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The Customer Relationship Management of the Publishers- Begin from the Inspection and Management on the Reader Business Reply Card. | Updated at:2008 / 08 / 28 | |
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The Reader Business Reply Card is mostly disappointing.
Started from the puberty, I was infatuated with the POP songs as the same as the other young people, and I had bought many music cassettes one after another. Moreover, I was always very earnest filling in the Business Reply Card, which size was as small as post-it sticker, in the music cassettes, and I thought the Business Reply Card would be the only connection between me and the singer.
After my grown up, I found those Business Reply Cards were like a stone dropped into the sea, and were always one-sided wishes, so I stopped the habit. Especially when the CD taking the music market position instead for the cassettes, I found the CD package shell was obvious bigger, but the Business Reply Card was still in such small size. This was making me think those music recorders had no hard intention, they were not really caring about us, who bought their CD, and I would not willing to fill in anymore.
The experience of buying music cassettes and filling in the Business Reply Cards is happened again on my plenty books buying afterward. From my third grade of the University, I have formed a habit on book buying, and that was just the time which the Taiwan publication quantity was rising largely. I had spent over six figures money on books every year; this amount could be very far from the average purchasing power of the Taiwan book buying population.
When I was just a student, without any relationship in publishing circles, I was also very sincere to fill in the Reader Business Reply Card in the end of the book after I bought it. I was trying to tell the publisher which parts of the book I didn’t like, and what kind books that I wanted the publisher could be list on the nest publishing. (Were there suggestion column in the Business Reply Card?) I was silly believing some of my wishes would be fulfilled by the Reader Business Reply Card. (For example, make some authors’ works been published.) Finally, after filling in most Business Reply Card of the big or small publishers in Taiwan, I had only received one to another book advertisement catalogues to ask me to buy more. I would be the super VIP in the other industry, but in the Publishing industry, I was treated as a stranger, just like a passing by traveler for just buying one book a year.
The bad design on questionnaire
Looking from the social sciences research's aspect, the most publishers’ questionnaire on the Reader Business Reply Card is very bad. Speaking to the collection of the readers’ basic information, the questionnaire form is crude, specially the professional fence, it only copies the job classification of the social professional meter. There are just only manufacturing industry, service industry, the trade, the SOHO, the student, the housekeeper, unemployed, the armed forces Catholicism and others for the professional status on many Reader Business Reply Cards. Can this professional fence's design really interpret out the reader's status?
The different type's books should use the different Reader Business Reply Questionnaire, especially in inquiring the reader’s occupation/business and the reason of purchasing the book part. For example, the novel and the design books, both have different key points to their target reader groups basically. So the Reader Business Reply Card should focus on the status information collection of the key group or target group; such as the Reader Business Reply card of the design books should classify more precisely on the architect, the designer, the related branch of the students/ teachers, etc.
Moreover, there are few publishers will provide the incentive to encourage the readers to fill in the Reader Business Reply Card, (such as the monthly lucky draw, presenting the new books of the month as a gift). Most publishers’ Reader Business Reply Cards are just a serve as a specimen, many publishers are even only providing a page to rip by the reader’ own, and then the reader fills in the card, stamping, and mailing away finally. This is almost a transformation warning to the readers, sending back the Business Reply Card are such so trouble, it would be good do not sending them back.
The publisher often neglects the voices from their customer.
Therefore, when the publishers complain they do not know what kinds of the books that their readers want to read, so they do not know what should be published and sell to their readers; I think those publishers who do not face up the Reader Business Reply Card well; they don’t have the qualifications to complain the market. Because, these people have not planned to listen attentively the reader's aspiration and the demand simply, no need to say they would collect and manage the statistics of the representative market voices by the scientific methods.
I often think about when the publishers face to their readers (the customer, their feeding off parents), whether do they know what are these people looking like after all? What issues do they care about? What books do they want to read? What kinds of life they are living? How much money do they earn? How much money do they have to buy books? How much time do they have to read the books?
When the publication quantity is getting bigger and bigger, the rate of returning books is also getting higher and higher, the publishers also pushes out the responsibility to the downstream retailers and the non-buying books readers; is anybody thinking earnestly to understand their readers’ thoughts, to care about their reading demand so they could publish the books which their readers want to read?
Manage the customer relationship by the Reader Business Reply Card.
Actually, from the design, collection and the data compilation analysis of the one small piece of the Reader Business Reply Card, we could see out whether the publishers look highly to their market, or understand the demand of their customers. Do they take the mission to satisfy their customers’ demand on their own, or treat their customer as a fool who deserves taking out the money to buy books?
For example, the Reader Business Reply Card would be set up the question on readers how much the money (salary) they earn a year, and how much money the reader spent on buying books a year, but it is seldom to further inquire about how much money they spend a year on publisher’ publications itself or the same type books of the bought book.
