We are devout believers in the data driven market credo; 'why guess when you can know?' This means we keep a weather eye open for case studies and research that will move the decisions we make with our clients from the gut to the head (with or without blinking ;-).

The recently published Relationship Marketing - part of the Relevant Knowledge Series from MSI - is the mother load. Mr Palmatier analyses 97 different empirical studies covering 38,077 different commercial relationships. Head spinning stuff for relationship marketers!

At the risk of over-simplifying, (and being too dry for a blog like this), the summary 'Best Practices: ways to build&maintain strong customer relationships' is worth disclosing;

• do not let conflict go unresolved
• assign customers a dedicated contact person
• spend most of your budget on raising the skills of your 'boundary-spanning' (aka service) staff
• focus on social (person to person) and structural (system integration with customers) programs
• minimise the use of financial (discount) programs
• let your boundary spanners (sales people) control social programs but not the structural & financial ones
• if your sales staff churn rate is high, make an effort to get them to be consistent in approach and focus more on structural programs
• early in the relationship, focus on amount, frequency & quality of communication
• measure relationship; quality, breadth, composition and growth/velocity regularly. Especially velocity (is the relationship improving or decaying, not just its current state)
• audit your own organisation to make sure you are aligned to relationship marketing - strategy, leadership, culture, structures and control, business processes

But for me the biggest insight is Mr Palmatier's insistence that if a customer relationship is not growing, it declines. If you cannot grow the relationship, go for efficiency and being 'easy to do business with'. There is no such thing as maintaining relationships - according to the facts.

The Australian Direct Marketing Association held its annual 3-day forum last week and this 'make marketing evidence based' message was consistent from almost all presenters, including yours truly. Sounds like we are finally getting the message. Now all we have to do is follow our own advice!

At the conference I managed to catch up with an old friend - Terry White who is the Chief Innovator (great title) at Amway Japan. Terry - 'Marketing used to be 90% magic. Now it is 90% science and only 10% magic' - and he does not mean statistics, he means facts.

* Mark Twain on customer analytics