Apr 12, 2015 | Articles
Customer Retention??? Darryl Joubert August 2015 CEO, Intimate Data (Pty) Ltd Direct Marketing and Data Quality Specialists Article Published Nex Media Vol. 1 Issue 3 High customer churn rates is often a result of NEGLECT by a company of its existing customers. In to-days tough economic and competitive climate it’s even more important to retain existing customers in order to ensure long-term profitability. Why keep existing customers: • Reduced acquisition costs, compared to acquiring new customers. • Keeping your customers as they become more affluent and spend more increases your revenues. • You can target them for up- selling and cross-selling other products, • Loyal happy customers recommend your company and products to their friends, • Referred customers tend to be more profitable and stay with your business longer than those who respond to price promotions. Retaining and extending a customer into year 2 could increase revenues by up to 40% and by up by 100% in year 3. Customer Retention programs should have realistic evolving goals and objectives. Goals are used to determine the communications used, marketing approach, the value of incentives, overall program viability, are regularly evaluated against measurable objectives, and changes need to be made when necessary. Retaining customers through Loyalty is more than just a rewards program, as the best loyalty initiatives should be sustainable, reward giving, and brand related. They are personal, communicative, and geared toward establishing a genuine dialogue for common learning and sharing. These elements, when implemented correctly, give the consumer a strong incentive to purchase frequently, as each transaction is increasingly personal, rich, and rewarding. Ie: the customer perceives a real... read more
May 12, 2014 | Articles
“Dirty data impacts CRM Return On Investments” May 2014 Article Published Nex Media Vol. 1 Issue 2 – submitted by Darryl Joubert C.E.O. Intimate Data (Pty) Ltd Many organisations fail to address the most essential component of the CRM initiative: accurate, reliable customer information. “”Ensuring that high-quality customer information is reliable requires constant effort, and can often shift management’s focus from a company’s core business,”” says Joubert. “”CRM is meant to allow companies to communicate precisely and cost-effectively with their customers to build customer loyalty, expand market share and increase sales. And yet, millions of rand later, many organisations are still waiting for their substantial investment in CRM software to deliver the promised results.”” If one had to focus, as a start, on one important data element, Joubert suggests “the addressing element of each customer”. In South Africa poor contact ability of a company’s customer’s addresses impacts their return on investment and their bottom line. Joubert estimates that 3% of a company’s customer’s addresses are incorrect, and that this has an effect in the following way; 1. Incorrectly captured address or out of date address (moved). By mail being undelivered and returned by SAPO as a NIXIE, this effects each single wasted mail item in the following way; 1.1. Postage Loss of the stamps @ R2.80, 1.2. Wasted Laser/Printing costs @ R0.20, 1.3. Wasted Paper that it was printed on @ R0.15, 1.4. Wasted Envelopes purchased @ R3.75, 1.5. Wasted mail room manipulation @ R0.18, 1.6. Totals R7.08 per wasted mail item, Calculation of potential loss: (number of customers mailed x number of times they are mailed a year)... read more
Jan 12, 2013 | Articles
“Sacrificing data quality undermines marketing and business success”. January 2013 Article published in “Nex Media” Vol 1 Issue 1 – submitted by Daryl Joubert C.E.O. Intimate Data (Pty) Ltd If the state of a company’s products, services and marketing matched the level of quality of the data in the company’s databases, would the company survive or go out of business? In an environment that is increasingly based on information, companies need to understand that the value of their business relies on the successful management of their data. The old maxim “garbage in, garbage out” still holds true for data quality “Data quality is a critical yet neglected strategic business issue,” says Darryl Joubert, chairman of SA based specialist data quality software supplier and Direct Marketing service bureau Intimate Data. “Data quality problems hamper virtually every area of an organisation, from the mailroom to the executive office, and have a direct affect on the bottom line. Every hour spent searching for missing data, correcting inaccurate information, working around data problems and resolving data-related customer complaints is an hour of direct cost to the bottom line.” Research has shown that failure to examine the content, structure and quality of data is one of the root causes why IT projects and procedures often cost more than two-thirds of their original budgets, or even collapse completely. Huge emphasis is placed on systems integration and infrastructure, while inadequate attention is paid to the lifeblood of any IT system: the actual data fed into it and, more importantly, the quality of that data. In many companies, there is a lack of appreciation of the impact... read more
Oct 12, 2006 | Articles
