The article was shared quite interestingly by the actual experience of the writer as a customer who was congratulated on a birthday by the brand and proposed a strategic solution, helping the brand implement a happy birthday program to bring results worthy of what has been invested.
Case story
One evening, while driving home from the football field, my phone rang… Automatically, I intended to reject it, thinking it was another real estate sales call, insurance offer, loan invitation, or some too-good-to-be-true 300% investment opportunity…
Still energized from a bit of exercise, I decided to entertain the call. A female voice on the other end, which I guessed belonged to someone between 22-25 years old, about 1.6 meters tall, with fair skin, pink lips, and lightly applied makeup, greeted me:
“Hello, are you Mr. Liem who purchased *** at AEON Binh Tan?”
“Yes, that’s me. Why are you calling?”
‘Uhm, that’s right, what are you calling me for?!’
The reply made her voice tremble as she continued:
“I’m from ***. I’m calling to ask if it’s almost your birthday?”
I coldly responded: “Yes, and?”
She gently continued:
“Did you receive our promotional code message? It offers a 30% discount on bills under 10 million VND at *** AEON Bình Tân.”
I began to take interest and asked:
“When did you send it? I don’t recall receiving it or maybe I deleted it! Let me check.”
I began to be interested in the story and asked:
“When did you send it to me? I don’t know if I received it or deleted it! Let me review it”
…And the conversation lasted over a minute. I eventually found the message sent on April 1st. Hic… the message arrived on a day known for pranks (April Fools’ Day). I wondered:
“Why did you send it almost a month in advance? How am I supposed to remember?”
She seemed more confident, realizing the value she was offering:
“Well, I called to remind you!”
…Ending the conversation, I thought, it takes quite an effort to offer something to an existing customer. Not to mention, encountering a difficult customer might result in complaints and negative reports to Telco for advertising calls.
Current status of customer care in businesses
From this funny story, I want to talk about the current situation that many businesses in Vietnam are facing in taking care of old/loyal customers with ”machine + rice”.
This is extremely expensive and does not really create a comfortable experience for customers. Not to mention the risks of people (employees), the problem when involving a few customers to report to Telco, this is an advertising call, a SPAM call! It will affect both the brand and create other problems that must be solved next.
Let’s analyze the situation
Message sample
Here is the birthday greeting message I received, sent 24 days before my birthday. Let’s analyze it:
- Sent on April Fools’ Day (April 1st) at 8:19 AM. This time is often driving to work ⇒ Inconvenient to check.
- The brand name was repeated, unnecessary characters ⇒ The possibility of splitting the message into 2 ⇒ Increasing costs. If you look at the news from Bank or Global companies, you will see that they don’t need to repeat their brand name in the message. Because it is already in Brand Name, shown in the sender section.
- The content was quite confusing in that Code ”BD+Number sequence”. I wonder if the promotion code includes ‘BD’? ⇒ Confuse the receiver.
- The link in the message using bitly was OK. However, the click is not available ⇒ Shows a lack of pre-sending checks and annoys the clicked person.
Sending time
The timing of sending a birthday greeting was inappropriate, 24 days in advance! This I have the opportunity to do with some parties. Similarly, I also asked the caller and it is known that the system sent it once at the beginning of the month. This problem I guess is that this message operator must have asked for a data file from another department in charge of data. They can’t take the initiative to do it, so do it once a month for their convenience. Anyone who has a birthday in the month sends it.
Fairness
Based on the sending time, it is temporarily concluded:
- Customers with birthdays on April 1st can’t use the code.
- Customers with birthdays on April 2nd need to rush to use it.
- Customers registering after April 1st with April birthdays won’t get a code!
Reminder call
- Calling customers at 7:40PM – It’s quite ok for me.
- The reason for the call (reminding about the birthday offer) was appropriate.
- The call duration (when the customer is interested) was around 2’30”, allowing about 50 calls per shift on average.
Birthday celebration cost per customer
According to this scenario, the cost for sending SMS + reminder calls + preparation costs is about ~6K-8K VND per customer. For 200K loyal members to be sending code, the annual cost is around ~1.5 billion VND. How much sales revenue is needed to ensure ROI?
Other costs
Looking more broadly, to do this, there will definitely include additional costs:
- Customer information storage software (Excel, CRM, POS, etc.)
- Software operation teams handling data extraction for marketing.
- Data management costs: file exporting, emailing, protecting, misplacing, resending, reprocessing, and errors.
- Customer complaints about disturbances, involving third parties, etc.
=> A solution is necessary.
Recommended solution
With the trend of digital transformation and effective data utilization to increase the customer’s experience with the brand, shorten timeframes, optimize the operation team, and reduce risks: data loss, consumer protection laws,… We suggest applying pangoCDP to this strategy as follows:
Increase customer experience
According to the scenario of sending a promotional code on the occasion of an existing customer’s birthday, you can reference the flow below. Remember, you can create this flow while enjoying half a favorite song and a sip of coffee. You can also create multiple scenarios for A/B Testing before applying on a large scale.
The flow is very simple:
- Send a “beautiful” email with the promotion code and an action button leading to the website for tracking (provided the customer has previously given their email).
- Check if the customer opened the email 2 days after sending.
- If opened: Move them to a segment for continued care. Set up the next care scenario as deemed suitable.
- If not opened: Send an SMS with a link for tracking. If customers clicked, what next? If not clicked after one day, what next?
Customers will receive information “gently” and interactively, instead of a short, dry SMS “like Phan Rang sunshine.”
Faster campaign execution
100+ times faster because you won’t need to ask IT for customer files or accounting for promo codes. No need to ”thank” to export promotional codes from the accountant. The system automatically classifies, or you can segment customers using a visual interface to get the desired list (customer code). The system automatically retrieves emails and phone numbers when executing the scenario.
Reduce operational costs
Saving time for departments to focus on their core tasks, providing more value to the business. Shortening TIME costs as you can easily do it yourself and minimizing ERRORS by testing for the best scenario to increase conversion rates.
Reducing error and data leakage risks
No need to export customer lists, this is not good at all. Because it will have many potential risks associated with data loss or errors when manipulating.
Reducing complaint/report risks
All opt-in (registration to receive information) and opt-out (refuse to receive information) information are strictly managed in accordance with the customer’s personal data usage policies for advertising and customer care.
Collect more legitimate customer interaction data (Data enrichment)
Each email/SMS sent will have an action/link for customers to proactively interact with. From there, the system continues to keep track to enrich data and help businesses better understand their customers. Besides, marketing can also measure the conversion rates when customers purchase offline (in-store) after being influenced by the automated scenario.
Real-time visual performance measurement report
Each automation workflow comes with a real-time report to help businesses to monitor effectiveness instantly and make timely adjustments.
How much investment is needed?
For a scale of 200K existing customers and about 2 million monthly website visits and Facebook page interactions, the cost saved from ~1.5 billion VND mentioned above can be used to deploy PangoCDP.
Not only a happy birthday campaign, businesses can actualize marketing ideas, customer care campaigns, and business strategies into specific numbers. By leveraging customer data and PangoCDP tools, enhance customer experience, utilize existing customer value, attract new customers, and of course, increase conversion rates and revenue.
Conclusion
Finally, thank you for taking the time to read. The article has many points needing improvement in wording and writing style, but I hope it provides you with some relaxation after stressful work hours.
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