A recent MediaPost research brief revealed some interesting findings about the potential for in-bar marketing. The Arbitron Bar Media Report claims that younger individuals (age 21-34) who frequent bars tend to belong to a difficult demographic to reach via traditional marketing channels because of their increased use of newer consumer media technologies like TiVo and streaming online content.
Obviously, this demographic is not every company's target customer, but has potential nonetheless. The difficulty many businesses would have with this, technique, however, is tracking campaign performance and the resulting conversions. But, behavioral targeting technology allows for relevant marketing execution and effective measurement.
For companies using this tactic, it would be important to look at the multi-channel metrics for marketing campaigns across different regions where they've implemented this approach via digital signage, experiential marketing, video, etc. A comprehensive marketing database allows marketers to easily create a segment for analysis in terms of sales performance among current customers who fit the target demographic in each region.
With the mass proliferation of cell phone usage and the increasing ubiquity of cell phone cameras, the possibilities for customer acquisition through the leverage of innovative marketing solutions and these mobile technologies are growing.
For example, the realms of design, technology, and Marketing 2.0 overlap with the Semapedia project and more recently p8t.ch. These 2D barcodes can be read by taking a photo with a mobile phone(provided a code reader is installed), automatically launching the phone's web browser to any specified URL. The wearable p8t.ch product connects online social media with mobile technology and real-world interaction - true multi channel marketing!
With the ability for a user to redirect their unique p8t.ch URL as many times as desired, the image has the potential to act much like a standard text shortcode, and web tracking analytics should be able to be applied.
Until phones come readily equipped with the code-reader technology, however, the implementation of this technology is very limited. Even so, its potential is great for on-demand relevant marketing in print, outdoor/experiential events, and tradeshows.
For more information, visit:
P8TCH
Semapedia.org
Getting your customers to pay attention to your email marketing communications may become more difficult with future improvements to email client technology if you're not explicitly whitelisted by them.
Miles Libby, the anti-spam project manager for Yahoo, had discussed upgrades to their email client that ties back to their DomainKeys email authentication process. For their upcoming release, each email will have a rating that indicates email sender authenticity.
This development makes email reputation and deliverability more of a priority as it will be visualized with the email itself. And as the technology gains traction, the decision to open an email may weigh more heavily on the sender authentication than on the subject line.
In a business or work environment, it's not unusual to be bombarded by massive amounts of email, but there are technology solutions out there that are gaining ground with Web 2.0 email users. Xobni is a free application developed by a San Francisco-based company that uses integrated technology and analytics that tie right into Microsoft Outlook. Xobni automatically threads email conversations and provides the user with an email analytics overview of their personal email volume and the volume of emails exchanged between all their contacts by the time of day.
Xobni's features will probably prove beneficial to email marketers. With tools that make email management more efficient, received commercial emails won't get in the way as much, perhaps reducing their negative perception and providing lift to customer retention statistics. On the other hand, reducing the need to read through subject lines when searching for a particular conversation might also reduce the chances of your email marketing to catch the attention of your audience.
With changes in the way consumers are going to be receiving email, there is a need for a co-evolution of marketing software that provides innovative marketing solutions that work with these new Web 2.0 email technologies.
An article by MediaPost Publications cites an eMarketer research study predicting the global mobile marketing industry to reach $19B by the year 2012.
Domestically, the 2007 mobile marketing spend reached $878M and the U.S. is expected to lead the growth trend through 2011. After that point, the size and development of India and China are going to play a major part in the global market.
Widespread adoption of mobile marketing technology is yet to occur, with uncertainty regarding restrictions and regulations on mobile marketing as a possible obstacle. Even so, the statistics for customer interaction are promising at 12% in the United States, according to the article. For more information on mobile marketing regulation visit the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) website; they have a Code of Conduct for Mobile Marketing drafted as a set of guidelines for mobile marketers.
Because mobile phones have become such an integral part of everyday life for so many people in this country, text-based mobile marketing is one of the most reliable ways to reach customers and serves as a great medium for customer retention campaigns or alerts and notifications. Mobile customer acquisition and marketing list growth opportunities arise when two-way communication is enabled via shortcodes or mobile text.
