How to Squeeze More From Your Customer Data: Think ‘Swiffer’

Flip your Swiffer sheet / Leverage your customer data

We’re big ‘Swifferers’ in my house – 2 kids + 2 dogs + hardwood floors = high-frequency swiffage.  Our Swiffer is constantly ready for action, loaded with its special picker-upper sheet.  When you Swiffer as much as we do, you go through a lot of those sheets.  This is a source of some irritation for me – have you noticed how expensive those Swiffer sheets are?  I mean, what are they made of – cashmere?  (even the non-brand ones are no bargain…)

That being said, not too long ago (as I completed a routine swiff of the house), I had a revelation about those dang sheets that made a little light bulb appear above my head.   Are you sitting down?

– When your Swiffer sheet is full, you can flip it over and use the other side! No, really.  It’s true.  Happy days are here again!

As you may have already calculated, this nifty tactic gave me a 100% lift in my Return on Swiffer, or, alternatively, cut my Cost per Swiffer in half.  What happened is I simply (finally!) recognized an opportunity to optimize use of a valuable asset.

This sounds a lot like what we do with customer database marketing.  It’s a bedrock axiom in direct marketing that customers – and the data you capture and store about those customers – are your most valuable asset.  That’s because typically “retention ROI” is so much higher than “acquisition ROI” – in other words, it’s a lot more profitable to market to an existing customer than to acquire a new customer.  In fact, according to this Forrester report, “The cost of acquiring a new customer can be five to eight times more than retaining and generating the same revenue from satisfying current customers.”

With an ever expanding menu of marketing channels, it can be tempting to focus inordinate attention on the latest shiny gizmo or bells and whistles in pursuit of new customers.  But, especially nowadays with tightening budgets and increasing accountability to produce concrete bottom-line results, retention marketing deserves a top priority rating.

Have you had a “flip the Swiffer sheet” eye-opener regarding customer marketing?   Are you squeezing all the juice you can from your customer data and touchpoints across different channels?  Contact us – we can help.