Direct, database and digital marketing practice: Black hole or
parallel universe?
esd-toolkit's Sheila Apicella and Govmetric's Nic Streatfeild
have collaborated to publish an article in the Journal of Direct, Data and
Digital Marketing Practice. The paper considers and debates
techniques for marketing in this digital age in the public sector
and makes some comparisons with the commercial
sectors.
It illustrates how local authorities are succeeding in
achieving cost reductions and in
improving customer satisfaction levels by
migrating specific population segments to more appropriate contact
channels.
The authors argue that, particularly for digital channels,
innovations in the way customer satisfaction data are gathered can
be used to identify improvements in service quality in public
sector, where competitive markets do not apply. They conclude that
because they are non-competing, local authorities operate in a
culture in which data relating to population segments, customer
satisfaction, services and channels used, customer satisfaction can
only be analyzed to achieve significant improvements in
effectiveness where comparable information is pooled and accessed
for benchmarking purposes.
Similarities between the two sectors include the demand for a
joined up view of the customer / citizen; the understanding of
population segments for which different communications strategies
are appropriate; the demand of users for personalisation, choice of
contact and transaction channels; and the desire of the service
provider to migrate service users to lower-cost channels where
appropriate.
Click
here to download the article.
Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice
(2010) 11, 302- 316.
doi: 10.1057/dddmp.2009.42