Even with such a high rate of expected growth, mobile marketing may not be for everyone. The majority (more than 70%) of the mobile internet marketing audience is below 35 years of age, so companies with a relatively younger customer base stand to benefit more from the growth of the mobile marketing industry, even if text-based messaging still makes up for most of the mobile marketing revenue. However, as time goes on with advances in technology and the adoption of mobile communication, especially in India and China, these demographics could change dramatically over the next few years.
JuiceMetrIQs users can now compare sales, acquisition, and customer demographic data from different segments side by side, making it easier to identify segment activity in relation to total sales.
Additionally we've re-introduced the data chart builder where users can create charts based on the type of data, segment, and date range displayed.
We've also included functions within our email marketing message reporting that allows users to create segments from link click activity, unifying customer purchase history with marketing interactions. This on-demand segmentation can then be used with our segment comparison tool to easily see how sales, acquistion, and demographics differs between customers who click on different links.
In terms of email conversion tracking, on top of tracking the sales revenue received from individuals sent an email, we now plot anticipated sales numbers (based on sales from the previous 6 weeks) so our clients can see how their email generated sales are performing in the context of expected sales levels.
It probably needs a little updating now, but for more information, check out our demo.
With so many factors contributing to how your marketing message is spread among your customers, it's impossible to come up with a fool-proof strategy for effective word-of-mouth marketing, but by applying recent marketing research we can create innovative and educated strategies that are worth trying.
Chances are, no matter how much you know about your customers, you can't possibly know them in a personal sense, the way their peers do. So when they forward your marketing message, its because they know someone who might be interested in your offer, even if they themselves aren't. But what factors, if any, contribute to whether or not someone forwards a message? Altruism may play a role, and that's why a segment that is worth trying to tap into are voters; not necessarily voters in terms of U.S. politics, but customers that vote on issues related to your brand.
Recent research from Richard Jankowski and James Fowler, professors of political science at the State University of New York, Fredonia and the University of California, San Diego, respectively, has indicated that there is a high correlation between voting and levels of altruism. The reason posited is that individuals who vote don't necessarily vote with their personal interests in mind, but that they vote to support the communal interest of society (or your brand) as a whole. Even if passing on an email marketing message is as easy as clicking the forward-to-a-friend button, that message may be more likely to be spread around if the original recipient is characteristically altruistic. It's a bold assumption, but one that may be worth trying. Correlation aside, individuals that participate in a vote related to your brand are probably going to be more engaged by your company in the first place and consumer input is one of the easiest and cost-effective ways to determine what your customer base is interested in and what they may want changed. Even better, this type of behavioral segmentation is probably made even more valid if no incentive for participation is offered, since the goal is to determine those individuals who are most engaged in your brand.
The hard part is getting people to feel that it's important to voice their opinion, so whatever is going to be put up for the vote can't be trivial, but it doesn't have to be a big deal either. A while back, Frontier Airlines executed a successful viral marketing campaign where their passengers had to vote on the animals that got to be featured on the tails of their aircraft. You don't have to change your brand, but you have to make your customers feel like their votes will contribute to it.
So for what industries will the be most beneficial? Clearly, for this type of approach to work, a company has to be in the industries that generate the most word-of-mouth marketing. According to research by the Keller Fay Group, these would be the restaurant/food, entertainment and media, sports and hobbies, beverages, and retail industries. Additionally, industries that deal with computers and consumer electronics also may be able to benefit as they generate a great deal of user reviews and user generated content.
The best-selling books The Influentials and The Tipping Point have contributed to the development of the "Theory of Influentials" which dictates that there are select individuals that posses certain characteristics, skills, or personalities, making them innovative trendsetters who have tremendous influence over others; Win over the "influentials" and you win over the world. When you read the text, the theory makes sense, and advertisers spend millions of dollars a year trying to reach these highly-connected individuals, but the theory is not without its detractors.
Recent research by both Harris Interactive and network-theory scientist, Duncan Watts, suggest that word-of-mouth marketing and trends don't originate from special individuals. But this could be because the average individual is much more connected than they were even just 5 years ago. With the advent of Web 2.0, and the proliferation of user generated content, practically anyone with a computer can gain expertise in any field and network with like-minded peers.
The case may be that the Theory of Influentials isn't invalid, but that the social dynamics have changed.
The views of Harris Interactive and Watts do share a common thread: the degree to which trends/messages spread is determined more by the circumstances in which they are shared, not by who shares them. Communication has to be shared in an emotionally engaging manner, in the right context, to others who are already primed to be receptive to the message. This means that anyone can function as an "influential" when interacting with their like-minded peers online or elsewhere.
