Cox Communications Engages Customers with Customized Rewards - PODi Case Study

Vertical Market: Other—Cable
Business Application: Direct Marketing/Loyalty/Traffic Generation

Business Objectives
Cox Communications is the third largest cable company in the United States with over six million subscribers. As an industry, cable companies experience great competition and a high rate of customer churn. To improve customer retention Cox Communications wanted to be proactive in engaging and rewarding its best customers.

It needed a direct marketing campaign that would:

• Recognize product bundle customers—those that receive TV, Internet and phone service through Cox
• Learn about and address any customer dissatisfaction
• Drive traffic at Cox Solutions Stores to increase opportunities for selling additional products

Results
Working with its marketing service provider, Paradise Design, a direct marketing campaign was developed that engaged bundle customers and encouraged them to visit a Cox Rewards microsite.

• 9.6 percent visit rate—7,362 recipients visited their personalized microsite via a Personalized URL or QR Code
• 8.8 percent response rate—6,796 recipients completed the online survey at the microsite and received their rewards book
• Cox Solutions Store educational classes were filled to capacity representing over 2,000 visitors—Five different stores in Orange County and Palos Verdes, CA, participated in the program. Each store held a monthly class with a maximum attendance of 36
• Cox identified and addressed customer concerns immediately

Campaign Architecture
Personalized postcards were sent to 77,000 Cox bundle customers offering a special reward for their loyalty. Recipients were directed to visit a personalized microsite which could be accessed via a Personalized URL or a QR Code. The majority of responses came in via the Personalized URL.

Once on the campaign site customers were asked a few questions regarding their satisfaction with Cox and their interest in other Cox services. A "Thank You" e-mail was delivered to customers immediately following survey completion. If the customer expressed an interest to learn more about selected Cox services they received an additional e-mail with that information.

Customers who filled out negative satisfaction ratings were called by a customer service representative within a few hours. This was a key part of the campaign as Cox had not previously had a systematic way to identify and respond to areas of customer dissatisfaction.

Two follow-up e-mails were sent to non-respondents—the first, four weeks after the postcard was mailed and the second after an additional three weeks.

Target Audience and Message
The target audience for this campaign was 77,000 Cox bundle customers. Cox wanted to maintain a strong relationship with these high-value customers, who have their cable, high-speed Internet and phone service through Cox. The personalized postcard and the campaign microsite expressed Cox’s appreciation for their business.

Offer
For the offer Cox wanted to provide customers with an item that they would keep throughout the year with Cox’s branding highly visible. They partnered with Entertainment Promotions to provide customized coupon books with over $600 in savings for local restaurants, merchants and services. The special Cox Rewards books had custom covers featuring the Cox logo and “Digi” mascot. The inside cover contained a letter from Cox’s marketing manager and the first couple of pages featured coupons for free On Demand movies and free education classes at participating Cox Solutions Stores. Two versions of the Cox Rewards books were created—one for Orange County, California and one for Palos Verdes, CA—to ensure recipients received coupons for establishments in their area.

Creative
The personalized postcard, e-mails, campaign microsite and Cox Rewards book had a consistent look and feel for a seamless customer experience. Each touch point incorporated Cox’s mascot in a fun and engaging manner that created instant brand recognition.

Key elements that made the design a success:

• Recipient’s name featured prominently on the front of the postcard
• Use of corporate mascot, logo and branding that made communications instantly recognizable
• Offer highlighted in copy and images
• Personalized URL and QR Code response mechanisms clearly displayed with instructions

Reasons for Success
Cox’s customer service personnel received many phone calls from customers thanking Cox for paying attention to them and providing the Cox Rewards book—an unexpected and highly-valued outcome of this campaign.

Best practices learned are:

• For continuous customer engagement use an offer with staying power. Cox not only provided a valuable incentive to drive response but gave its customers a gift that they would use throughout the year.
• Have a defined process in place for responding to customer feedback. If one of the goals of your campaign is to engage customers and gather their opinions on your products and services then you need to respond in a timely manner to requests for additional information or to negative comments. Failure to have this in place before the campaign is launched will lead to confusion among call center staff and/or sales personnel, and to greater customer frustration.

Source PODi
PODi is a global, member-supported not-for-profit organization. The PODi library consists of over 500 digital printing and marketing case studies from around the world.

© 2013, W. Caslon & Company. All rights reserved.