The document discusses the importance of building a customer preference centre for companies. It notes that with increasing digital channels, traditional marketing methods are ineffective. A customer preference centre allows customers to choose their preferred marketing communications. The document provides an overview of what a customer preference centre is, why companies should have one, key considerations in building one, challenges, and benefits. It emphasizes using customer data and preferences to improve marketing ROI and customer satisfaction.

1. October 2016
By Nirjhar Datta Chaudhuri
BUILDA
PREFERENCECENTRE
FORYOURCOMPANY
CUSTOMER

2. In today’s world, customers are no more simple names
and numbers on a database; they are the tangible
assets of any industry or product category. With digital
touch points increasingly getting adopted by customers,
traditional methods of single channel ‘spray and pray’
messaging is a thing of the past and is leading to a
huge drop off of customers from enterprise marketing
endeavours. With the large number of channels and
options available today, acknowledging what a
customer wants to listen to can be the game changer in
this new era- this is where a Customer Marketing
Preference Centre will play a critical role.

3. Introduction
In 2015, an average user received 208 emails per day, out of which 98 were
consumer emails which were marketing messages and in the mobile marketing
domain. On the other hand, an average a person received 67 SMSes per day out
of which 41 are marketing ones. Given the large amount of messages a customer
is exposed to in a day, it becomes critical to send the right message in the right
manner to a customer that he/she would prefer.
With 43% of SMS responses occurring in the first 15 minutes, putting forward
the right content in the right manner, at the right time can be the deciding
factor for any marketing communication. Also, for some industries email and
mobile marketing opt-out rates have dramatically risen to 1% and 8.5%
respectively and are still bound to increase further. Given this scenario the need
for an enterprise-wide Customer Preference Centre can become a huge
competitive advantage.
What is a Customer Preference Centre?
A Customer Preference Centre is a marketing best practice where marketing
messaging platforms of all touch points of an enterprise are brought under
one umbrella, with dedicated governance commitment to the customer to
choose their own preferences with regards to marketing communications
they want to receive.
Home Depot has an end to end Preference Centre that
takes into consideration customer profiles and interests

4. Why a Customer Preference Centre?
1. Clarity amidst the noise - As mentioned before the sheer volume of
marketing messages has increased to such an extent that the message ‘blind
spot’ has taken centre stage now. Customer Preference Centres aim to nullify
that effect itself.
2. Personalisation - It is the age of the customer, unless we address each
customer individually and customise personalisation rules to engage, the rate of
decay of customer engagement will increase manifold even before the
enterprise and marketers recognise it.
3. Customer Preference Profiles - One of the main uses of a Preference Centre
is to understand what our customers prefer, what are their mind sets and how
do we tap into them in a focused and segmented manner to gain maximum
leverage on our marketing endeavours.
4. Customer Journey and Preference Optimisation - Every product or brand of
an enterprise has a journey which a customer has to go through from the
moment he or she is qualified as a potential prospect to becoming a customer
and turning into an avid user and advocate. Customer Preference Centres help
us optimise this journey which benefits both the customer and the company.
5. Higher ROI - A Customer Preference Centre may entail significant time and
monetary resource to get it up and running, but once fully functional can
optimise marketing investments significantly while improving the customer
engagement.
Better Holistic
Customer Experience
Our Aim Our Starting Points Our Output
A Unified Data Repository
for all Businesses
Data Merging
and Enrichment
Robust
Customer
Knowledge
Standardised
Communication
Systems

5. Key Success Factors
1. Customer Data - Customer data and tagged-in preferences is a key
pre-requisite of the Preference Centre. A multitude of insights with regards to
customers’ preferences are hidden in the current data itself and may be
leveraged to form a robust marketing communications plan.
2. Respecting Customers’ Preferences - There has to be commitment from all
relevant stakeholders within an enterprise – Sales, Customer service, Marketing
departments to uphold the promises made when taking customers’ preferences
and being in touch with them on their terms and request.
3. Adoption of Preference Centre - Both on the company side as well as at the
customers’ end, adoption and business impact will be maximum because
implementation on just a select set of customers will not be worthwhile for the
initiative. Therefore, it has to be a well thought through initiative with all the
push and pull issues factored in the roll-out plan.
4. Enabling Technology Support - A proper technology backend has to be put
in place to manage the centre properly, straight from taking preferences from
the customer, to last mile enablement.

