Dentsu India: Moving ClozR

Direct marketing is a tough nut to crack for most advertising agencies. While their customers demand instant conversion, the call centres often fail to deliver. To address the issue, Dentsu India has launched a new customer relationship and loyalty programme management agency called ClozR Communications — a 51:49 joint venture with Serco BPO. Serco BPO has almost 10,000 people on its rolls and specialises in customer interaction and IT services.

The partnership was struck once Dentsu India zeroed in on the problem most agencies face in direct marketing, says Chairman Sandeep Goyal. “A smart branding plan by any ad agency would often get marred when outsourced to third-party BPOs for execution (follow-up),” he says. While big BPOs would tend to focus on larger customers with large orders, smaller outfits were often found to lack the finesse required to interact with consumers for direct marketing. ClozR, Goyal claims, will provide end-to-end execution from following up with consumers for their reactions to handling their queries — steps which are integral to direct marketing.

ClozR will focus on both the digital and offline media, since direct marketing requires both nowadays. For example, a sales pitch in a mall will be followed by e-mail to prospective customers of the product or service. Denstu will bring in its branding and creative prowess and Serco BPO will chip in with its technical and software expertise as well as its grasp on CRM exercises.

Satish Sathyanarayana, COO, ClozR Communications, says that in such a partnership, data such as consumer contacts that the client provides changes less hands and hence becomes more secure. ClozR says it could save 15-20 per cent on a direct marketing campaign for clients since it won’t charge an additional commission for outsourcing tasks. ClozR expects the conversion rate after the campaigns to be 20 per cent higher than industry standards.

ClozR is targeting break-even within a year. It claims it is on the verge of signing on at least five clients with yearly commitments even as it is launched; Dentsu’s roll of over 100 clients could be the hunting ground for the new agency. It will have offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Dubai and has made seven top-level appointments who will report to Sathyanarayana.

All this is an effort to “become an agency which would be smarter than a BPO but take a deeper dive into direct marketing than traditional ad agencies,” says Goyal.