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Aug 6, 2019, 04:12 AM
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Sasha Banks-Louie
Customer service execs are taking a hard look at bots for the simple reason that they can handle large volumes of calls, chats, and emails, so that service center staff can focus on the toughest questions. As the technology behind bots—known as digital assistant technology—has improved in terms of natural language processing, machine learning, and intent-matching capabilities, companies are increasingly willing to trust them to handle direct customer interaction.
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Jun 24, 2019, 07:35 AM
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Rusty Langford
Customer support is customer support, right? While every company must acknowledge, respond and resolve customer inquiries or address complaints, it’s the uniqueness of their products that defines their customer experience. But not all products, and certainly not all consumers, have the same level of complexity. Such is the case with streaming services.
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Aug 10, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Brands that produce commodity products can still make real connections with their customers (think Coca-Cola). Zach Nelson, VP of Marketing Strategy at Harte Hanks, explains how.
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May 29, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Social media should be about having personalized conversations. See which brand Kate Sullivan, Senior Director, Digital & Social Media at Harte Hanks, holds on a pedestal for social personalization.
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May 4, 2018, 09:42 AM
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JD Metcalf
How much more profit would your company generate with a small improvement in new customer retention? For most firms, the answer is, “A LOT.” A simple Google search generates statistics that show it costs between 5X-25X as much to acquire a new customer as it does to retain a current customer.
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Apr 10, 2018, 14:02 PM
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Thea Crelin
Making the most of the investment is simply a matter of focusing efforts on the anticipated opportunities (and risks) an individual company’s change will present. By doing so, even small insurers could compete with mid-sized rivals. To get the most out of segmentation, one must keep in mind that the buyer’s journey for each segment is likely to be different.
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Mar 22, 2018, 09:32 AM
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Nicole Bump
The definition of customer retention is simple: a customer continues to transact with your brand. But achieving customer retention? Not so simple. In fact, as Scott Neslin, Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, explained at a Harte Hanks Marketing Advisory Board meeting, customer retention is downright difficult to achieve in practice and can be expensive to boot.
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Mar 19, 2018, 11:26 AM
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Nicole Bump
Who would buy a mattress online, you may ask? Well, I would, for starters, and so do a lot of others—the online mattress industry is worth about $1.5B. But because a mattress is typically considered a 'fit product' that customers want to try out in person, these bed-in-a-box companies have had to innovate their customer experience to provide value to the buyer in other ways.
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Mar 15, 2018, 13:43 PM
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Jon Dome
We've established that people will perceive your brand based on their own experiences with it. And if those experiences are unremarkable—or worse, negative—your customers won’t miss you when you disappear. The best way to design a remarkable experience is to design it around the customer’s needs throughout the buyer’s journey.
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Mar 8, 2018, 09:24 AM
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Mike Hastings
Auto marketers can best respond by focusing on three major areas: the retail experience, the connected car, and new mobility patterns. Out of these three areas, we suspect a major shakeout in the digital phase of the retail experience will happen first. Those brands that radically enhance their ability to digitally connect with auto buyers and make their digital marketing more human will enjoy outsized rewards.
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Mar 5, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
This issue of Featured includes our top content from January 2018. Several of our most-read pieces this month illustrate the challenges marketers are still grappling with around getting their teams to design and execute on the experiences customers want.
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Mar 1, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
A company in the pet care industry was shipping a high volume of samples to consumers, veterinarians, breeders, retailers and shelters. They uncovered that their existing data files contained abnormally high address problems which were driving up failed delivery attempts and increasing cost of shipping—causing the company to lose both money and product.
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Mar 1, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
A consumer packaged goods brand in the skincare industry was losing money and opportunities because of incorrect or bad mailing addresses stored in their data files.
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Feb 22, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
Harte Hanks managed the printing of sales collateral and point-of presence (POP) displays, conducted sales training, procured promotional items, completed kit assembly, and distributed over 2,500 complex launch kits.
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Feb 21, 2018, 12:52 PM
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Nicole Bump
As a New Hampshire-ite, I need really good winter boots if I’m to leave the house between November and March. The last time I was in the market for such boots, I saved up and splurged on a pair of LL Bean’s infamous Bean Boots. They were pricey, but I was confident that if they weren’t up to snuff after a long winter of snowy, slushy treks to my kids’ bus stop, I could return them and find something else that was.
