Last Thursday the Relationship Marketing campaign which fraoch has been working on with VisitScotland and creative agency Union Direct won the Direct Retention category and overall Silver at the IDM Business Performance Awards in London.

These are generally recognised as the top awards in the industry, since they are stringently judged on business results. The judges applauded the clever segmentation and its use to drive personalisation through the intelligent use of data. The programme delivered an incremental £18 Million in revenue to the Scottish tourism industry.

We have just found out that our joint submission with VisitScotland ‘In Search of Real People’ has been short-listed in the Consumer Insight category for these major awards.  A lot of work goes into writing the submission paper, but in this case, nowhere near as much as went into the project itself! 

Many months of quantitative research and data analysis gave us the foundation to build a robust, new segmentation model covering the UK tourism market, but also looking specifically at the strength of the consumer’s relationship with Scotland.  This was followed by a few more months of qualitative research and insight development in order to convince ourselves - and the wider organisation - that this was more than a piece of marketing theory.  We proved that we had found a way of accurately categorising and genuinely describing real people. 

As a result, VisitScotland has radically changed its overall marketing approach and even reorganised the marketing department.  The new segmentation has provided very valuable management and planning information, has hugely increased VisitScotland’s understanding of different types of consumers, and is now being shared with tourism organisations throughout the country. It is definitely one of the most challenging and far-reaching pieces of work I have been involved in in my career, so it is fantastic to see it paying off.

If you would like to know more about the case study, then please email me from this site.

A few years ago on a trip to the States, I bought an interior design book called ‘Use what you have decorating’.  The premise - as is fairly clear from the title - is to focus on improving the way your house looks by re-using and rearranging things you already own, rather than splashing out on lots of new stuff.  Of course, we can take on similar lessons in marketing, especially as times get tougher economically.

One of the main ways we can use what we have is to focus on getting the most out of existing customer and enquirer databases.  A recent study by Gyro International claims that 83% of marketers see building stronger relationships with their consumers as key to surviving the credit crunch, whilst only 2% are considering cutting their investment in CRM.  Existing databases often provide the key to acquiring new customers too - profiling, segmentation and the building of scorecard models can give new insight into where to look for future high value prospects.  Interestingly, much of my work is centred in this area at the moment, so this need is certainly resonating in the industry.

Another way to ‘use what you have’ is to make the most of networks and resources.  I’m a member of the Marketing Society and a fellow of the IDM.  I pay my annual fees, so I owe it to myself to get value from them: attending events, catching up with colleagues, reading the journals and logging on to pick up nuggets of information and news from their websites. (OK, you may have lost your password, but it only takes a few seconds to request a reminder!) 

Don’t overlook your own corporate memory either.  Take a look back in the files at your organisation’s best case studies and award entries. Dig out results reviews and research reports from the past couple of years and refresh your take on them.  Re-reading them in the light of what you know now just might spark some fresh thinking.

And finally, don’t just use what you have, but use what’s freely available - there is a wealth of insight out there on the internet to stimulate new ideas and prompt and prod us into things to test in search of improved results and breakthroughs. It could be anything from news articles to trendspotting to checking what your competitors are up to - it’s all there at our keyboard tip.  If you don’t already have it, chances are, someone else does - and they may be willing to share it! 

In such a mood the other day, I came across this tongue in cheek guide to how to survive the recession - mainly by carrying on doing what we already do well anyway…

http://jezebel.com/5063647/the-complete-idiots-guide-to-the-recession

At fraoch marketing we focus on helping organisations to understand their customers better and to build stronger relationships with them.  With increasingly sophisticated and cost-efficient techniques for personalisation, both online and offline, there are more opportunities than ever to do this well.  But to personalise you need to know something about the individual you are talking to - who they are, where they are and what they are interested in, for example. 

The above must sound really obvious to anyone in marketing.  So why is it becoming more and more common that organisations only ask for email address at point of data-capture?  It tells you so little - if they are called ‘Chris’ you don’t even know if they are male or female! Transparency builds trust, so asking a few more key questions at this point will get the relationship off to a good start for both parties.  The individual will know what information they have provided, in the expectation that the organisation will then send them timely and relevant communications in future.  The organisation benefits because it has data to help it to understand its customers better, and information around which to build future marketing communications programmes.

OK, some individuals may choose not to provide the additional information, or may duck out of the process altogether.  But I bet you that they are the ones who are more interested in the sign-up incentive and less interested in the organisation’s products or services!

It’s the day before the start of the new football season - for teams in The Championship (division two for traditionalists) in England that is.  So tomorrow I’ll be at The Valley, full of hope and trepidation, as Charlton take on Swansea.  The result will almost certainly affect my mood for the coming week - it usually does!

