Customer Communications – Choosing The Right Medium

Tim Farthing, commercial director at Dennis Communications, examines how brands and companies should go about choosing which media channel to use to communicate with their customers.

I can’t think of a brand or company that doesn’t want to communicate directly with their customer. In fact, I am still being sent catalogues from a small cricket equipment shop I visited in Somerset when I was 12. There has been a huge proliferation in the volume and type of customer communications over the past few years, but how do you, the brand or company, go about choosing which media channel to use?

The options are endless, ranging from the traditional written word on paper, to the newest technologies such as video messages via mobile phones. In their own way, they are all effective at increasing brand loyalty, driving sales and activating lapsed customers. The key is to choose the right channel for your message and audience, and the best way to go about this is to use the age old technique of asking yourself questions:

Who do I want to communicate with? What do I want to say? When do I want to do this? What do I want to achieve? How will I measure effectiveness? How much do I have to spend?

But don’t fall into the trap of just answering these questions yourself. You will undoubtedly have preconceived ideas and therefore may struggle to see beyond the obvious. There are plenty of other people and groups to ask these questions to, most notably:

Colleagues Customers Contract Publishing Agencies Planning & Media Agencies Research Companies

Once you have decided on the answers to the questions above, now is the time to choose the right medium.

Case Study

Dennis Communications, the customer publishing arm of Dennis Publishing, was recently approached by a well known travel operator who was considering the options for their customer communications. They had a hugely successful website with 1,000’s of videos and strong e-commerce function, but they had previously only used print and mail for their customer messages.

Digital magazines emailed directly to their customer base were an obvious choice. They would enable the use of video and sound, the reader is only a click away from purchasing and their accountability and cost effectiveness were considerably greater then the usual print and paper options.

Every type of customer communication medium has their own list of benefits and challenges, so here is my crib sheet for the three main options (it’s not a bible, more of a top line guide):

Print Magazines

Benefits:

Proven success. Printed magazines have worked brilliantly as customer magazines for a long time.

Perceived Value. Your customers will have the perception that a beautifully published print magazine, sent to them for free, has a much higher value than it actually cost to you.

Shelf Life. A printed customer magazine, sent to someone’s home, will be in their house for a surprisingly long time.

Challenges:

Response Measurement. Make sure you use every possible measurement tool at your disposal.

Cost Management. Paper and distribution costs need careful management so choose a large, respected publisher as they will benefit from economies of scale.

Websites

Benefits:

Interactive. Your customer will have many opportunities to interact with your brand through competitions, forums and video to name a few.

Adaptable. The short lead times mean that changing content is quick and easy.

Accessibility. Your customers can access your website from almost anywhere, even aeroplanes (I am now reliably informed).

Challenges:

Cut Through. Every man and his dog has a customer website, make sure yours is special.

Marketing. It can be surprisingly difficult to attract customers to your website as you need to PULL them in. Make sure you provide an attractive reason for visiting your site.

Digital Magazines

Benefits:

Editorial Diversity. Through the use of video, sound and moving images. It’s like having your own TV show, but in a magazine style.

Accountability. 24/7 tracking mechanisms help you follow the customer from start to finish.

Cost Effective. Digital magazines have similar benefits to print magazines but without the paper and distribution costs.

Challenges

New. A relatively untested medium, but not for long.

Delivery. Digital magazines are sent via email so make sure your customer email database is up to date.

To summarise, if you are a brand or company that is considering starting or reviewing your customer communications, then take time to consider the basics. Once you have done this, then call in the experts. A good publishing agency is not hard to find.

Dennis Communications: www.dennis.co.uk