionably effective in the adult population.  They’re less than effective at preventing youth from trialling tobacco if smoking is seen as cool and will likely annoy authority.  

Our client : an Australasian government’s national health department looking to reduce the health impact and future economic cost of smoking.

The challenge : To make smoking uncool; to de-normalise it among the youth.

The solution : Facebook is the channel. Humour is the value proposition.

Market tests have shown that non-smoking youths are willing to message their smoking friends on Facebook but only if the message is funny.  It mustn’t be confrontational as they don’t want to risk losing the friend.

A widget will allow Facebook users to place humorous images on friends’ walls, with escalating status for users who use them repeatedly.  To date this has proved a successful social intervention; youth channel, youth rules for content and youth as the channel.

The referee may not listen but the management do

Moving from the disease of smoking to the other end of the continuum, we’re also working with a sporting body to grow their profits.

The issue : Aging and declining membership of a football franchise together with reducing attendance at games and all the financial difficulties that produces.

Our client : An Australasian sporting body with a large base a members

The challenge : To lift membership levels (especially with youth – the future of the game), lift game attendance and hence lift revenues

The solution : A “focus group on steroids”. 

Working with the membership-based sporting organisation, we established a ‘by invitation’ online advisory panel of several thousand passionate members.  These members came to games regularly and had been paying their subscription fees for a number of years.

The incentive offered; the club will listen to your advice, implement your suggestions if they can but in all events they will talk to you and let you know that they heard you.

Watching these online members ‘talk’ to each other, and the club, about a subject of common interest is a visceral experience for marketers more familiar with response models. Questions are asked and answered directly and quickly.

The panel has given advice on which players to feature in promotions, and how to talk effectively to the membership.  More importantly, thanks to the Hawthorne Effect these ambassadors have personally increased membership significantly above last year’s levels through word of mouth recruiting.

The panel is not a research vehicle and is not intended to be. Understanding the opinions and attitudes of your most engaged customers is more important than understanding the average if you are trying to generate positive word of mouth for your brand or product. They are simply more likely to bother than the average customer.

Research we’re finding true

Its Gen Y and Gen Me and Gen C

Forrester found that “Gen Yers are more apt to like style, fun, and technology; seek out what’s hot; make purchases based on image; consume all types of digital media; and use every wireless service on their mobile phones”.

In consuming all types of digital media they’re also creating it and doing so far faster than any marketer.  The rate of consumption also has them tagged as Generation C for content and also Generation Me.  This latter description was developed by Jean Twenge who believes “Gen Yers were raised and schooled in an educational system focused on promoting self-esteem and a “you can be anything” mentality. As a result, they’re more narcissistic than other generations. Students scored significantly higher in the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) test in 2006 than they did in 1987”. 

Within these broad descriptions there’s also a level of granularity of subcultures they identify with including niches such as “goth,” “emo,” or “prep” according to Forrester. Each of these is differentiated by clothes they wear, the music they listen to, and the media they consume and share.

Kagoy - Kids are Getting Older Younger. 

Best described late last year in The Times of London, “KAGOY has also affected the dolls that little girls covet. As well as Barbie with her accessories, there are now the streetwise, precocious Bratz dolls. The Bratz Secret Date Collection, marketed to six-year-olds, pairs each Bratz girl with a Bratz boy, and includes two champagne glasses and “tons of date-night accessories”. 

Kids are learning about adult life much earlier than ever before.  And in many instances they want to emulate it and are influenced by the style of older teens.

Listen

Make it a conversation. They are used to conversations, not just telling, also listen. Listening means confirming you heard in some way.  Implementing their suggestions is one way, replying to them is another way. Close the loop.  

Authenticity 

Genuinely invite discussion, do not presume and praise your product on their behalf. This means being brave, they may say negative things. They will do this with or without you by the way, so it is best to be involved so you can ask them how to improve

Volume matters

As you really want to address a market, not a handful of customers, volume matters. Use existing communities which already have large numbers of participants or use traditional marketing to seed your own. 

Data – always data

Data should still drive marketing decisions, not anecdotes. Marketing to youth through conversations does not mean you should abandon rigour. Find a way to link ideas expressed in the conversation with actual behaviour. Registration, coupons, referrals; there are ways to do this. Go to the trouble.

Legal and necessary insider trading for marketing professional

Originally published in the June 2008 edition of teh New Zealand Marketing Association's DLB magazine - authored by Carlson Marketing

If your marketing budget was equivalent to an investment budget, trigger marketing is an investment strategy that seeks out high yield returns and invests only in those stocks (customers) rather than in every stock in the market.  By contrast, standard marketing invests only in the stock index (all

 potential customers in the market ) and hence each stock (customer) gets a piece of the investment budget.  Over time the index (all customers) does deliver returns which are both humble and directly proportional to the sum invested.  The only way to make more money investing in the index is to increase your investment (more share of voice at the customer). 