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Feb 20, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Kay Lemon, Accenture Professor of Marketing, Carroll School of Management at Boston College, predicts that consumer packaged goods manufacturers will continue to learn more about their end customers through data and technology—enabling them to build relationships directly with their consumers.
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Feb 20, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Scott Neslin, Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, explains why brands are seeing such excessive product returns and provides advice on how to reduce return rate.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Don't be a creep. You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 14, 2018, 14:35 PM
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None
You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 6, 2018, 09:25 AM
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Rich Romig
You could argue that with each increasing Roman numeral, there are fewer and fewer Super Bowl “ads” to review. Sure, there are 30- and 60-second short, brand-sponsored films, special effects bonanzas, comedy routines, music videos—most with a little product demo or placement within—but many aren’t “commercials” in the selling-something sense of the word.
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Feb 5, 2018, 16:06 PM
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Karen Puckett
Some years ago, “…Best Buy’s management team realized a big box filled with stuff wasn’t all that appealing to a lot of people.” This is when the company began to focus squarely on providing customers with a better experience.
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Feb 2, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
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Jan 30, 2018, 16:14 PM
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Michael Behrenhausen
We recently set up a conversation between Harte Hanks CMO Frank Grillo and Kimberly Whitler, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, to discuss the current and future state of retail both digital and physical. The two ended up having a lively, insightful exchange of ideas.
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Jan 26, 2018, 09:23 AM
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Steve Acuna
Sometimes, 1 + 1 actually equals 3. Or 4 or 5 or more. And today I'm suggesting that if retail brands were to team up with the consumer brands they sell, they would both be able to better serve their customers and end up at that 3+ number.
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Jan 24, 2018, 10:21 AM
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Mike hastings
As automakers gather this week and last in Detroit at the North American International Auto Show, they’re celebrating impressive 2017 sales—especially of trucks and SUVs that generate big profits. But the outlook for 2018 and beyond is a little less clear.
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Jan 23, 2018, 12:51 PM
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Steve Acuna
Many brands operate under the assumption that their marketing communications and advertisements define the brand. In reality, you can tell customers what your brand is all day, but people will perceive your brand based on their own experiences with it. And if those experiences are unremarkable—or worse, negative—your customers won’t miss you when you disappear.
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Nov 27, 2017, 14:46 PM
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Steve Acuna
Just in case you didn’t know, there’s still only 24 hours in a day. And the constant demands on our time and work/life balance are nothing new. Only now, there are more options, more channels, and more content vying for our attention during those 24 hours.
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Nov 20, 2017, 14:21 PM
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Zach Nelson
Overall, Holiday 2017 is looking good. Holiday spending expectations continue to rise in large part due to improved household finances. In fact, almost 80% of consumers expect to spend the same or more this holiday season.
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Nov 17, 2017, 11:58 AM
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Alan Kittle
The average heavy smartphone user checks their phone 150 times a day. 150 TIMES A DAY. On top of that, they—or more accurately, 90% of “they”—think that’s healthy. Their need to experience micro-euphoric moments again and again, all day and often at night, fuels this behavior, and it’s creating an entirely new set of expectations in the way businesses interact with them.
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Oct 5, 2017, 15:15 PM
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Nicole Bump
From airlines and hotels to gas stations and drug stores, customer loyalty programs abound. Scott Neslin, Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, argues that, while many brands initiate loyalty programs to generate incremental sales, the real value in a loyalty program is the data it generates.
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Aug 18, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
Significant and varied marketplace disruptions were creating challenges for one of the world’s most innovative and enduring brands. Smartphones and content streaming were eating into this consumer brand’s sales of core product lines like cameras, stereo systems and music players, camcorders, and even TVs. The shift away from physical storefronts, and the rise of dominant online sellers like Amazon, added to the challenge of connecting with customers.
