Gap Analysis
Gap Analysis is the art of using the sales history within your axis diplomat system to identify gaps in your sales to your existing customers, and using that information to generate more accurately targeted marketing.
Gap Analysis allows you to identify customers that:
- bought a product, or a range of products, during a particular period of time
- didn’t buy a product, or a range of products, during a particular period of time
- bought a product, or a range of products, during one particular period of time but didn’t buy a different product, or a range of products, during a different period of time
If, for example, you sell both laser printers and laser printer consumables, you could identify all of those customers that have bought a laser printer in the last 18 months, but have not bought any consumables.
You can also narrow your selection down to a particular group of customers so that, depending on how your customer group codes are used, you could look, for example, specifically at your public sector customers.
This would allow you to carry out some very precise, targeted marketing to just those customers - perhaps with a special offer on laser printer consumables. Furthermore, because the marketing is only going to those who do not currently buy printer consumables, you are protecting your margins with those customers that do buy them, by not reducing prices across the board via a special offer.
Help Prevent Attrition on your Customer Accounts
Gap Analysis also helps you to identify customers that may be moving away from you.
Using the previous scenario, for example, you could identify those customers who have not bought laser printer consumables in the last six months but who were buying them in the 12 months leading up to that period.
Integration with Campaign Management
The real power of Gap Analysis comes with its integration with Campaign Management.
Having identified a set of customers, via Gap Analysis, you can automatically add those customers to a campaign. You can then easily generate mailshots, emailshots and conduct telemarketing campaigns to that set of customers, without having to re-identify that set of customers each time.
Continuing the laser printer example, you could create a campaign called “Printers but no Consumables”, identify those customers that have bought printers but not consumables and automatically add them as members of the campaign.
Using the standard facilities within Campaign Management, you can then send them a mailer, outlining a special offer on consumables. You could follow that up with an email equivalent and then use some telesales resource to start calling those customers to establish whether there is a demand.