July 24, 1995
"Building the Customer Relationship: Engaging In Direct Ministry"
by Kenneth M. Culpepper
DM News, July 24, 1998
Direct ministering is direct marketing!
An organization that provides Christian
products and services of ministry value to it's customers should be able
to substitute
ministering for marketing and become an even better provider. And when an
organization
begins to directly minister to individuals, it engages in a spiritual bonding
with its customers.
Through the technology of the database, an organization can determine
which of their
products and services are of ministry value to a customer before an offer
is extended. This
saves the organization postage and promotional costs, enhances revenue,
heightens ministry
perceptions, and improves business processes. However, the most powerful
impact in building
this relationship for both the customer and the organization is the engagement
in ministry
over the customer's lifetime.
This relationship is of the utmost importance to the organization because
most
providers of Christian products and services struggle with the right balance
between being a
business and being a ministry. Engaging in direct ministry relationships
with customers
creates the proper balance between business and ministry and allows for
the organization to
be both. In addition, over the customer's lifetime, the organization experiences
results of its
direct ministry in its customer's lives. This is something most Christian
organizations do not
get to experience, having to rely only on estimates through second and third
party reporting.
Distinguishing an Organization from the Others
The first step to engaging in direct ministry with customers is learning
to distinguish
marketing from selling. And since ministering can be substituted for marketing
to make the
organization a better provider of Christian products and services, the organization
must make
sure that its idea of marketing is not the same thing as selling.
Philip Kotler, of Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern
University,
states it this way, "Marketing is meeting needs profitably. Selling
is getting someone to
purchase your product, not necessarily meeting their needs. Marketing starts
long before there
is a product to sell and continues after the product has been bought. The
stronger your
marketing, the less you have to do in the way of selling."
Most organizations that are providers of Christian products and services,
even if they
are non-profit, have not made this distinction. If the focus has been on
selling, rather than
marketing, ministering is confined to a minimum.
The focus on selling has become a daily by-product of the business process.
This is
understandable because sales are what drive most any organization. Usually,
they are the
measuring stick for growth, goal achievement and success and are tied directly
to reaching
sales goals, staying within budget and maintaining cash flow. The financial
reports come in
periodically from all transaction systems to analyze which parts of the
organization are
meeting their sales forecasts. These sales are then compared to each part
of the organization's
costs for an evaluation of their bottom line according to budget.
Some organizations collect transactional data to do sales analysis on
their inventory,
retail locations and vendors within their database. Others are even using
transactional data to
determine when to extend offers to customers based upon their recency, frequency
and
monetary values (RFM Values). However, here is where most organizations
stop. To go to the
next level and engage in direct ministry with customers, an organization
must migrate from
the transaction to the relationship. This requires an organization's commitment
to continuous
testing and perpetual learning about not only what presently ministers to
customers, but what
will continue to minister to them in their constantly changing lives.
In the future, all organizations that are providers of Christian products
and services
will have to engage in direct ministry with their customers to survive.
These three factors will
make it necessary for an organization to migrate from transactions to relationships:
1) Technological advancement has made it affordable for any organization to
minister/market to customers on an individual basis. If an organization does not
make the time and effort to engage in direct ministry with its customers, another
organization will.
2) Engagement in direct ministry in anyone's life is extremely personal, much more
personal than other individualized marketing products like the clothing you wear,
the food you like to eat, the media you consume and even the charities that you
choose to support. Thus, the organization that figures out how to engage in direct
ministry with its customers first, and commits to perpetually learning about each
customer's changing life, will become extremely difficult to compete with.
3) Our society is in the process of changing from information-based to knowledge-
based. The businesses that truly understand the value of this change will strive to
become knowledge businesses. Knowledge businesses will be providers of
knowledge-based products and services that allow customers to be lifelong
learners. They will be providers of products and services that educate while serving
customers. Customers will come to expect this learning relationship in all products
and services.
To be a provider of Christian knowledge-based products and services,
an organization
must transform into a knowledge business. For that organization to become
a knowledge
business, it must be able to use its entire information base to acquire
knowledge about what
ministers to each customer. After all, ministry products and services are
what it provides. This
will evolve into a perpetual learning process between the customer and the
organization. The
customer continues to learn from the knowledge-based products and services,
and the
organization continues to learn from the customer.
