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“Hey we miss you”. This was the subject line of an email from Sony which landed in my inbox and made me choose my career direction with Salesforce. Let me tell you how.

During my tenure with Google prior to my current role with Salesforce I heard this mantra from Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman:

“There are people who can be relied upon to respond promptly to emails, and those who can’t. Strive to be one of the former.”

I strive to respond to work emails within an hour, and thanks to mobile technology people like me now have the ability to see a brand name in the subject line and choose to either open or delete within 3 seconds (Yes I have timed this).

So, when I received the email from Sony, I asked myself what could have triggered it. I thought:

“Is Sony monitoring my usage?” More importantly I also thought,  

“Sony, do you really care about me as an individual?” A company like Sony has so many customers - I’m impressed that my activity would even register on its radar, much less that it would care enough to try to bring me back into a relationship.

Turns out this is the reason behind that email. My PS3 hadn’t had any attention for a few weeks, and this prompted a personalised email communication.

The email worked - I was back playing FIFA that very night! But more importantly - it sparked my curiosity and reignited my passion for the 1:1 customer experience, so much so that I now find myself evangelising the importance of cross-channel marketing to small and medium businesses that I deal with every day in my current Salesforce role.

I have realised that the 1:1 marketing experience that Sony created with me as a customer is a benchmark every brand should aim for. But, most marketers, I find, still think this is too complex and difficult for a small business to achieve.

Allow me to challenge this belief through sharing some examples. 

Frank Body

Amaysim

1800 Flowers

None of these businesses are big. Yet, they have all managed to increase their lead conversion rates by up to 6%, and their open rates by up to 20% simply by challenging themselves with questions like these:

  • Are we easy to do business with?

  • Do we have a single view of the customer? (Bet you haven’t heard this one before)

  • Do I know what % of my customers are active vs inactive?

  • Which channels are the best ones for me to target my loyal customers?

  • How do I acquire new customers?

  • Do we as a brand have processes like welcome journeys, thank you emails and “Hey we miss you” magic moments to help our customers feel valued?

If these questions dwell on your mind often and you are interested in learning more, I invite you to join us on the 24th of August at The Future of Marketing Sydney to learn about how small businesses like Frank Body are creating new benchmarks in marketing automation and acquiring new customers with little effort through social media, mobile and email marketing.