The first two questions are the obsolete social and economic status analysis that distinguishes the reader's social position by the income. However, the rich man does not certain to buy many book, and not necessarily many, and the non-rich man does not buy less books; it is a mixed consuming time now, no one gets shopping by their own status. If we can add the percentage of the book purchasing amount comparing with the income/ the disposable income has not bought book not necessarily few, this is raises mixed crops expense the time, nobody little darling observes own identity shopping. If can join the income/to be possible the disposable income, (especially the proportion of purchasing amount of oneself publications), it may judge whether the said reader belongs to the severely reader or not.
The severely readers are very possible to buy the sole type of the publications, it is possible that your publications type of your publisher is coped with them, so they have bought a lot of sole publications of the one publisher. For such heavyweight reader, the publisher should draw his readers’ centripetal force over to their side by E-mailing or even sending a gift over, if this publisher received the Reader Business Reply Card back. However, I had filled in many Reader Business Reply Cards of the publishers, and my e-mail is only integrated by one publisher, which sends me its subjective advertising e-paper regularly. In fact, I have seldom to see more publishers to use earnestly the e-mail information of the Reader Business Reply Card, to establish the reader society and maintain the customer relation.
In this network society, although the various publishers already had their own blogs to recommend the new book to their cyber pals, even invites people broadly to join the first reading activities before official publishing and so on. However, the consciousness of managing the customer relationship generally by network is still weak for the publishers. Such as the E-mail list which is collected from the fore-mentioned Reader Business Reply Cards, there are very little publishers establish the various societies by the different status and interests which are showed on the Reader Business Reply Card, and manage these readers by e-papers contact; they also seldom inquire their readers, whether they have individual Blogs (even to say they have visited them.)
I believe that the good e-paper with good Blog, complimentary gifts and special preferential activities providing non-periodically (the publishers can initiatively inform the readers which bookstores have been holding the preferential book purchasing activities, or the author sign gathering currently, etc); all these incentives in the e-paper would not be rejected by the readers. (The worst e-paper is some kind with whole advertisement.)
Customer Relationship Management: how to uncover the severely readers and establish the society.
Besides the severely readers are buying more books than the common readers, they are the opinion leaders or the jobholders in some domain; for example, the architects / designers are possibly purchase the massive architectures / design books, and the high level managers of the enterprises could purchase massive business management books. These people themselves are the potential spokesmen of the relative books; it will be very pity if the publishers cannot seize these customers’ information by the Reader Business Card and manage the customer relationship deeply.
The common question of the publishers is often mixing the common passengers with the frequent customers, and they treat these two kinds of people in the same way. It seems having no different to the most publishers between the customer buying one book occasionally and the frequent customer buying their publications. Someone maybe say because the book was sold out by the bookstore, so the publishers could not contact the readers’ information directly, and seldom thinking about there is always a Reader Business Reply Card in each book, which could help to collect the readers’ information. (The low replying of the Reader Business Reply Card is because of the not good design of the Business Reply Card, and lacking of the incentive and the publishers should try some ways to promote the replying rate.) Even the reason is caused from the bookstores, cannot the publishers ask back to the bookstores to provide the customer data analysis when the chain-bookstores start to change the sell ties and charge the displaying fees; especially the network bookstores, all their customer data analysis is acquired from the computer running program reports, it is only the willing concern, and never cannot to achieve. If the publishers cannot be willing aggressive to grasp the market need and realize the constitution appearance of their own reader group, it is always gambling in publishing.
Enhance the rate of card replying, and process the management of information bank.
If the publisher is willing to amend their Reader Business Reply Card, which is followed for years, and already not fitting in with the current social needs, and to design again, for more speech space to readers(open style questionnaire), more information collecting on the internet society management using,(for example, the E-mail, the Blog), and to provide more complimentary gifts and special preferential activities (like the regular draw on book present, the special gift, the book purchasing gift coupon, the admission of the special activities, the movie tickets, etc.) to attract the reader filling in the Reader Business Reply Card, so that the rate of replying can be raised up.
In fact, the recycling of the Reader Business Reply Card is not necessary using mailing, the fax or the internet version, (inviting the readers to connect with the website to fill up the information), will help you to reduce the troubles of the reader’s reply as far as possible but increase the motive of filling in, this must be able to rise up the willing to fill in the card.
After having the reader information, the publishers can judge the importance of the readers (the profit earning contribution, the ability of actual book purchasing and the influence of book spreading) in accordance with the status variable, such as book purchasing type, incomes, the book purchasing expense and so on, and they can set the marketing strategy for different societies and establish closer connection with their readers. For example, if a publisher published one book which had ever been recommended/ expected on the Reader Business Reply Card, the publisher can find out the reader information by the data bank, and reply to the reader of the new releasing news of the book, even to present the book free as an appreciation, etc. Though this looks not like worthy of mentioning, but it is a method promoting the reader loyalties largely actually
So long as paying more intention on the Reader Business Reply Card, it must helps the publishers to collect the most whole information of the readers, so that the publishers can manage well the customer relationship, and this must become the powerful resources of book selling.
Author:Wang Chien-Ren |
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