Don't let those newsletter dates slip

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Whenever we sit down with a client to plan a customer-contact campaign like an email newsletter to the client's database our campaigns are based around contact at three-monthly intervals. That frequency isn't chosen at random: 90 days is the magic number, and this is something backed up by decades of marketing research across a range of industries.

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Late payments getting even later for small businesses

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The recovery might be well and truly underway, but new figures from credit agency Dun & Bradstreet have highlighted the need for companies to continue to closely watch cashflow.

D&B's latest analysis of payment terms shows it now takes an average of 53.2 days for a business to get its invoices paid, up from 52.1 days this time last year.

As usual, it's smaller companies getting hit hardest.

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The power of human faces in email marketing

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The key to a good website, a good blog post, or a good email newsletter is having good content. The most important thing is to have something worth reading. But your content won't get read unless the document captures the reader's attention. How do you ensure your document gets and holds the reader's attention so he or she will actually notice the good content?

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SEO producing results for Homeplus Improvements

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Over recent months we have worked on a number of projects with a fixture of Adelaide's home-improvement industry, Homeplus Improvements. We have been able to assist Homeplus Improvements with a number of behind-the-scenes technical details - the sorts of things we touched on in our post "Know your domain details" - in order to launch a new website to support Homeplus Improvements's salespeople and sales activities.

Has it worked?

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Tips for the time-poor

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Time is money, as the old adage goes. But how many of us actually consider what that means to us personally? Well, what it means is this: when you waste time in your business you waste money in your business.

Here are some common-sense tips in a guest post from Hayes Knight SA Director Tim Sargent, aimed at improving efficiency in the office and maximising the usefulness of your time, both as an individual and as a member of a workplace team.

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No retention strategy at the NRMA

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I have long retained one leftover from my time living in Sydney: membership in the NRMA. When my household acquired another vehicle recently, I contacted the NRMA -- hey, I'm a customer! -- to make sure that the vehicle was added to my account so that I would still receive roadside assistance if I ever found myself in a tight spot. The operator I spoke to informed me that I would need a new membership specific to that vehicle, effectively doubling my payments. When I queried this policy and pointed out that a membership  in South Australia's RAA would cover me regardless of which vehicle I was in, the operator suggested that maybe I should just cancel my NRMA membership seeing as I lived in South Australia anyway.

I was gobsmacked.

"Let me get this straight. I've been with you for over ten years, a regular paying customer, and you're saying... maybe I should just swap to another provider?"

The operator replied with some indifference that I might as well. I replied that if the NRMA didn't care if I remained a customer or not, I didn't care to.

Here are some things I might also have pointed out if I thought that the operator cared:

  • It costs far less to retain an existing client than to acquire a new one.
  • It's at least twice as expensive to bring on a new customer with an existing service than it is to retain a customer with that service. A business that loses one good customer has to sign up two more just to break even.
  • Current customers are any business's best source of referrals and cross-sell opportunities.

But I didn't. So I didn't.

Suffice to say that I am now an RAA member :)

If anyone from the NRMA is happens to read this, you need to talk to your customer service representatives... they're not helping your organisation!

Kelly Wright