Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

The future of direct marketing in PSFs

I've begun receiving a magazine called IN Marketing, the magazine of the Direct Marketing Association.  Not surprisingly, it's filled with articles and research about one-to-one marketing programs, including sending customers direct-response e-mails, list management, campaign metrics, personalized web sites, and the like. 

It's fair to say that most professional service firms are wrestling with this aspect of marketing, both tactically and strategically.  Certainly, direct marketing begs the question:  "What can we offer that will attract our targeted audiences most effectively?" 

Tactically: First, there's the absolutely crucial issue of client lists. We all know that effective direct marketing depends on a well targeted list.  I can't tell you the number of horror stories I've heard about the sorry state of client lists in professional firms.  If your firm is struggling with building and maintaining a segmented client database, you're not alone.  The best example I've ever seen, good enough that I wrote about it as a case study in my book Marketplace Masters, was an accounting and business consulting firm, Numerica Group, now Vantis , based in the U. K. 

Strategically: Most professional services marketers, with "knowledge" as their product, have yet to figure out an appropriate "offer" that will stimulate a definitive reply.  (Seminar invitations may fall into this realm.)  Clearly, given the complexity and customization of most professional services, any direct outreach needs to be planned and managed with great care.  But I don't think this is really the crux of the challenge.  Rather, it is the strategic problem of identifying the best clients to retain and the best prospects to acquire, which of course affects where a direct mail approach is targeted.  I've heard about too many professionals, regardless of their firm's clearly identified criteria about which is and is not "the right target," who went ahead and marketed to the absolute wrong target. 

No matter the challenges, professional services firms that want to compete successfully will have to increase their sophistication regarding direct marketing.  Indeed, direct marketing calls the question about the whole nature of proactive marketing (the essence of direct marketing!) and reactive marketing (the foundation of professional services!).

It's just a matter of time until savvy professional services competitors figure out a way to use direct marketing techniques more effectively.  The rest will have to play catch-up (a painful game to play).   

E-mail as a relationship marketing strategy

Do you think that professional service firms are maximizing the effectiveness of their emails, especially when it comes to cultivating client relationships?

I recently came across a white paper that discusses high impact e-mail marketing.  It's from the Peppers & Rogers Group, well-respected products-oriented marketing consultants.

Download the white paper (PDF 278 KB)

The paper touts the proactive use of e-mail as a tool for cultivating profitable and loyal relationships, especially when it's used as part of a total "client experience" strategy instead of a simple sales tool or knowledge-delivery vehicle.  Martha Rogers, one of the authors, asserts, "E-mail marketing initiatives must be predicated upon knowing the customer base and communicating with those customers in a credible way that sustains their interest." 

Of course, we're talking here about much more than simply being nice to each other on e-mails!  With the increasing robustness of data mining and client relationship management technologies, it's clear that professional service firms can use e-mail marketing more programmatically and more critically than they may have done in the past. 

But how many professional firms actually consider e-mail marketing as a discreet and potentially advantageous vehicle in their marketing plans?  From what I've heard in my connections with many professional service firm marketers, I'd wager we're still at the baby stage when it comes to masterfully managing our e-mail communications and effectively targeting the knowledge needs and interests of our clients and prospects.   

The four key points offered in this white paper sound like a good start to get your professional service firm to think more critically about e-mail as a relationship marketing strategy.  Sure, some of the lingo is product-oriented, but if you substitute terms like "purchase behavior" with other types of client-data, this information becomes more strategically interesting. 

1. Think customer experience.  Watch for the discussion about "raising the relevancy bar," customizing content, and catalyzing action.  What kind of action might a professional service firm seek from its clients?  Technology exists now to make e-mails much more interactive -- a true information exchange on multiple levels. 
2. Make privacy protection part of your brand promise.  If "trust" features in your firm's brand promise, this concept is critical. Once e-mails have stimulated information-sharing, professional service firms must go beyond "permission marketing" to embrace a more careful organizational approach to managing competitively-sensitive client information. 
3. Ensure your recipients know you.  This section, the most simplistic of the white paper, offers basic points about transparency in e-mail distributions. 
4. Measure impact.  What's beyond open- and click-through rates?  The authors encourage qualitative research to get direct feedback about the value of targeted e-mails.   They even encourage the creation of an e-mail advisory board to help test an e-mail relationship marketing strategy.