6. The Roadblocks
Prerequisites: A Single Data System
Even though the need for a Customer Preference Centre is evident and presents a
strong business case for itself, many enterprises face a number of hurdles in
implementing them. Primary among these reasons is the fact that empowering or
giving complete or partial control of marketing communications to the end
customer may not always be in tandem with the business objectives of the
enterprise. Among other reasons is the fact that given the variety of customers
and customer preferences it becomes a tedious and a complex activity to create
an enterprise wide implementation of a Preference Centre that will be completely
adept to the adoption of being completely customer obsessed with regards to its
marketing communications and engagement.
In the following section, we detail out how to conceptualise a Customer
Preference Centre and reduce the hurdles to become a completely customer
centred engagement platform.
Given the large amount of information already available in customer database
systems, it becomes imperative to collate and construct a customer single view
that can give a holistic look into who is the customer and what their preferences
are. This Single Customer Preference Data System will be the key element that
can help us deliver superior customer experiences by enabling proper customer
knowledge and a standardised communications framework across businesses.

7. Ramping Up
While a Single Customer Data base may be the starting point to a successful
Preference Centre, it is a long journey to take it from there to becoming a holistic
system. One must constantly strive towards excellence as you can see below and
there is a very thin line dividing a ‘need to have’ and a ‘good to have’ system.
1. Constant Preference Profile Enhancement: Customer information and
enrichment should be a continuously improving exercise to understand and
capture customer preferences more deeply.
2. Right opt-in/opt-out Information: While it may be easy to think this a
hygiene, the more meaningful we make this in terms of preferences and in
terms of manner better the system will be. There needs to be an enterprise
alignment of what is opt-in and opt-out and how to enable it.
3. Company-wide Cross Channel Deployment: As mentioned earlier this
should not be a single project in isolation - it has to be slowly adopted
enterprise wide encompassing all marketing communication channels if the
company aims to achieve any significant outcomes and this needs to be
adopted across business units too.
Honda Power Sports division used the Product Level factor
into very good use to target their engaged audience

8. Customer Preference Centre: Framework
Given the complexity of any business environment as well as corresponding
customer mindsets with respect to channel preferences, it becomes very
important to define the framework of a Customer Preference Centre and the
various components that need to be considered under them. Here are a few
examples of how many best-in-class enterprises have gone about adopting it:
1. Product Driven: In enterprises that have products across a number of price
points, value-tiering and features, one should take into consideration that,
while cross and up selling are important, it is also vital that all customers may
not be willing right away to consider the entire portfolio of products. Hence,
letting customers decide their product level preferences is important at the
beginning itself.
2. Channel Driven: Every channel and their corresponding audience profile are
very different in terms of their frequency of usage, adoption and response.
Hence, one of the first criteria a business should consider is the different
channels they may want to address.
Dun and Bradstreet took into consideration each channel
given to their target group
Contact Preferences:
Unsubscribe from all future marketing emails
(You will still receive service-related emails)
Subscribe to marketing emails.
How else can Dun & Bradstreet communicate with you?
*Message and data rates may apply.
Business Phone Yes No
Mobile Phone Yes No
Postal Mail Yes No
Fax Yes No
Mobile Text Message* Yes No

9. 3. Audience Driven: One of the other primary criteria a Customer Preference
Centre should consider is the type of audience they are catering to. While it
may suffice to progressively build up a customer profile, it may also be useful to
take in customer interests at the start itself, as you will see in the example
about Home Depot above.
4. Content Driven: Many enterprises take into consideration the type of
content they want their customers or users to see. Given the variety of products
and services that many companies have, segregating them into proper stacks or
needs, would help customers relate more to each stack or need.
5. Timing Driven: For enterprises like Fab (See figure) among many other
retailers, timing of marketing communications is critical to customer footfalls.
Given this complexity, it can be simply mapped to as much details as timing
during the day or week as well too.
Fab has given control to its customers to define their
preferred content and timings

