The following results are taken from our principal Christopher Robert’s experience in various senior marketing roles and as Head of Marketing at ENERGEX Retail an energy company in Queensland Australia. It outlines our philosophy, thinking and passion for results.

Read about these results in the areas of:

Brand Strategy and Development
        (Energex Brand Recovery)

 Development of effective Customer Management Strategies
        (Energex)

 Engaging staff to deliver business results via a Customer focused approach
        (Suncorp-Metway)

 ENERGEX earth’s choice leads the nation with green power
        (Energex)

 Unprecedented residential customer acquisitions
        (Energex LPG)

Increasing margin, sales, volume and income all at the same time
        (Suncorp-Metway)

 Internal Cultural and Sales Incentive Programs
        (Energex)

Brand Strategy and Development
     
Situation
After five storms in 7 days in early 2004 and the release of an independent report ENERGEX faced more than 8 months of negative media scrutiny. This resulted in severe brand damage.

Challenge faced
There was no template to follow to outline how to recover such a damaged brand.

Resolution
Chris led the development of a brand recovery strategy based on cutting edge market research that focused marketing and communication on messages that reflected positively on Energex’s brand. Some of the initiatives included the development of an integrated brand communication campaign and a reduction in sponsorships. Through this process Chris ensured the support and engagement of key stakeholders including the CEO, Executive and the Board.

As a result of these initiatives the ENERGEX brand recovered dramatically and in early 2007 enjoyed brand equity levels that were independently measured via research as being better than any other major energy utility in Australia and one of the strongest brands in Queensland.

Development of effective Customer Management Strategies

Situation
Given the expected introduction of Full Retail Contestability in the Residential market ENERGEX required direct marketing capability.

Challenges faced
At the time direct mail lists needed to be sourced from core billing systems and took 6-8 weeks, response analysis was not automated and cumbersome, the organisation lacked a single customer view of revenue or cost to serve and demographic customer information.

Resolution
Chris was instrumental in the development of a world class customer knowledge infrastructure enabling direct marketing. This included a marketing data warehouse, campaign management software, analytics and data mining. In addition the marketing data warehouse linked to external media buying software allowing us to execute integrated marketing communications including direct marketing and advertising to the same segments. Resulting in increased campaigns, efficiency and effectiveness. Importantly this capability enabled strong customer understanding that resulted in several new marketing strategies.Campaign lists could now be extracted in hours not weeks.

Importantly this capability enabled strong customer understanding that resulted in several new marketing strategies.

Engaging staff to deliver business results via an innovative Customer focused approach

Situation
Suncorp-Metway’s key strategy, named Allfinanz, was designed to increase the number of products per household.

Challenges faced
The strategy lacked sufficient momentum as there was a lack of, much needed internal engagement from staff. Research also suggested that a majority of customers did not want to put all their eggs in one basket.

Resolution
Chris was asked to develop the Allfinanz strategy and subsequently developed the Diamond Allfinanz strategy.

This strategy was based on a unique customer segmentation model tailored for the finance industry. The model encapsulated cross sell, needs analysis and cost to serve initiatives into one program. The program included a staff launch, strong executive involvement, internal staff program, new measures and an innovative team based incentive program. This strategy set the future direction for the organisations CRM strategy.

This initiative was extremely successful and resulted in approximately 100,000 incremental sales, a dramatic increase in share of wallet, contribution to profit and led to the establishment of a major project team to fully exploit this customer management strategy. The key to the success was engaging staff and as a result it positively impacted on internal culture in addition to incremental sales and financial benefit.

Marketing Plan and Campaign Development

Situation
After a successful launch, sales of earths’ choice ENERGEX’s green energy product levelled out in the residential segment, despite heavy investment in advertising.

Resolution
Chris initiated a fundamental shift in the marketing communication mix to below the line initiatives including cross-sell and direct marketing. This resulted in a fourfold increase in customer numbers accompanied by a large reduction in advertising costs. This resulted in earths’ choice becoming the leading green energy product in Australia.

Unprecedented residential customer acquisitions

Situation
There was a business imperative to rapidly increase LPG sales in the Residential Market.

Challenge faced
Marketing strategies of this scale had never been deployed in the LPG portfolio.

Resolution
Chris and his team developed an integrated marketing strategy for LPG that resulted in sales results never seen before in the LPG industry.

Neil Horrocks National Manager LPG ENERGEX Retail Jan 2007
"Our business has grown at 3 times the industry rate every year for the last five years thanks to highly targeted, fresh marketing and exceptional channel management, Thanks Chris."

Increasing margin, sales, volume and income all at the same time.

Situation
The funding portfolio (Term Deposits, Cash Management, Pensioner, Bonds and other Investment Accounts) was losing share, sales and volume over 18 months.

Challenges faced
Various marketing strategies had been used including aggressive pricing and advertising but the portfolio continued to decline.

Resolution
Chris developed a comprehensive marketing strategy that included advertising, media, new channels, segmentation, new product development, and pricing across three brands Suncorp, Metway and QIDC that dramatically reversed this trend.

Importantly Chris ensured that key Executive staff were engaged in strategy development and deployment to ensure buy in and support.

This initiative included the deployment of a complex pricing model for the Funding portfolio based on quantitative choice modelling that enabled us to predict product sales based on various competitive pricing scenarios allowing us to maximize income, margin and sales.

The end result was an increase in market share and sales. Margin and total income increased by more than 60%. At the same time a 40% reduction in advertising was also achieved via smarter segmentation and targeting.

From long term sales decline to record sales

Situation
Metway Bank a small regional bank in Queensland, Australia experienced a decline in home loan sales over several months.

Challenges faced
Metway bank was up against four major banks that dominated the market. In addition Mortgage Originators such as RAMS and Aussie Home loans were starting to make an impact.

Resolution
Chris developed a comprehensive marketing strategy that included pricing, promotions, advertising, alliances, and sales incentives resulting in the two most successful home loan months in the history of the bank.

This equated to a 50% increase in monthly sales. This was achieved by thoroughly understanding the shopping behaviour of home loan customers.

Internal Cultural and Sales Incentive Programs

Situation
The Contact Centre was seen as a great channel to cross sell retail products. However the general view was that the group was not leveraging this channel as well as it could.

Challenges faced
Though the contact centre had a strong focus on customer satisfaction and operational efficiency selling was considered a dirty word.

Resolution
Chris created an innovative cross-sell incentive program around a Rugby competition theme. This initiative resulted in an increase from 20,000 cross sells per year to more than 100,000 per year effectively creating a brand new cost-effective channel for product sales.