A new year always carries with it the promise of new opportunities, resolutions, and growth. For us here at VML, this couldn’t be more applicable as 2024 brings the transition of two agencies to one.

Two industry greats; J. Walter Thompson and Lester Wunderman, may not be above our doors anymore, but remain integral to our heritage and values. This is particularly exciting for our CRM expertise as we bring the most innovative CRM capability in the industry to our clients under the VML banner. So, what better time to reflect on Lester Wunderman’s influence on modern-day CRM?

In many ways today’s CRM has transformed beyond recognition from Lester Wunderman’s heyday. The number of marketing touchpoints has increased ten-fold in the last decade alone. The explosion of new channels, data, marketing technology and automation has made customer journeys faster, more complex and more demanding, yet so much more personalised and powerful. In 2024, we are truly in a new era of connected customer experiences, increasingly influenced by AI and one in which CRM expertise will be invaluable.

Yet Lester Wunderman’s book Being Direct contains insights that, though it was published almost thirty years ago, seem more relevant than ever. So, while we work to navigate brands into the future, we also keep with us the evergreen wisdom of our founders. The channels and touchpoints have evolved of course, but the principles that underpin his work still ring true for customer communications today. Whether we’re targeting customers on their doorsteps, in their inboxes, on digital channels or elsewhere on what Lester Wunderman calls 'the library with the largest exposure in the world: the internet', his guidance is ever relevant.

So, allow us for a moment to dive into the archives and share with you Lester Wunderman’s ‘Nineteen Things All Successful Direct Marketing Companies Should Know’, essential advice that any CRM expert can draw from.

‘Nineteen Things All Successful Direct Marketing Companies Should Know’

It’s not an ad with a coupon; it’s not a commercial with a toll-free number; it’s not a mailing, phone call, a promotion, a database, or a Web site. It’s a commitment to getting and keeping valuable customers.

The product must create value for each of its consumers. It must satisfy consumers’ unique differences, not their commonalities. The call of the Industrial Revolution was manufacturers saying, “This is what I make, don’t you want it?” The call of the Information Age is consumers asking, “This is what I need, won’t you make it?”

Advertising must be as relevant to each consumer as the product or service is. General advertising and more targeted direct marketing must both be part of a holistic communication strategy.

The most dangerous question a prospect or customer asks is “Why should I?” And he may ask it more than once — but never of you. The product and its communication stream must continue to provide him or her with both rational and emotional answers.

Favorable consumer attitudes go only part of the way to creating sales. It’s also the consumer’s accountable actions such as inquiries, product trials, purchases, and repurchases that create profits.

The results of advertising are increasingly measurable; they must now become accountable. Advertising can’t be just a contribution to goodwill — it must become an investment in profits.

Customers have to know and feel the brand as an experience that serves their individual needs. It has to be a total and ongoing immersion in satisfaction that includes everything from packaging to point of purchase, repurchase and after-sale service and communications.

Relationships continue to grow — encounters do not. The better the buyer-seller relationship, the greater the profit.

One automobile dealer calculated that a lifetime of cars sold to one customer would be worth $332,000. How much should a marketer spend to create such a loyal lifetime customer for a given product or service?

“Prospects” are consumers who are able, ready, and willing to buy; “suspects” are merely eligible to do so. Communicating with prospects reduces the cost of sales; communicating with suspects raises the cost of advertising.

Measurable results from media, not the number of exposures, are what counts. Measurements such as “reach” and “frequency” are out of date. Only “contacts” can begin relationships.

Be there for your customers — be their database and source of information and service through as many channels of communication as possible. They can’t tell you what they need unless they can reach you.

Listen to consumers rather than talk at them. Let them “advertise” their individual needs. They’ll be grateful for your responsiveness. Convert one-way advertising to two-way information sharing.

The answer “Not now” is as dangerous to advertising as “Not this.” Only consumers know when they are ready to buy and they will tell you if you ask them in the right way.

A “curriculum” is a learning system that teaches one “bit” of information at a time. Each advertising message (bit) can build on the learning of the previous one. It can teach consumers why your product is superior and why they should buy it.

Promotions sell product trials — but not ongoing brand loyalty. They may also attract the wrong customers, who may never become loyal. The right customers must be acquired and persuaded to want what the product does and not what the promotion offers. The right customers may in fact be your competitors’ best customers.

“Totally satisfied” customers are least likely to fall away. Those who are merely “satisfied” may fall away without warning. To build ongoing relationships, rewards for good customers should be tenure-based (on previous purchases, usage behavior, and length of relationship). Rewarding “tenure” can prevent competitors from “conquesting” your best customers.

Spend more on the good customers you have. Ninety percent of most companies’ profits come from repeat customers. It costs six to ten times as much to get a new customer as to keep an old one.

Data are an expense — knowledge is a bargain. Collect only data that can become information, which, in turn, can become knowledge. Only knowledge can build on success and minimize failure. A company is no better than what it knows.

As an agency we know that moving with the times is vital, and staying at the cutting edge of innovation is always front-of-mind in our work.

But as Lester Wunderman’s work shows us, our heritage is of almost equal importance, and it is a resource we constantly draw from.

Our transition to VML brings with it the merging of several streams of industry heritage, providing us with an unmatched archive of inspiration. It also brings with it a great privilege; the opportunity to build on that heritage, and make it our own.

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