For 7-8 years around the turn of the century I was a partner in a company that specialized in ‘relationship marketing’, about the time that term was being invented. Frederick Reichheld’s The Loyalty Effect was our bible of the day.

We made a nice bundle of cash telling major consumer-facing corporations that they could make an even bigger bundle of cash by doing two simple things — identifying their best customers and loving them tighter than a tick does a hound’s ear, and learning how to clone those customers.

Seemed like a no-brainer to us, and we always marveled at how well paid we were to be advising the obvious.

I suspect you can detect some of the seeds of my devotion to donor retention — surpassed only by Roger’s — from that experience.

So it was a blow to the gut when I read this item over the weekend. It was a study by Demand Metric/Influitive looking at business marketers’ use of what they termed ‘customer marketing’. Sadly, the survey results they reported on business marketers’ focus (or not) on existing customers was like reading these concepts had just been invented!

True, only 8% of marketers surveyed admitted to no use of customer marketing. But fully 47% said they either didn’t track results or revenue from such efforts, or considered their results minor. Either there’s still a fortune to made consulting to these doorknobs … or they’re hopeless dumber than. 55% did say customer marketing would become “far more important” in their future plans. Maybe there’s hope.

Respondents who saw the most revenue gain from such efforts indicated two metrics they most followed — renewal rate or churn, and/or customer referrals or references. Duh!

Never again will I assume the nonprofit sector to be more backward than the commercial world when it comes to recognizing the value of retention and donor/customer development.

In fact, truth be told, that company I worked in years ago peddling ‘relationship marketing’ stole all its ideas from lessons we had already learned as fundraisers. The firm I joined back in 1995 was founded by Rob Smith, one of Roger’s original fundraising partners.

Tom

P.S. As an aside, I was thrilled to see Roger’s Retention Fundraising at the top of my additional recommended titles when I searched Amazon for Reichheld’s book. A very fitting closing of the loop, I thought.