What is 'The Last Mile' ?

What do we mean by "The Last Mile" of Marketing? We're referring to that extra effort required to actually achieve what you set out to do, without which all the miles travelled so far are wasted.

Unless you learn from marketing, and unless the learning makes a difference in the next campaign, may as well not bother and save your money. A lot of money gets spent on IT teams, CRM Systems, data,creative, marketing staff, consultants and more and yet how many of us are sure we are getting ROI from this spend?

Here's a popular myth - "email is cheap" - what about the hidden costs of lost customers? Just because its cheap doesn't mean "more is better"! Quality of communication seems to losing the battle to quantity, with the result that not only is the value of any single piece of communication diminishing, but in customers are disengaging, which means lost opportunity for both businesses and customers on what may have been a valuable exchange.

It's not a matter of getting a campaign out the door - it's making sure it's executed well, correctly targeted, followed through, responses captured, results analysed, lessons learned - and executed again with the wisdom of lessons learned (phew!)

The Virtues of Data Sharing

Many businesses share their customers with other businesses, and yet if asked if they would share data about their customers, even confidentially, they run a mile. 'What! Share my customer data? Not me...the competition will steal my customers" Why do we assume we'd be worse off?

Let's think about it - what percentage of your customers are truly loyal - let's say 50% - that means the other 50% are now other peoples customers. Of the 50% loyal to you, how many of them are exclusive to you only? Chances are they probably shop around now. If 50% are not going to come back, maybe they'd be better value for other businesses - and if they did you the same favour? Would you both be better off or worse off?

"Which 50% are the loyal ones then?" you may ask - well your data should tell you that already, based on how many have bought once, twice or more times. You may already be communicating to them differently, maybe not. Regardless, if they are loyal to you now, they'll probably stay loyal to you no matter what - data sharing won't stop that.

Now, reality check - what business would love to have loyalty as high as 50%! So if you buy this argument at 50%, then it only becomes more compelling if loyalty is any lower, which is the case for many small businesses operating in the Tourism, Leisure and Music industries. Customers don't mean to be disloyal, but they do like variety, and want to experience different places, sounds, tastes and sights. Can't blame them...

In summary, between you and your so called 'competitors', you may be able to increase the overall loyalty of your respective customer bases, by coordinating your marketing efforts, based on more insightful analysis on shared data. Keeping customers loyal to the category, say destination, our Artist genre, or series of events may be smarter than trying to compete for a slice of a smaller pie. Competitors, or collaborators?