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Jul 7, 2017, 10:24 AM
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Karen Puckett
A New York Times article asks, “Is there any home purchase more confusing and fraught with anxiety than buying a mattress?” Many people would answer ‘no.’ Somewhat akin to buying a new car, the process can be complicated by myriad choices of brands and models, plagued by hard selling and hidden costs (warranty, delivery), and let’s not get started with the returns process.
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May 16, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
This luxury auto manufacturer had a new vision of a more connected consumer experience that would meet buyers where they are across the customer journey. Initially rolling out across two European markets, they needed a partner to connect all internal silos and champion customer centricity.
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Mar 31, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
An online leader in luxury retail consignment earned $100M in its first year (2014), with plans to reach $1B by 2019. To fuel this ambitious growth, the company must continuously expand its membership of customers, who consign their high-end products for resale to other buyers.
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Mar 20, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
A leading consumer electronics brand offers several rewards programs for their customers each year. However, the vendor helping this brand with ordering and fulfillment of these reward orders was taking weeks to validate and deliver items to the consumers—which feels like forever! In addition, the company didn’t offer email or chat support when customers wanted to check up on their reward status.
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Feb 2, 2017, 10:51 AM
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Frank Grillo
Case study from Dr. Karl Hellman.
In our 3-second attention span world, social media marketing often grabs attention with dramatic discounts: 30% off or more. But discounts erode profits and detract from brand equity: “Thirty percent off? What’s wrong with this product?”
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Jan 25, 2017, 11:26 AM
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Ryan Moats
For years, retailers have been told that to compete in the new ecommerce world, they need to have a well-established omnichannel organization. The 2016 holiday season proves that the time has come—and it is not going away. Retailers that do not have a solid omnichannel strategy that lets customers shop whenever and however they want to shop are going to be left in the dust.
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Jan 4, 2017, 16:40 PM
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Ryan Moats
Many retailers are beginning to feel like competing with a dominant force like Amazon is a losing battle.
In the recent article “Can your brand win vs. Amazon?,” eBags.com CEO Mike Edwards examines the struggle for vendors and retailers to remain profitable in the shadow of the online retail giant. Amazon offers lower prices, convenience, a wide selection, product recommendations, a range of shipping options and a personalized customer experience. They’ve set the standard for customer expectations, and if you ignore that standard, you won’t succeed.
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Oct 27, 2016, 13:41 PM
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Barbara Basquill
Before a snowflake has fallen or a holiday decoration is placed, retailers and consumers indices’ have already planned on the sales expectations they want to achieve. While the digital frontier shows no sign of slowing, now is the time to prepare for 2017.
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Sep 21, 2016, 07:19 AM
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None
The social landscape is booming. Every minute of every day, consumers are using social channels to discuss their experiences, feelings and opinions on brands. And this
presents rich opportunities for B2C businesses to build strong, meaningful relationships with consumers.
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Aug 22, 2016, 15:44 PM
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None
Developments in virtual reality are gathering pace. Adoption rates are up and the depth, breadth and quality of content is steadily increasing. Forbes reported that from
January to March 2016, $1.1 billion dollars was invested in VR. That compares to $2 billion in the whole of 2015.
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May 4, 2016, 13:00 PM
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Adi Clark
I’ve spent much of my career working in data-driven marketing roles and delivering insights for B2C brands, but over the last decade the balance has shifted and I now work almost exclusively with B2B businesses. While some of the differences between the two worlds are to be expected, such as the availability of different data types and the more complex buying cycle in B2B, in fact there are a great deal of similarities in the techniques and types of analysis that can be carried out for B2C and B2B. So why aren’t B2B brands making as much use of analytics as their B2C counterparts?
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Nov 10, 2015, 11:57 AM
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Alan John Kittle
Smart B2B brands have been learning from their B2C cousins about wrapping messages up in a more appealing way for years. Some B2B players have a clear vision of the role video needs to play and how to make the viewer experience both enjoyable and meaningful. Plaudits where they’re due!
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Sep 10, 2015, 14:53 PM
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Anthony Figgins
Marketing automation is quickly becoming one of the most valuable technology tools for both B2B and B2C marketers. The right tools can save you time and money, and they can showcase ROI faster. However, like with any technology platform, there can be a steep learning curve. Here is what you need to know to get started.
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