Multi-Channel Messaging Done Right

Enlightened customer messaging builds long-term relationships, not instant cash.

By George Linkletter

If you listen to some of more avid promoters of the transpromo concept, you’d think that sending a regular message to an existing customer without including one or more paid advertisements from a third party amounts to a business sin.

After all, in this age of omnipresent Google ads, how could any organization possibly forego the chance to maximize revenue from each and every customer contact?

Well, how about because customers, partners and donors have a lifetime value and ought not to be treated like an ATM whose sole function is to spew forth cash?

One organization that gets the importance of maintaining an ongoing relationship via multi-channel messaging is the American Red Cross. Its effort to connect with blood donors is comprehensive and serves to create a secure bond. It is a program that works and other organizations could adopt.

Truth be told, the Red Cross faces the same challenge that just about every organization does: What is the best way to hang on to an existing customer?

The Value of Existing Customers
For the Red Cross, and the patients who need blood, the situation is absolutely critical.  Only about five percent of eligible adults in the United States donate blood. Convincing non-donors to donate is a huge hurdle. Here in Connecticut, our supply of blood donations does not meet our demand. Our small state is a net importer of blood. So it is absolutely critical to maintain donations from a very small core of existing donors.

Once you sign up to donate blood, you enter into a system that reminds you of both the appointment and the urgent need you are meeting. You will receive a full-color post card reminder about two weeks in advance of your appointment. The card is fully personalized with the date, time and location of your appointment to donate. At my house it goes on the refrigerator.

About a week prior to the donation, you’ll also receive an e-mail reminder listing the same data. And the night before your donation, you’ll receive an automated outbound telephone call reiterating the information again. The message will also request that you call an 800 number if you are unable to make the appointment so you can reschedule for another day.

Lastly, if you happen to live anywhere near where the donation occurs, which is frequently at a church or community center, you’ll see lawn signs near the road promoting the blood drive for about a week prior to the event. That’s three reminder contacts, using three different channels, and possibly the signs, as well.

When you arrive to give blood you are warmly greeted by a volunteer who may be your neighbor and you may know personally. The actual donation of blood is very brief. In my case it takes less than eight minutes. Afterwards, you get a free snack and something to drink, can enter a raffle for a premium gift, and often receive another free gift, such as a coupon for a free pound of coffee from Dunkin Donuts or a discounted meal at a restaurant chain.

Continuing Donations
You will also be asked if you’d like to sign up for the next blood drive. If you do, you get your choice of times. You are permitted to donate as frequently as six times a year. In my small town, the blood drives are held three times a year, so that’s my schedule, too.  And you’ll get a small sticker that you can wear to announce that you just gave blood, which helps remind your friends and others of the need.

The Red Cross also maintains a frequent donor program. This encourages continued donations over time and can be used to help trigger immediate donations when supplies are especially short. I’ve already been rewarded for my donations with a baseball cap.

No doubt the Red Cross could take advantage of the myriad third-party advertising opportunities that occur with each of these sequential contacts. But for now they don’t.  They stick to their knitting and forego the added revenue.

It may be that the Red Cross will ultimately succumb to the need for the added revenue.  After all, all organizations today need more money and advertisements are all around us. You can’t even watch a baseball game on TV without being assaulted by the branding messages located on the wall behind the batter.

Still, it is reassuring to know that, at least for now, the Red Cross values its relationship with its donors enough to keep its messaging pure and focused on the important task at hand.

Comments? Contact georgelinkletter@charter.net.