Dialogue will also be supplemented by other tools such as mailshots, phone calls or
personal visits, depending on the context. For example, after a customer registers on the
RS Components web site, the company sends out a letter to the customer with promo-
tional offers and a credit-card-sized reminder of the user name and password to use to
log in to the site.
As well as these physical methods of maintaining contact with customers, many other
marketing devices can be used to encourage users to return to a site (see also Chapter 8).
These include:
loyalty schemes – customers will return to the site to see how many loyalty points
they have collected, or convert them into offers. An airline such as American Airlines,
with its Advantage Club, is a good example of this;
news about a particular industry (for a business-to-business site);
new product information and price promotions;
industry-specific information to help the customer do his or her job;
personal reminders – the US company 1-800-Flowers has reminder programmes that
automatically remind customers of important occasions and dates;
customer support – Cisco’s customers log on to the site over one million times a
month to receive technical assistance, check orders or download software. The online
service is so well received that nearly 70 per cent of all customer enquiries are han-
dled online.While adding value for their customers by means of these various mechanisms, com-
panies will be looking to use the opportunity to make sales to customers by, for example,
cross- or up-selling.Stage 4: Maintain dialogue using offline communication
Here, direct mail or e-mail is the most effective form of communication since this can be
tailored to be consistent with the user’s preference. The aim here may be to drive traffic
to the web site as follows:
online competition;
online web seminar (webinar);
sales promotion.When e-mail addresses are captured offline a common problem is the level of errors
in the address – this can often reach a double-figure percentage. Plan for this also – staff
should be trained in the importance of getting the e-mail address correct and how to
check for an invalid address format. Some call centres have even incentivised staff
according to the number of valid e-mail addresses they collect. When collecting
addresses on paper, some practical steps can help, such as allowing sufficient space for
the e-mail address and asking for it to be written in CAPS.
A further objective in stage 3 and 4 is to improve customer information quality. In
particular, e-mails may bounce – in which case offline touchpoints as indicated in Figure
6.7 need to be planned to collect these e-mail addresses.
The balance between online communications (stage 3) and offline communications
(stage 4) should be determined by how responsive customers are to different communi-
cations channels since stage 3 is a lower-cost route.CHAPTER 6· RELATIONSHIP MARKETING USING THE INTERNET