CTPS [Corporate Telephone Preference Service] is having the biggest impact on direct marketing, more than anything else for a decade. With a national suppression file of near one million records of ‘by-law’, none-contactables by phone, the UK market is being artificially squeezed, killing off potential quality prospects from marketing databases. No telesales campaign can be run without the entire data source being run against the CTPS file, unless the contacts are your past customers already.

Yet it seems that the market is either totally unaware of this or are suffering from apathy. I can only put it down to B2B marketers not being as informed as they should be – and I do not think it’s their fault. Does nobody gives a monkey’s that at this rate, in five years time, we will not be able to contact any new prospects by phone. Ok, maybe that is a slight extension of the truth, but the fact remains, anybody in a company [from toilet cleaner to HR Director] can suppress their entire telephone network, and without being audited, without consulting their team or even superiors, and this is freezing up huge swathes of the market – especially now large corporates are wising up to the system and suppressing entire divisions of their global subsidiaries, and as a result, c.1m contacts have already signed up.

In short the CTPS was seen as the natural extension to the TPS, which has had its success. Lots of anachronisms, but the TPS gives homeowners the opportunity of suppressing their private numbers, so protecting themselves from nuisance calls - especially the automated pre-recorded calls stating “you’ve won a big fat prize, now call me back on my premium rated hotline and you could win a big fat apple” [and not the one that plays music]. The TPS seems to make sense.

Based on a European Directive [not law], the UK Government [in the form of the DTI] were the ONLY European Government to implement a scheme, run by the DMA, which gives companies the same opportunity to suppress their numbers. But is it the same principle as the TPS? Is it fair and whom is it trying to protect? … and it’s not the little old granny sitting at home!

The CTPS purports to protect the SME, especially the Small from the ME, from being distracted all day long by relentless, hard-nosed, telesales calls. The Federation of Small Businesses supported and also lobbied for the CTPS. However, nobody really looked at the reality of the situation.

SMEs are the largest users of the Telephonic Medium, using it to drive new business. Where do they get their leads? Need I say anymore than the words, ‘Yellow Pages’! Small businesses still rely on the Yellow Pages as well as other directories (including search engines), to research new prospects, then action with a telephone call. Now, with the implementation of the CTPS, this is all in fact illegal. If you do this now you are exposing yourself to a £5k fine. Why? Because, if one of the numbers in the yellow pages has been registered with the CTPS, you have flaunted the CTPS legislation. How to stay squeaky clean? Run the data-capture via the CTPS database first. However, this is obviously impracticable and expensive… as each time you run the list, you have to pay for the privilege.

Also, if the CTPS was set out to protect SMEs, why are corporates allowed to register themselves and on a grand scale? Who are they being protected from? Couple with the fact that large corporates have huge in-house databases, comprising of most of the market, which they have already sold to, means they are not as hampered by the CTPS as SMEs. Remember, you do not have to run lists of past customers through the CTPS.

Basically, SMEs were supposed to be the ones who were protected by the CTPS, but on the face of it, are actually the ones being penalised the most. This is nonsensical. I do not want to sound overly bitter about this, there is real potential for a CTPS scheme, but not in this format. It is creating an environment that is untenable and anti-competitive. Sadly, the Labour party has moved on to their next quick fix, as they do, and I cannot see any reviews of this legalisation for a long time coming. Maybe, if the market got a bit more involved in the debate, it would move things forward. But if the market continues to be as apathetic and misinformed as it is, it will take the reality of my ‘rumour mongering’ of a total suppression of all numbers in the UK to make people stand up and take notice.

On Tuesday 27 March B2B Marketing and Mardev held their 5th B2B Marketing Great Debate events on the subject of ‘Is the CTPS Working?’. The panel was made up of the DTI, DMA and other key stakeholders in this field. White paper to follow. Publishing April/MAy 07. Email joel.harrison@b2bm.biz for a copy.

No self-respecting business leader would profess to caring about anything else more these days, other than an earnest and heartfelt focus on the customer.