10. 6. Geography driven: Enterprises such as FedEx and Virgin, given their
widespread presence across the globe, have considered the uniqueness of their
customers in different geographies and have introduced country/area specific
customer preference centres to address concerns at a local level than at a
global level.
7. Frequency Driven: Another important factor that is not considered, most
often, in terms of marketing communications - yet is arguably the most
important, is the frequency with which one reaches out to the target audience.
Being objective about the frequency rather than force fitting customers with the
right frequency marketing communications can yield better results and higher
ROI as well.
Time of Comms Geo
Channel
Product LevelFrequency
Audience
Content Type Hyatt
Honda
GM
FedEx
ChoiceOne
HomeDepot
ToysRUs
DNB
Fab
Virgin
5
4
3
2
1
0
Customer Preference Centre – Usage & Access
Conceptualising a Customer Preference Centre is the first step towards a new era
of pull-driven marketing rather than the traditional push-driven marketing. Given
the importance and complexity in terms of inter-business needs, intra-business
objectives, data confidentiality, and regulatory rules- among many other
challenges - it is vital to put in the right Control Policies to maintain a thriving
Customer Preference Centre. As described in the diagram here, a strong Control
Policy framework has to be put in place both in terms of access and usage if
different business units have to leverage this asset.

11. Customer Preference Centre - The Benefits
The benefits a Customer Preference Centre will bring in today’s age of the
customer and ever expanding digital channels and devices is quite huge:
1. Higher Customer Satisfaction: Being able to control and maintain the
contextual and permission-led marketing content that a customer would want
to receive is a stark move away from yesteryear’s mass marketing methods and
given the level of personalisation, it will surely reap its benefits – both by way
of customer engagement and business value.
2. Better ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment): Significant amount of cost
savings will come into play when companies adopt their marketing messages
through a Customer Preference Centre foundation.
3. Robust Understanding of customer preferences: A Customer Preference
Centre can become the key lever in truly being able to understand what the
customer prefers in terms of their conversations with the enterprise and what
drives them towards having meaningful and responsive engagement with the
company.
4. Enterprise or group Level Orchestration: Bringing the entire customer
marketing effort under one umbrella will help synchronise and integrate the
messaging from the entire enterprise on a seamless pathway and remove a
number of broken pathways.
5. Higher Customer Share of Wallet: Lastly, the most significant benefit is the
fact that, with the use of effective understanding of customer preference,
contextual and relevant marketing communications will ensure a highly
engaged customer which will lead to increased customers’ spends for the brand.
Data Type
Transactions,
profile
Social etc.
Operational
Aspects
Authority,
Legal,
Governance,
Maintanance
Purpose of
Access/
Usage
Frequency
of Access/
Usage
Access
Method
from Data
Repository
Control Policy Framework

12. Cequity’s business is helping companies enhance Customer Equity.
Founded in 2007 with the belief on customer equity being the only differentiator in
the next era of business, Cequity works with top management teams to create and
operate customer-centric strategies as a strategic asset.
Our work across clients, independent research and studies done by us to understand
customer value drivers, show a strong correlation between superior customer
experience and strong improvement in the bottom line.
Who we work with?
Our clients are typically bold, ambitious business leaders who seek to create a
customer intelligence led differentiation. They have the talent, the will and the
open-mindedness required to succeed. They are not satisfied with the status quo
and are looking to transform customer experience in their firms.
What we do?
We help companies acquire, retain and manage customers optimally. We help
managements define actionable customer strategies driven by data, analytics,
marketing technology and creative insights. We take it a step further by working
with management teams to implement and operate on these strategies to achieve
desired success.
How we do it?
Our elegant integration of multiple services as a service platform - strategy, data,
analytics, technology, campaign management, digital, customer relationship centres
and creative solutions; creates outstanding results for our clients. Our deep
experience as a consulting and operating partner to clients enables us to achieve
tangible business impact and success for them.
About Hansa Cequity

13. 403 & 404, B Wing,
4th Floor, Commercial Office Towers,
Kohinoor City Mall, Kirol Road, Off LBS Marg,
Kurla (W), Mumbai 400 070.
Email: info@cequitysolutions.com
http://www.hansacequity.com
Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Chicago.
Consulting I Data Management
Analytics & Insights I Campaign Management
Digital Experience I Customer Experience
Nirjhar Datta Chaudhuri
Nirjhar Datta Chaudhuri: Nirjhar Datta Chaudhuri is a Senior Marketing
Consultant with Hansa Cequity. He specialises in building customer
intelligent enterprises in the Auto, Airlines, Consumer Durables and
other related industries.