"Dear customer, you are not allowed to contact us by phone."

Written By Ted Grigg

I am constantly amazed at the profit killing decisions some companies make by not remaining hyper sensitive to their customers’ buying behavior.

For example, one company was spending many millions of dollars in direct response. The organization was concerned about an unexplainable drop in the acquisition numbers over the last several months and asked for my perspective on the cause. The core medium was direct mail.

After reviewing their marketing materials, I noticed that the company had omitted the toll free number from all of their acquisition direct mail at about the same time acquisition costs started to go sour. Their call centers were getting overwhelmed, so they decided their customers should now respond only over the Internet, by fax or by reply mail. To my growing dismay, they had never tested the impact on response of omitting the phone number from their acquisition pieces before making this decision.

I asked them, “How many of your new, direct mail customers respond by phone when compared to the Internet, fax and reply mail before you dropped the phone contact number?” They got back to me after several days to provide the numbers. It so happened that they were getting over 70% of their orders over by phone from their direct mail respondents! They had offered Internet, fax and reply mail along with phone contact as an option in the past.

Through their response behavior, customers were telling the company that they wanted to respond by phone.

What a mistake to try to force customers to respond the way the company wants rather than adjust the company to fit the way customers want to respond!

Are Internet based companies trying too hard to force people to ask questions and buy products their way by omitting any reference or access to a phone number? Do you think this irritates customers? Have you noticed some critical customer behavior steps marketers overlook? Would you have expected such a small change as omitting a phone contact number would negatively impact sales?

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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