There is one critical distinction between stock investment strategy and marketing investment strategy – marketing professionals are legally permitted to be insider traders.  In fact – if they’re not insider trading then they’re not performing their fiduciary duty.  Insider trading delivers the holy grail of the investment professional – high return with low risk.  Trigger marketing delivers the same for marketing professionals.

Profile your customers. 

Trigger marketing, when used properly, is highly discriminating and mercenary.  We generally find four major customer tiers.  Tier 1 are our outstanding customers who are clearly giving us all their business in our category.  These will be less than 10% of your base and in general the goal with them is retention.  

Tier 2 probably comprises another 20% of the base and they’re giving us considerable business but are clearly shopping around.  We want to

 reduce their promiscuity.  These two tiers together are giving us close to 80% of our revenue.  The last two tiers have some value but the returns they generate aren’t as good as we can get out of the first two.

Each customer has a profile and a specific ‘shopping basket’ or purchase history.  This history builds a picture of who they are, and what people just like them (their peers) buy.  By comparing them to their peers we can identify 

what they’re not buying from us and by default must likely be buying from somewhere else.  We use this data to promote the products purchased by their like minded peers that they’re currently not purchasing from us. 

The net effect?  You know who is likely to respond to what kind of offers, and more importantly, what discounts you need NOT apply; reducing mass markdowns and allocating your marketing dollars to those who will respond best and deliver the most in return.

The key areas

There’s generally five areas for data gathering:

1 - Profitability

Look at the profitability of both customers and products and the intersection of the most profitable of each with the other.  You’ll also need to know individual product margins both list and realised after all discounts and incentives. 

2 - Basket typology

Identify the popular categories and their profitability.  Also understand what products are mixed in which baskets. 

3 – Promotional promiscuity

This is more difficult to assess as we find most organisations don’t retain data on customer responses to offers they’ve made to them.  However it’s one of the more important measures as it’s the measure of the impact of your past marketing efforts.  Most importantly you want to know who’s a discount only shopper.

4 – Life stage

Age and gender feature prominently here as expected.  Also useful is self reported information such as hobbies and interests but these are less valuable than actual behaviour as measured through facts.

5 - Shopping habits

Key here are the recency and frequency features most marketers will be familiar with.  However insights behind the data are also useful as tested through various hypotheses. 

Once the data is assembled the real work of developing a predictive model begins.  The five core data areas defined above are assembled into working ecosystem with each area feeding the others.  Done successfully a good predictive model will tell you with a high degree of accuracy (greater than 75%) who will visit which of your stores or branches next, when they’ll do this and what they will buy when they get there.   Much of our work in this space is now based on medical and actuarial survival models and the results for sections of the customer base are excitingly accurate.

For example, for one of the tiers in a retail client’s customer base we’re able to predict with an 80% level of accuracy when a customer is due back in their store. 

One of the benefits of trigger marketing is how well it fits with the other data driven areas of the business such as:

>        Finance - you can predict the revenue lift for a given campaign and demonstrate how much better than the next best option it might be

>        IT  - you can predict how many hits the website will take and hence the bandwidth required

>        Inventory management – you can link customer demand by category to your supply chain

The results speak for themselves.  The following are examples of successes we’ve had using this approach:

 

Client	Communication	Result
Credit card issuer	70,000 customers	Spend lift 43%, transactions lifted 67%
Upscale Department Store	497,000 customers	88% lift in  volume
Home Retailer	105,000 customers	48% lift in volume
Office Supply Retailer	185,000 customers	108% lift in volume
Hotelier	594,000 customer	$1Million incremental volume
Grocer	40,000 customers	132% lift in volume
Office Supply Retailer	185,000 customers	98% lift in volume

The principles of trigger based marketing are relevant to any business and the biggest returns come from the first rough and ready steps in treating different customers differently.

Growing Green Profits

Originally published in the December 2008 edition of the New Zealand Marketing Association's DLB magazine - authored by Carlson Marketing 

An inconvenient company.

One of our clients, a senior manager in a big Australian finance company, went to see Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.  The next day he demanded from us a totally Green customer strategy for his entire division’s customer base and what’s more – he had the CEO sign off the investment before the week was out. 

Global Green

This wasn’t an isolated incident for us.  Our colleagues in other countries reported either a strong demand for Green solutions or the launch of Green solutions in banks in their markets. To understand why, we launched a study into the reasons for and responses to Green as bank strategy.

