The challenge is NOT TO CUT marketing expenses but to turn every marketing dollar into an investment. Your Sixth Star marketing strategy should. . .
Focus on all your customers not just the best ones. That's where segmentation analysis and understanding the dynamics of shopping patterns and who's profitable is important.
Embrace a multi-channel effort to engage all media. The knee-jerk reaction is to JUST DO E-MAIL is not prudent because in this imperfect world full of security and spam fears, a majority of your customers are unwilling to share their e-mail address with you. That may be changing a little as we see one of our clients recording 53% of their members with e-mail addresses. However, open rates still are not where we want them to be.
Be remarkable, be creative, even be outrageous. Maybe you can't do something to get the press time Mark Cuban did when he gave away 20,000 airline vouchers to Dallas Mavericks fans last week. That was outrageous. Now, try to do something outrageous in your marketing world.
Address the future with a new strategy. In these times, traditional thinking is to cut prices and have another sale. My suggestion is to be creative and find ways to add value to your sales proposition rather than to cut prices. Wal-Mart has announced they are phasing out the annoying Yellow Dot — or, with these changing dynamics, will they go back to their roots of promoting price cuts. Let's watch.
For more information, contact Bart Foreman, Group 3 Marketing at 1-888-571-6554 or e-mail him at [email protected]. You may also visit the Group 3 Marketing website at www.group3marketing.com.