Entrance lobbies and reception rooms everywhere bear testament to how seriously companies take their commitment to customer focus, enshrined as it is in 'Our Corporate Values' that hang framed or engraved in metalised plaques featuring mock-vintage ornate scrolls.

All the more surprising then that large organisations struggle to coordinate their efforts in communicating to customers or prospects. The problem seems largely organisational: with different divisions and teams all responsible for promoting their own products or services, and operating in marketing silos.

A recent press report highlighted (admittedly in a B2C context) a financial services company who managed to produce 92 million direct mail pieces focused on acquisition. A spokesman was reported as saying that this simply reflected the size of the bank and the volume of products it offered. "It is never sent to customers who explicitly say they don't want it," he was quoted as saying.

These comments are hardly going to win any industry awards for PR deftness, but more importantly it betrays the customer focus ethic, and reaches to the heart of the challenge.

On the one hand is the desire for a customer-centric organisation and approach to business. On the other is a company divisionalised according to what they sell. Best customers and prospects are considered ideal candidates by most, if not all, of these business areas, and so they receive a blizzard of offers, some complementary and some downright contradictory. Customers in B2B marketing being at least reasonably inteligent human beings, tend not to feel particularly special or well-understood as a result.

So what to do?

Well, surely it has to start with better profiling and segmentation. Whether a customer or prospect, information about the target audience is essential, so that significant characteristics can be used to define the kind of message and offer the intended target receives.

I am also starting to hear a different language used by large companies to help customers make more sense of their kalaidescope of products and services. In place of 'product offers' come themes. Themes allow products and services to be attached to them, and combine together propositions, offers and invitations to enable customers to find out, view, validate, trial and treat - all in a meaningful context.

This doesn't mean that the customer gains absolute control of the 'relationship' (after all that implies that organisations no longer should execute demand push marketing) but it does provide a context for a bit more of a dialogue, whereby the customer can choose what is of most interest, and the marketing organisation can start to segment at what stage of a buying cycle they are as a consequence. This in  turn helps to target the kind of help and information that can influence a current or future buying decision.

Themes are designed to rationalise messages, and to engage with customers no matter what stage of the buying cycle they are. In B2B that cycle can be rather long, so it is an imperative to try to appeal to, and get on a future buyer's shortlist, no matter what stage of the researching and buying cycle.

The challenge with taking a themed approach to pulling products together that are properly aligned with customer actual or propsective needs is a big one. A great deal of planning, collaboration and customer research is needed to get the themes right in the first place, and ensure they reflect the brand values of the selling organisation.

The 'science side' of marketing is catching up here as well, with marketing systems that feed off a single customer view now capable of executing the results of all that planning.

Is this talk just trigger-based marketing, a grand theme from the 1990s, dressed up in new clothes? Well, yes, it is. The difference is arguably that this time around it is much cheaper to implement this kind of strategy than before; the web and e-marketing allows for much more scope in customer segmentation; and tools are more integrated with all the marketing channels at our disposal.  Whereas trigger-based marketing was expounded at conferences by suppliers a decade ago, now it is the business client who is talking the talk. I believe there is the will to walk it as well.

...there are no Golden Rules!

Sure, there are really handy tips, such as these:

But beware of accepted wisdom, such as 'never email on Fridays'.

It is quite amazing how many of these statements are regarded unquestioningly and propagated at conferences and within companies - even if these 'pearls of wisdom' are based on isolated or unrepresentative instances, where other variables may well have been at play. In reality most of it is absolute guff.

Here at Mardev we have built up a huge database of stats. based on the prospect email campaigns we undertake on behalf of customers, going back half a decade. One day I'll get around to publishing some of it, probably on this blog! In the meantime, the one thing I can say that constantly delivers the goods is relevancy. Target your message to people who can be accurately profiled as being likely to have a genuine professional interest in your proposition or area of expertise, and you'll engage your audience and discover how responsive they can be.