The purpose of this communiqué is to bring you up to date with what is going on in the world of Intimate Data in terms of what we have been working on over the last year or so and how it should benefit you, our customer, in your business. There have been three main thrusts, the first looking at improving the effectiveness of our Intimate Value product range, the second looking at enhancing our product offering of consenting prospects to our list broking and bureau clients, and the third looking at improving, simplifying and actively managing the communication between Intimate Data and its clients or associates, specifically in relation to queries or requests, etc. It has long been our ambition to validate an individuals address details down to a name at a number on a street within a specific suburb. Of course this is not a simple task when one considers that many people within the same or different families can live at the same address. Added to which is the fact that many people do not record an address until they become commercially active plus a high percent of the population moves to new addresses every year. In South Africa this amounts to 20% on average, of which a good number don’t advise all their associates of their new address. Added to this, many people only use a PO Box address and some dwelling areas have no official addressing structure. Of course you already know this as you see it all the time in the ever-increasing cost of returned mail or the frustration in tracking debtors, etc. Our... read more
Aug 12, 2005 | Articles
A debate has surfaced concerning information / data privacy stemming from articles in the newspapers about the Post Office selling personal information. Michalsons IT Attorneys published an article regarding the issues of data privacy as a result of this debate, as summarized below. Different Forms of Privacy: There are four different, but related types of privacy. They are: · Bodily Privacy · Communication Privacy · Territorial Privacy, and · Information / Data Privacy For more detailed information about the above concepts of privacy, please click here: MSN South Africa Homepage Facts About Privacy and the Current Position: – In South Africa there are laws for all of the above concepts of privacy, except information / data privacy. – It is questionable whether information / data privacy is covered by the Constitution and Common law right to privacy. – There is currently no general data protection law, but it is being worked on by the Law Commission. For more detailed information about South African privacy laws and constitutional rights to privacy, please click here: http://www.privacylaw.co.za/home.htm What the Law Says: – The right to information / data privacy is not yet recognized in South Africa. – Although it is not yet recognized, an individual may still take legal action against any infringements. – However, it is very difficult to prove the infringement, because it is unethical to talk of alleged infringements as unlawful or... read more
Aug 12, 2005 | Articles
CRM has many measures of success but a core component of CRM which few people are paying attention to is the integration of data. As a result of this lack of attention many IT projects fail because the integration of data and applications, and the quality of data. CRM projects consume vast amounts of money and without accurate, available data the ROI from the CRM initiatives will be low. Impact of ‘Dirty Data’ on CRM ROI An issue linked to data integration is data quality. If a company owns more than one data store, a problem of duplicated and incorrect data may arise. Incorrect data may result from clients and employees inputting the data incorrectly or spelling a name differently, which would in turn create two records for the same person. In order to extract any valuable data from these stores, these problems need to be discovered and solved. A recent study commissioned by the SAS Institute identified how much impact ‘dirty data’ has on the profitability of a company is highlighted by the following: · Retha Keyser, the Product Manager at SAS Institute SA, identified that: “Data quality is a major obstacle in achieving ROI from CRM initiatives. The foundation of successful CRM is the accuracy and timeliness of the underlying data.” · Keyser also identified that: “Accurate data is vital to the bottom line of businesses, proving that data quality is the single largest obstacle to achieving ROI from CRM campaigns.” · Keyser also suggested, “To begin to address this problem, companies need to identify the data corruption areas and quantify the issue in business terms before... read more
Nov 12, 2003 | Articles
Poor data quality is undermining the massive investments being made in enterprise resource planning (ERP) – and the failure of many companies to take this issue seriously is exposing them to certain systems failure. The past five years have seen businesses large and small investing millions in the process – and all too often the pain – of implementing ERP systems, by definition a heavy-duty, headache-inducing process that ties together an organisation’s many data centres and makes them available to employees throughout the organisation. Cost of ownership of an ERP system is notoriously high, aggravated not only by the cost of the hardware but the ongoing upgrades needed to keep it going. A large ERP user, for instance, can realistically budget for between R50 million and R100 million for hardware upgrades every three years. Part of the need for such costly upgrades is the sheer size of the databases that support ERP systems, says Darryl Joubert, chairman of specialist data quality software supplier and service bureau Intimate Data. “”These grow exponentially the longer they are in use. And the bigger they get the more money and resources need to be thrown at them to ensure the ERP system continues to function adequately with the right response times,”” says Joubert. Just as the hardware of an ERP system needs to be upgraded to keep abreast of technological developments, so do companies need to pay attention to the lifeblood of any IT system: the actual data in it and, most importantly, the quality of that data. Dirty data, redundant and inconsistent data, is common in organisations with no clear data quality... read more
