Success Story
Data generation: More than 20% response rate - VW Financial Services reveals the secret of success
Mr. Stankovský, as a finance company you already have a lot of data from your clients. Why is it so important for you to enrich that data with e-mail addresses and telephone numbers?
To enrich our customer data with actual telephone numbers and e-mail adresses is a very important and strategic focus for us. First and foremost we are looking for ways to communicate during the contract duration. For example, we send electronic invoices. Most of our CRM activities depend on valid data, especially for electronic communication with the customers.
That's why we ask right at the beginning of the business relationship for the necessary data and give our customers a very convenient and easy access to it, so they can update it at any time. However, in order to have a really strong base of correct communications data, we need to be active beyond that.
That's why you started a very successful campaign to generate e-mail permissions and phone numbers for your customers. What were you exactly doing?
We had to find an affordable yet effective way, to reach our customer base and get their permissions. So we came up with the idea to use the traditional mailings we send out anyways and enrich them with a call-to-action to give us their e-mail permission. In order to achieve a high response rate, we offered an incentive and made the entire process very easy and convenient for the customer.
All they had to do was to visit a website we communicated in the mailing. There they ended up directly at the form, where they left their e-mail and permission. As a “thank you” everyone received a travel voucher worth EUR 100,- for leaving their e-mail address.
What is the response rate? Which facts and figures can you share with us concerning the success of the campaign so far?
We were hoping for high response rates, but never expected it to be as unbelievably high as it really turned out in the end. More than 20% of the mailing’s recipients gave us their permissions!
The whole process seems very smooth. Once the client enters their e-mail address online, they are rewarded right away with a voucher per e-mail. How much does that contribute to the customer experience and for you in terms of getting valid e-mail addresses?
The voucher was sent via e-mail immediately, right after the customer left his data with us. That way we delighted our customers by fast service while we received permissions for e-mail addresses which were 100% valid! Therefore, we made sure that you could only get the voucher by providing a correct e-mail.
The telephone number is not a required field in the online form even though it is a declared goal of you to get the phone number. Why did you choose not to make it mandatory? And do people give it to you anyway?
The telephone number was not required as a mandatory field because our goal was to ensure the high response rate as much as possible and we identified two barriers for getting the voucher as being unacceptable for customers.
This turned out to be a very smart move. Because even though we did not make the telephone field mandatory, more than 90% filled it out voluntarily. So we got the phone numbers, without being overly aggressive about it.
From your experience, what are the success-factors for a data enrichment campaign like yours?
We do have very loyal customers, which gives us a head start on promotions like this one. The big secret however lies in the communication itself. We have made great experiences with not being too aggressive in our marketing communication. And of course you need an interesting benefit for the customer. In the end, the customer has to be motivated or nothing will come out of your activities. With the travel voucher we have obviously found an incentive that is extremely motivating by providing a high value everyone wants, while still fitting into our budget for activities like this one.
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