Successful personalized, multi-channel marketing campaigns leverage this concept; personalization contributes to the relevance and personal significance of the communication and the multi-channel elements play off of each other, priming the customer to receive a direct mail piece with an email, or vice versa, for example. The principle also contributes to why social networks are so valuable. People visit particular social networks already in a primed mindset, looking to learn or share information about a particular subject with their peers.
One argument made by Harris interactive is that people aren’t likely to be universal influentials, but that they each have expertise in certain subjects, so that a person's level of influence isn't absolute. Social networks mitigate this variation, however, by creating a forum where the focus generally revolves around a particular topic or theme. With so many data-rich interactions happening online, this is where innovative marketing technology solutions play a major role and will continue to do so in the future.
The future of marketing technology needs to be able to capture and integrate Web 2.0’s wealth of social network data. Watts attests that there aren't particular individuals who function as absolute influentials, but that often trends originate from "accidental influentials" that happen to be at the right place at the right time. Nevertheless, it still makes sense for marketers with access to social networks to take notice of who their most active brand advocates are. Chances are that they have a broader reach so even if they themselves aren’t the catalyst for a particular trend, their message may reach that right person at the right time.
More on this topic later for companies that want to leverage social network theory, but don’t have a social network platform:
- who to target
- why to target these particular individuals
- best and worst industries in which to leverage social network marketing
Juice Media will be hosting the first of a series of webinars featured by the Marketing 2.0 Technology group on LinkedIn.
Join us for this free webinar, Integrated Marketing Technology: Solutions for Customer Data Management, being held on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 10:00am-11:00am PDT.
This webinar will cover the available integrated marketing technologies being used by companies to consolidate, manage, and explore their ever-growing customer databases. Topics reviewed will discuss:
- dealing with distributed customer data
- the benefits and challenges of customer data management
- existing and available technologies
- choosing the right solution for your business
Title: Integrated Marketing Technology: Solutions for Customer Data Management
Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Time: 10:00am-11:00am PDT
Password: 2.0t3ch
Space is limited.
Reserve your space now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/214133363
By John Faris from the Red Door Interactive Biz Blog
On May 6th, Red Door hosted a panel discussion on Customer Lifetime Value that included a number of industry experts.
Red Door Interactive President, Reid Carr started the session with a quick introduction of the panel and the topic at hand. He pointed out that acquisition and conversion strategies often dominate the focus of Web marketers at the expense of retention and extension strategies. This leads to a lost opportunity for engaging with your customers and creating long-term value instead of one-off conversions.
At that point, the panel discussion kicked-off with speakers, Rick Enrico of Juice Media, Susan Tull of BlueHornet, and Katelyn Himes of La Quinta Hotels. Instead of providing a transcript of the entire session question-by-question, I’ll just summarize the main points made by each individual during the Q&A.
Rick Enrico proclaimed that the future of marketing lies in automated one-to-one communication with customers through multiple touch points. By leveraging data from marketing channels such as mobile, social, search, and email; companies can segment their users by behavior/interaction/analytics and then generate content that is hyper-relevant to each segment. Companies should use segmentation and relevancy to replace “batch and blast” in their marketing communications. Moreover, companies should move towards a pull marketing strategy in which they give customers a choice about how they interact with the brand. One customer may want to be contacted by mobile text message when a specific product is available, while another may want to be contacted by email when the company is offering special promotions. By giving customers the option to choose the content and the medium, companies will generate better customer lifetime value.
Susan Tull focused on email communications and started by pointing out that marketers have been talking about automated one-to-one marketing communications for ten years, but that now the tools are available to implement it effectively. Marketers need to get started with segmentation and one-to-one marketing now or they will be left behind. Companies should take a “crawl, walk, run” approach so they aren’t intimidated about acting now. You can worry more about advanced strategies when they get further into the process. One easy strategy to get started with is email link segmentation. Look at what links people are clicking on in your emails and segment those people into groups based on their behavior. Then follow-up with those various groups with relevant messaging based on the links they originally clicked on.
Susan stressed that the first thirty days after someone opts in to email is typically the best/most profitable time to engage with them. The rest of the panelists nodded in agreement. Companies should send a series of messages during that period to encourage the customer to engage with the brand and/or make purchases. With regards to analyzing results, many marketers are mistakenly judging the value of a campaign by looking at one-off transactions when they should really be looking at customer lifetime value.