What is Green

Yes – it did start with tree huggers.  No – it’s no longer possible for an astute businessperson to openly claim that climate change is not real.   Your last chance for doing that died when the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) died in 2002.  Composed of companies such as Exxon, Shell, BP and GM, the GCC invested heavily to cast doubt on global warming.  Visit the websites of any of those past champions of the falseness of global warming today and their new environmental credentials are headlines.

The science says; global warming is driven by the emission of Greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, chief of which is the Greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. These gases trap heat in the atmosphere, forming a blanket around the earth which retains heat and generates global warming. Almost every activity that a company or an individual engages in releases carbon dioxide. The sum of these emissions comprises the individual’s or organisation’s “carbon footprint”.

Why is it important

The science no longer matters.  What matters now is what customers believe that global warming is real.  More important though is who they believe should be responsible for addressing it – every company on the planet.  More and more over the last decade, curing social ills has become the responsibility of the companies that customers deem to have contributed to the problem. Supposed polluters and those who fund supposed polluters are all responsible, in the eyes of certain customers, for addressing global warming. 

Why banks and what are they doing

Banks are certainly not significant contributors to Greenhouse gas emissions. Yet major players including HSBC Bank, GE Money, Citibank, Bank of America and Westpac have implemented Green strategies.  These range from offering environmentally conscious credit cards to linking their brand identity to Green principles.

Bank first, customer second

Our Australian customer’s new Green strategy never got to market.  A lucky coincidence for him perhaps.  Had he got to market, his proposition would likely have failed because it would have been what is know as Greenwashing – pretending to offer Green products before putting in the investment to become a Green enterprise yourself. 

Citigroup started its Greening process in 2002 with significant energy consumed to light and heat its more than 9 million square meters of office and branch space around the world.  80% of their energy consumption came from just 10% of buildings which included skyscrapers and data centres.   New offices and branches now maximise the use of natural sunlight and minimise the use of electrical lighting.  As an added benefit – staff morale and engagement rose.  As one Citigroup manager noted “People are much more like cats and plants than we like to admit”.

Two ways to play

Our research found two distinct customer propositions on offer from banks around the world.  Their order is important.  First - work to reduce your customer’s carbon footprint.  We found innovative and practical financial instruments ranging from car finance for fuel efficient vehicles (generally hybrids) through to mortgages that funded solar water heaters and building insulation improvements to reduce the power bill.  These products save money for the customer. 

Second – help your customers offset their remaining impact through carbon credits and the like. These all come at a cost to the bank or the customer and included a UK bank’s offer to plant 40 trees on your behalf through to funding wind and solar power projects.

That bank’s not red - it’s Green

Westpac’s a great example of a bank doing it well and is recognized for its success by topping the Dow Jones Sustainability Index - a global rating for Green firms - for five of the last seven years. 

Westpac in Australia was a corporate trailblazer linking its Green and sustainable initiatives to its corporate identity through its adverts.  Our client Westpac New Zealand is up there too and in late November launched a customer innovation.  Back to its Green trailblazing roots, Westpac has developed and launched an online ecoshop subsidising a raft of Green, money and planet saving goods for all Westpac Online Banking customers.   The first bank in the world to offer such a service; it includes Green goods from energy efficient appliances to worm farms.

A similar catalogue of goods is now also available for redemption in the Westpac hotpoints credit card rewards program. 

The results of our research

A Green strategy benefits four groups: 

1. Customers – Green Products.  Aligned with specific values of certain customer segments, Green products offer a good solution for banks to differentiate themselves in a new way.

2. Operations – Cutting Costs with Green.  Reducing electricity consumption also reduces Greenhouse gas emissions.  Saving money and saving the planet are tightly aligned. 

3. Shareholders – A Sustainable Investment.  Many investors seek out businesses which effectively create long-term value by implementing strategies that will grow the business today without compromising future growth.  

4. Green organisations benefit from enhanced employee engagement.  Talented staff and graduates are being attracted to organisations based on their Green credentials. 

Get the report.  For a copy of Carlson Marketing’s report “Banks – Growing Green profits. Winning with customers, shareholders, employees and operating costs while saving the planet” email simon.rowles@carlson.co.nz

China's not always first for your globalisation strategy

First published in the New Zealand Marketing Association's DLB Magazine in September 2008

China’s not always first

Les Mills International should be our poster child for Kiwi marketers going global.  They have 5.5 million people working out every week to likes of their revolutionary BODYPUMP program.  Their distribution network to achieve this is 60,000 instructors leading classes in 12,100 fitness clubs in 70 countries around the globe.  They’re also quintessentially Kiwi having been founded 11 years ago by our very own icon of fitness; Phillip Mills.  The original weights-to-music group fitness program has grown to eight different programs today.