A Tool that Teaches an Organization How to Learn
For an organization to engage in direct ministry, it must create a customer
ministry
profile. A customer ministry profile is created from information that is
converted into a
knowledge base to predict what is of ministry value to the customer. It
contains some of the
following information: customer file (name, address, phone, account number,
etc.), social
issues, demographic/geographic, psychographic, purchase history, promotional
response
history, RFM Values, product usage, lifestage events, data overlays, background,
source of
acquisition and transaction, customer service, qualitative surveys to fill
in data gaps,
believable benefits by product categories and event attendance history.
A customer ministry profile is more than a segmentation device that places
the
customer into a group of qualified buyers. It is a strategic tool that equips
an organization to
learn each customer's present and future ministry needs by not focusing
entirely on their
similarities, but also their differences. It will teach an organization
to customize every product
or service it offers to its customers. The need for this is becoming more
evident.
For example, someone who is a single parent has different ministry needs
than those
of a married mother of three children. The mother of three children has
different ministry
needs than her husband, even though he is the father of the same three children.
Married
"empty nesters" have different ministry needs than married couples
around their same age that
never had any children; and divorcees will have different ministry needs
than "unmarrieds,"
even though both are single.
The use of customer ministry profiles teaches "learning methodologies"
about
customer behavior. These "learning methodologies" are successful
because they use actual
customer behavior to predict future behavior.
For example, a learning methodology reports that product category "x"
shows a strong
average profit for the behavior segment of customers that are "married"
and "age 50 plus." In
fact, the promotion history of product category "x" shows high
response rates for this
behavior segment from ages 50 to 90. This is great for the organization.
It's offers for the
profitable product category "x" are being responded to by this
behavior segment of its
customer ministry profile. The organization has reaped several benefits
from this knowledge
base:
1) It is decreasing costs by reducing its net offerings for this product category to only
the customers of this behavior segment
2) It is increasing revenue by increases in response rates multiplied by the average
order
3) It is reducing costs by decreasing the number of list rental acquisitions by only
purchasing prospects that fit the customer ministry profile of this behavior segment
4) It is increasing revenue by an increase in average orders multiplied by the number
of orders
5) It is increasing revenue from its improved business processes because it is able to
extend additional offers with the dollars saved from the reduction in net offerings
6) Its ministry perception is heightened because it is reaching the right people, with
the right offers, at the right time
After closer analysis of product category "x," another learning
methodology is reporting
that when these customers' spouses die, they discontinue its use. This is
important to
the organization for two reasons:
1) It identifies that product category "x" is no longer of benefit to this behavior
segment when one of the married couple is deceased. It further teaches that this
product category no longer ministers to the survivor.
2) It identifies a new ministering opportunity for the organization. A new ministry
segment for the survivors.
If the organization and survivors have engaged in direct ministry, they
each will be
learning through this lifestage event together. The organization will be
learning how to
minister to the survivors by teaching them how to continue in this stage
of life without their
spouses. The survivors will be learning how to continue in this stage of
their lives with the
aid of products and services from the organization which they had input
in developing.
The Unique and Complementary Benefit
Some providers of Christian products and services will still choose not
to engage in
direct ministry with their customers and will cling to what Peter F. Drucker
calls "a theory of
business that has become obsolete." These are organizations that have
already met their
business goals and have become very successful by operating in the old theory
of business,
and are resistant to change. The fear of changing a once successful theory
of business, even if
profitability is declining, will keep some organizations from engaging in
direct ministry with
its customers.
The main opposition to direct ministering is that many of these organizations
have
traditionally marketed their products and services through denominational
groups, churches,
mass audiences and recently through niche markets. The strategy to engage
in direct ministry
with customers has been and will be belittled by those claiming that "it
is attempting to
become all things to all people."
Becoming all things to all people is exactly what engaging in direct
ministry with
customers is all about. It requires planning, financial resources and a
change in the current
way of doing business in most organizations. However, it will ultimately
determine how
successful your organization will be, as a business, and as a ministry.
Ken Culpepper is president of Integrated Marketing Solutions, Inc., a
knowledge-base marketing firm that
integrates tactical marketing strategy with management of multiple contacts
of businesses to their customers, prospects and channel customers. IMS incorporates
marketing business planning, long-term corporate ROI strategies, and marries
knowledge-based marketing with e-commerce strategy and systems. IMS has
offices in Atlanta, GA (770) 390-9199 and Nashville, TN (615) 782-0461.
(Web: migmar.com/ims)