Be Careful Before You Pull the Trigger
At DMA09 earlier this week, Greg Holzwarth, senior vice president/managing director of customer information at Sun Trust Bank discussed how his company is building automated marketing campaigns around behavior-based triggers.
It’s obviously a sound idea, but one with a big hitch—typically, you can’t let the customer know you’re contacting them because of a specific behavior.
For example, said Holzwarth, a customer might suddenly discontinue direct deposit. It’s a natural trigger for either representative at either a local branch or a centralized call center to contact a customer about.
But, it probably isn’t in the bank’s best interest to tell the customer that’s why they’re being contacted, because it sends off a major “big brother” vibe. No one wants to feel like they’re being tracked.
So, the customer service rep has the task of sounding out the customer about both the behavior and why the behavior occurred. Did they simply switch to another job in the same city? Or are they relocating because they’re joining a new company? Are they retiring? Were they laid off? Fired? Or are they simply changing banks?
Where do you stand on behavioral targeting? An interesting point/counterpoint is in the current issue of Chief Marketer magazine. What’s your opinion?
