What if you spent $12 million in direct marketing and nobody came?

Imagine you are a $2 billion retailer who’s realized you were wasting 20% of your $60 million direct marketing budget because the mail wasn’t getting to the right customer. They essentially were spending $12 million with no return on that investment. That’s a case study that was presented at the annual CRM Conference I attended in Chicago recently. Another case study focused on a large retailer’s problems with email marketing. In fact, many retailers were complaining about revenues being down. That shouldn't surprise anyone in today's economy. But one presenter talked about revenue from loyal customers actually being up. That's also a trend we’ve been seeing consistently over this last year with our furniture clients.

No matter how big or small the company, we are all victims of flawed business strategies at some time. Success is all about recognizing and correcting them, like the $2 billion retailer I mentioned above did. What’s not surprising, is that it took an outsider to do it. It's sometimes hard to see the faults in your own plan or program when you're too close to it. That’s why consultants like us exist.

The other big topic at CRMC was social media. Guru Jay Dunn from Lane Bryant talked about it as "the end of the freakin' world." Like with most technology-driven media, consumers are ahead of the marketers. And what’s scary is that by the time we think we’re catching up, the consumer’s moved on. One of the basic tenets of social media is people follow people they find interesting. So you’ve got to make it interesting. Look at what Sea World's doing and you’ll know what I mean.