China’s not always first

Global for Les Mills International was not China first.  Their network was solid and established in the mature economies of the USA and Europe before they attacked the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets.  They’ve recently launched in India, are now in China and Russia and have massive growth in Brazil which is already up to 1,200 clubs.  Good thing too.  BRIC markets will account for 50% of the global economy by 2050.

Going global for most marketers is frequently a rose tinted vision of China’s 1.3 billion people and their rapidly growing consumption of any and all products.  Not so fast.  The China market is more like a mere 130 million middle class Chinese today.  That will rise to 650 million in 2010. 

Exporting your Kiwi business to China means you need to deal with the basics of language and dialects in China and you’ll need to transact in their currency.  

Localise me (carefully)

You’ll also need to amend or even compromise your proposition to meet local requirements.  Was Google’s decision to exclude the Human Rights Watch website at China’s request an amendment or has this compromised their “do no evil” policy?  It’s in dealing with local requirements in China that money is made or lost. 

Disney’s Euro Disney stumbled when it first opened in Paris because it was too American for their target French employees.   Recruitment initially proved slow as the standard US dress code banned facial hair and dictated “appropriate” underwear – not something the French appreciated.

We’ve also stumbled. Carlson Marketing is one of the four pillars of Carlson Companies (the other three are Carlson Wagonlit Travel – now the biggest travel company on the planet, Carlson Hotels and Carlson Restaurants). Last year Carlson had global revenues of NZ$50 billion.  When our restaurants division first opened the TGI Friday’s chain in Korea they weren’t American enough for customers.  TGI Friday’s in Korea didn’t follow the American menu and instead included traditional local dishes like kimchi.  Customers weren’t impressed – they expected the same global menu consistency of a Starbucks or a McDonalds.

In fact the consistency of a McDonalds was not what Starbucks needed as they’ve found a growth ceiling and are preparing to close stores all over the world.  The issue here seems to have been more about positioning than about market entry.  Starbucks seems to have become stuck in the middle of attempting to be a unique, club like atmosphere with the ubiquitous store presence of a price competitive eatery like McDonalds. 

Each long tail needs to have its own dog

The long tail, pareto effect or 80/20 principle all are used to describe two sides of the same coin.  On one side; a few customers represent the bulk of the revenue available and this will generally come from a few block buster products or offerings.  It’s on the other side of the coin that the long tail proves alluring.  That’s where the 6 billion potential consumers on the planet separate out into tiny niche markets clamoring for niche products that only a few specialist providers can or want to make.  Marketers frequently aggregate the long tails of multiple countries and arrive at a big number as justification for going global.  The revenue opportunity is real and meaningful but still needs the same business disciplines of segmentation, branding, market research, competitor tracking, local support, logistics, conformance with local tax and legal structures and local supply chain.    These cost money and if you’re unable to aggregate these into a single, scalable support structure – the cost rapidly outweighs the revenues.  

Make them come to you

By 2002 EDS New Zealand was already this country’s largest IT outsourcing and services company.  To drive growth it started to export services.  Working with the international EDS network, EDS New Zealand quickly picked up high value IT work with over 30 international clients.  Better still – an Investment New Zealand grant pumped $1.5 million into the venture which delivered production engineering, software development, IT outsourcing and contact centre work. 

With this success in importing IT customers and our well documented success in importing students to our educational system – what other options might there be?   Other countries in our region are importing customers too.  Globally there’s a growing medical tourism market as individual customers exploit the huge price disparity between specialist procedures in their home market and the cost of the same treatments in say Malaysia or Thailand. The market beachhead made by these perhaps long tail customers is rapidly approaching mainstream proportions.  Britain’s huge National Health Service already exports some of its patients to other EU countries and on occasion to outside of the EU. Aetna, a giant American insurer, has this year launched a pilot scheme in partnership with Singaporean hospitals to do the same.  Some American employers offer “global medical travel” as an employment benefit. 

Practice, practice, practice

In the Asia Pacific region, our company has been working to build the business in established economies like Japan, Singapore and Australia at the same time as we grow in China, Korea and Indonesia.  For the latter markets – you have to be there to learn the lessons and we architect our approach almost annually as we learn.  As golfing great Gary Player famously said “The more I practice, the luckier I get”.

Welcome

Welcome to our new blog.  Much of what we know and learn about loyalty marketing comes from the big loyalty markets of the USA and UK and from our strategy unit Peppers and Rogers Group.  This blog is planned to focus on the New Zealand market and how to drive increasing profits through loyalty programs.  We are after all one of the best penetrated loyalty markets in the world.