Why and how to manage the Marketing Pressure on your association's members?
Marketing & Communication
By
Sarah Cotton
On television, in the press, on the street, in the subway corridors, on bus shelters, on mobile phones and computers: we use every medium at our disposal to sell our products and services. To stand out from the competition, our logos are bigger and our products are shinier. We drown our targets in a sea of promotional messages. But don’t we risk leading our recipients to saturation? This is what we call “Marketing Pressure”.
In normal times, it is estimated that a British citizen is confronted with nearly 3,000 advertising contents per day. If this person spends 8 hours a night sleeping, he or she sees an average of 187 messages per hour, or 3 per minute, all media included. That said, this figure is relative: ads are part of a familiar urban landscape that passers-by tend to see but not read. But although ignored, these ads contribute to a general feeling of over-solicitation.
But how do you continue to promote your products and services while limiting the stress on your audience?
He who asks for nothing has nothing: what an irony!
Whether your targets are companies or individuals, solicitations are numerous and varied: mail, adverts, leaflets, cold-calling, emails, SMS, social networks. Promotional offers, invitation to an event or newsletters, all means are good to keep you visible for them. And this, whether they have already been a customer of yours or not. The worst case: soliciting your contact when they have never asked to be on your mailing list. These unwanted solicitations (or spam) are only moderately appreciated.
Generally speaking, the marketing pressure your targets are under is specifically characterised by this intensive and sometimes (even often) unwanted solicitation. Without these solicitations, whether they are intrusive or not, you reduce the potential business opportunities. And if these solicitations can bring a temporary increase in activity, at the same time they can also have a harmful effect on the long term on audiences insensitive to the first messages.
But with a little organisation, you can reduce this pressure in favour of more quality actions to engage your customers in the long term.
How to control the marketing pressure on your members and prospects?
Have a complete 360-degree vision of the relationship with your member.
Through a customer relationship management (CRM) software, you centralise data and interactions with your members to keep track of all your relationships. Thanks to this, you know when the last contact took place and what the outcome was. You can see and analyse the reactions of your target group to different communication campaigns: did they open your newsletter? Which links did they click on? What was the content of the last phone call?
In short, you have a complete view of the relationship, including the frequency of exchanges. You can then gauge the marketing pressure you wish to assign to each contact.
Personalise your messages by segmenting your database.
Thanks to the data you have on each of your contacts, you are able to group them by profile type. This segmentation can be enriched by assigning a score to each contact according to the criteria of your choice (number of emails opened, participation in surveys, crossed with their age, sex, interests etc…).
The knowledge you have of your members, prospects and targets will be an asset in the interest they have in your organisation. You are able to set up communications adapted to each category of profile, a relevant communication addressed to the right contact and at the right time.
Aerate the communications calendar.
You have many reasons and opportunities to address your members: product release, service offer, promotion, newsletter etc. Overwhelming your contacts with various communications, even if it is not to sell, can be harmful. Plan a sending schedule that is sufficiently spaced out so not to overwhelm them and thus increase the chances of your communications being taken into account.
With the help of integrated emailing editor, a CRM solution allows you to create your own customised emails and to automate the sending according to your distribution schedule.
GDPR reminder: your contacts must be able to manage their subscription preferences
Measure your KPIs: evaluate the impact of your campaigns.
To be effective and reduce the feeling of intrusion, your communications must deal with subjects that interest your contacts. So how can you ensure that your communications are relevant to them?
The first KPI to take into account in your analyses is the “open rate” of your emails, which allows you to judge your impact on your contacts. Next comes the “click rate”: in relation to the number of openings, this performance indicator allows you to determine the interest in your content. If it is too low, perhaps the wording of your email needs to be reviewed to make it more attractive. This is also true for the wording of your email objects which plays a decisive role in the opening rate of your communication.
A third indicator to watch is unsubscribes. A too high number of unsubscribes shows a lack of interest in your organisation. Is your communication calendar too dense? Do your segments correspond well to the messages you send?
By adding a form at the end of the unsubscribe process to your mailing lists, you give your former readers the opportunity to justify their departure. This information is invaluable for improving your communications.
It is also important to follow these indicators over time: their evolution informs you of the effectiveness of your efforts to reduce the marketing pressure on your contacts.
Set up tracking links in your emails. Easy to set up from the built-in emailing editor of the Eudonet CRM solution, you will be able to analyse your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in customisable dashboards.
Social networks: give your targets a free hand.
Thanks to social networks, you have the opportunity to reach more people. As we say in the jargon: you make your organisation’s image shine. Internet users are free to follow you or not. To encourage them, you distribute your content according to the editorial calendar you have set for yourself. We can’t talk about pressure here because you don’t really force your content on anyone: people follow you by choice.
On social networks, it is difficult to target a particular category of people, as the profiles are so varied. According to the algorithms based on the main interests of your followers, it is also possible that your content rarely reaches them. You can always sponsor your value-added content to push it to a target segment of interest for your development, but this will add to the marketing pressure you put on them.
Define the right time and control marketing pressure with CRM
In the end, it’s all a matter of dosage. Over-solicitation may have a repulsive effect, while not enough solicitation may cause you to miss opportunities. It’s all about finding the right frequency and timing. As you interact with your targets, you will gather important data about them, allowing you to better plan future communications.
With the help of a CRM, you will be able to plan all your marketing actions, spread them out over the year and, above all, you will be able to control the marketing pressure segment by segment or contact by contact by planning the sending of your campaigns and analysing the results of these.