I’ve helped a few Scottish football clubs with their marketing in the past - namely Celtic, Rangers and Hearts.  Being an avid supporter of a team myself was certainly an advantage when it came to working out the details of strategy and campaigns.  The only way to get results was to tap into the mood of the fans - get that right, and success would follow.  When the campaign launched, it was with nervous anticipation that we checked the fans’ message boards to get instant feedback on what they thought of the offer and how it was presented - real-time, unmoderated research!  Creating positive word-of-mouth momentum was essential. 

The internet has changed the way we support football these days - it’s made news so much more instantaneous, it enables you to follow matches as they happen from anywhere in the world and, if you wish, you can engage with fellow fans via blogs and message boards. 

I do log-on regularly to the Charlton sites, keen to keep in touch with the latest gossip and views.  Many of the topics aren’t directly Charlton or football-related either - it can be a fascinating slice of life and a way to read a wide variety of opinions from a whole cross-section of the population - a much more mixed bunch of people than I tend to meet and exchange views with in my normal business and social circles. 

That helps me to justify the time I spend on there, anyway!

Alongside running fraoch marketing, I am also a director of Scottish specialist tour operator, McKinlay Kidd (www.seescotlanddifferently.co.uk). The business has been going for just four years, and has gone from strength to strength due to a lot of hard work by Robert Kidd and the team.

Earlier in the year we decided that we had enough of a track record to enter the PR Excellence category of the Scottish Thistle Awards, generally recognised as the oscars of the tourism industry here. We heard a few weeks ago that the company had been short-listed - reason enough to book a table at the awards dinner, inviting along staff and business partners who had contributed to the company’s success. 

Imagine our total suprise - even disbelief - when McKinlay Kidd was read out by host Alistair McGowan as a winner on the night.  Needless to say, the champagne flowed… 

Fraoch recently pitched for the DM planning and strategy contract with VisitScotland, and has now been appointed for the next three years.  This is, of course, fantastic news, and we look forward to continuing to make a real difference to the way VisitScotland markets the wonders of this stunningly beautiful country to the UK and Ireland target audience. 

This takes me personally into a fifth year of working with VisitScotland, and I still find it every bit as exciting, challenging and demanding as at the outset.

Few brands are lucky enough to be able to out-spend their competitors.  Even Chelsea have worked out it’s not an infallible strategy.  Our philosophy at fraoch is that quality of thinking makes the difference.  If you have a large database of customers, interrogate it, manipulate it, learn from it, segment it, keep it fresh, and, above all, use it. 

We all know the theory that those who have just purchased a brand are warmest to the brand at that point, and most likely to make a second purchase or to recommend. Yet how many database strategies seek to maximise this? 

Digital printing and personalisation  - let alone e-mail contact - make it so much more possible to respond quickly to a customer transaction.  The technology is there - we’re the ones who need to play catch up!  A communications strategy directly stemming from an individual customer’s recent behaviour is much more likely to hit the right notes in terms of personalisation and relevance with the recipient of our message too- making it all the more likely that they will respond.

• download husbands and lovers

We have a great client list at fraoch and are always keen to uncover new opportunities, whether that’s more work with existing clients, or completely new relationships.  One of the key learning curves for me personally in this first year has been balancing future business with the resource available, when at the moment that resource is essentially just me. 

I’ve been lucky enough to receive quite a lot of business so far from people I know and from referrals. I’ve not needed to do a lot of proactive business development work, though I always like to keep the profile of fraoch high in the marketplace.

But I’ve just stumbled across a fantastic business development approach, and I’m prepared to share the secret.  It’s simple and even something you’ll enjoy doing: go away on holiday to some far flung destination like Africa for two weeks! I’ve analysed it and it seems to work in three ways:

1.  Tie up loose ends. Knowing you’re going to be out of contact for two weeks focuses the mind to firm up any possible client business before the holiday and agree a suitable schedule, making sure there’s lots of business on the books when you come back; 

2.  Sort out the important things. Going away makes you realise that you need a back-up contact point, so you have the conversations you’ve been thinking about sooner rather than later;

3. The phone keeps ringing - in the past few weeks I’ve had more requests for meetings and input than ever before.  Somehow everyone seems to sense I’m about to go away…

So if business ever looks quiet in the future, I’ll be off to book another exotic holiday.

So much of my focus as a planner is at the start of the communications process: is the consumer insight right?  Is the brief right?  Is the concept right?  Is the targeting right? How will we know if it is successful?  But the actual execution of the piece - especially a personalised mailing - can make all the difference. 

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve received two mailings using a very similar creative idea.  The first a Dine Around offer from Amex - every time I use my card to pay for a meal in selected restaurants I will be entered into a prize draw to win a holiday.  A good offer, but the execution let it down: a long, large envelope contained a much smaller folded piece, which it took me a moment to realise was supposed to be a napkin.  It was just a folded piece of card at first glance. 

Around about the same time I received a mailing from The Marketing Society about the annual Scottish dinner.  This was a standard size envelope, but contained a real paper napkin, overprinted with a call to action to book.  Excellent production values - putting the Amex piece to shame. And I wonder if it was that much more expensive to produce?