Re-engagement: You can reactivate a lapsed customer by engaging them with relevant content so they see your organization in a different light. You probably have a large contingent of past customers in your database who have not purchased for years--they’re lapsed customers. This is an untapped gold mine of new sales. You have all of their relevant contact information because they purchased from you in the past. It is likely they are still even receiving emails, flyers, and other sales-focused communications from you regularly, but the outreach is not triggering a purchase. Perhaps you can change their attitudes by delivering something different via original content.
Leading online retailer Zappos.com took a fresh approach to communicating with customers and prospects by creating a “magalog”--part magazine, part catalog. The Zappos Life Series used storytelling to bring its lifestyle to print. It developed a clear, tightly focused “story,” or theme, targeted to a specific demographic. Zappos then selectively chose apparel and footwear products that best fit that theme.
The magalog depicts the story behind the products and the people using them through magazine-style techniques, including bold photography and typographical treatment to reinforce the energy conveyed by the Zappos.com community. They wanted to create a feeling that recipients could identify with and aspire to, not to create a piece that wouldn’t simply join the pile of typical catalogs and email messages received every month. The magalogs did a good job of reactivating past customers who had not purchased from Zappos in more than a year. Although these customers might have been getting email, the magalogs landing in their mailboxes is what triggered much of this reactivation.
CMOs can improve the effectiveness of their marketing budgets by shifting dollars from advertising to more measurable content-based direct communications. Changing the relationship between you and your customers can be a game changer. Instead of interrupting their favorite TV shows or magazine/Web site reading with an ad, you are building a permission-based relationship through the use of truly valuable content. In the end, what it really comes down to is this: Why rent a media channel when you can own it--a channel that works just for you.
About Gordon Plutsky As director of marketing and research, Gordon Plutsky works with King Fish's clients on the marketing and messaging of their private custom media programs, in addition to creating audience development and market research solutions. Gordon is also responsible for the King Fish brand message, marketing, and public relations.
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