What would you do if you were allocated an extra $50,000 in your marketing budget?
That was the question that CRM agency Customer Communications Group (CCG) posed to a handful of its clients recently.
“It wasn't a formal study, per se,” Sandra Gudat, CEO of CCG, told Loyalty360. Informal as it was, it allowed companies to step back and consider their immediate challenges, and where their next-step priorities lie. “We aimed for a subjective question to leave the door open for what the solution may be,” said Lane Ware, Senior Vice President, Strategic Consulting and Account Management.
One of the major themes that rose from the answers was something that has long challenged marketers: Learning about customers, and the various ways to go about it.
For instance, testing was a target function for that hypothetical budget windfall, and planning based on the results of that testing.
The tests might range from the simple—A/B testing of offers, for instance, or of email versions and subject lines—to the more sophisticated (Gudat gave a hypothetical example of a manufacturer sharing some of the granted $50,000 with a retailer to test ways to sell a high-margin item to customer segments that don’t normally purchase that item).
Then comes the next challenge: What to do with the learnings remains a major speed bump in marketing operations. “It's not anything new—it's been a challenge for a while,” says Ware. “We're still seeing a struggle with making the data 
actionable. A lot of companies have done a good job at collecting the data, but being able to analyze it and come up with proactive, actionable insights that are going to make a difference in the business and have an impact on the bottom line is a challenge.”
Overcoming this learning speed bump through analyzing and modeling the data was therefore an appropriate target for respondents should the extra $50,000 be made available—which is fully supported by Gudat. And she knows what the first focus of the modeling should be.
“If I were running a store or company and I didn't have a lot of resources,” she said, “the first thing I would do is make sure I know who my best customers are, inside and out, and what moves the dial with them, what motivates them—why are they shopping with me? I would use that knowledge to focus my resources to make sure I retain those customers, in a traditional loyalty program, or a clienteling program, or something created outside the box.”
Reach out to best customers with relevance and a personal touch, said Gudat. “It's such a promotional environment, especially in the retail industry, when people start thinking of reaching out to their best customers, it immediately becomes some kind of promotion. We have found in talking to customers in focus groups and one-to-one is that when you have a best customer, it's an emotional affinity.” For example, the CEO might send personalized messages to best customers. “That's the kind of thing today that companies set aside, and they're too busy churning out offers and not looking back to that emotional affinity.”
Gudat recommends giving “a true gift to best customers, and not just a discount. Something that has a value that acknowledges that loyalty.”
It all goes back to understanding your value proposition, says Ware: “Work to understand how what differentiates you from your competitors, and how the differential resonates with best customers.”
And don’t stop there: “The next focus would be on customers who are most likely to become best,” Gudat said. “Do some analysis to determine who statistically is most likely to become a best customer. Focus intervention strategies on 
those folks to make sure that I retain them. If you can do those two things, you're going to be 90% ahead of a lot of your competitors.”
But now, add to these challenges the fact that the learning changes, and rapidly. We’d all like to conquer our trials with stable solutions, but as Gudat pointed out, “We are in a very dynamic marketing environment with lots of game-changing activity happening out there with technology and how consumers interact with it. The name of the game is to be nimble and spritely and flexible. What might work today probably won't work tomorrow. You have to come to work every day with that dynamic mindset of doing what's going to work, and not relying on the old standbys.” The days of locking down budgets around radio and TV and direct mail are gone. “That causes a lot of discomfort for marketers today. Certainly the data is a challenge, but we live in very interesting times.”