Katelyn Himes gave the in-house marketer’s perspective on customer retention and value. Companies should leverage behavioral data to further engage with their target market. For example, La Quinta saw their email response rates nearly double when they segmented respondents and non-respondents and sent a special follow-up message to each group. Marketer can also see great value when they create event-triggered email campaigns. Event-triggered emails tend to be more relevant to the user and may increase their patience and receptiveness in receiving other promotional offers via email. By analyzing and segmenting users based on recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM), companies can be more strategic with who they market to and how they market to them. Lastly, Katelyn stated that companies should treat their customers like a spouse. Give them a chance to provide feedback, listen to their feedback, and take the necessary actions to create a happy long-term relationship.
In the end, the whole panel agreed that customer perception is reality, and that testing is crucial to any marketing efforts that a company undertakes.
Recent research has found and common practice has shown the influence of word-of-mouth marketing with the proliferation of user-generated content in true Web 2.0 fashion. The amount of conversation that surrounds a product or brand is the best indicator of customer engagement, as the recipient of marketing communications becomes a communicator, or in some instances an advocate for the brand.
There is no doubt that word-of-mouth marketing works, but exactly how does it work, and where does it stand in relation to other, more deliberate marketing initiatives?
Recent research has shown that brands are discussed in billions of conversations a day, the overwhelming majority of which are positive. And because recommendations or critiques are given by peers, recipients are much more likely to be swayed, with as much as 50% expressing likelihood to purchase a recommended product.
About 10% of word-of-mouth marketing takes place online; and about 12% of conversations refer to online marketing or experiences.
So what does this mean in terms of modern internet marketing?
Relevant marketing is needed to create positive customer relationships and to foster customer engagement. The point is that the returns on personalized marketing communications potentially extend past the direct relationship established with that customer. This information suggests that the ability to "forward to a friend" becomes much more than a mechanism for viral marketing or organic list growth. Forwarded recipients should be regarded as a special segment that marketers can expect to see high conversion rates from.
SAN DIEGO – May 5, 2008 – Juice Media Worldwide, an on-demand marketing intelligence application provider, announced today its strategic partnership with Off Madison Ave, an award-winning, fully integrated marketing agency.
With the partnership, Off Madison Ave will be able to use Juice Media's integrated marketing platform, JuiceMetrIQs™ to offer more comprehensive, targeted marketing services to their existing clientele. Off Madison Ave plans to use JuiceMetrIQs to automate, execute, and measure marketing campaigns while giving their clients more insight into the results of their marketing efforts.
"JuiceMetrIQs solves the longstanding issue of enabling our clients to easily segment databases quickly and reliably," said Jason Baer, Director of Strategy at Off Madison Ave. "Personalized, targeted lifecycle marketing is more effective than traditionally used batch and blast methods. JuiceMetrIQs allows us to target individuals based on specific criteria, making one-to-one marketing truly achievable."
JuiceMetrIQs aggregates sales, customer, and campaign tracking data into a single web-based application, allowing its users to deliver and track highly-targeted marketing campaigns. JuiceMetrIQs' ability to determine revenue at the customer-interaction level enables marketers to develop personalized campaigns that lift conversion rates and increase customer retention.
Now more than ever businesses must leverage personalized communications to achieve success," said Rick Enrico, President and CEO of Juice Media. "Together, Off Madison Ave and Juice Media are focused on solving the distributed data dilemma by offering an easy-to-implement automated marketing platform for businesses that need improved cross-channel marketing reporting, efficiency and results."
About Off Madison Ave:
Off Madison Ave, a collaborative marketing communications firm located in Phoenix, redefines what it means to be an agency by delivering results-focused strategies and new methods of measurement. The agency focuses on a fully integrated approach to business consulting, public relations, advertising and interactive marketing. By embracing its signature "outthink. outperform." mentality, the firm serves clients as a partner, advocate and advisor with an in-depth knowledge of their business, industry and competitors. Each discipline invests the time and resources to assess client needs, develop strategic planning, elevate brand awareness and raise revenues.
The agency continues to earn a No. 1 ranking for public relations and Internet marketing in the state, and was voted one of the top two advertising firms by Arizona Business Magazine. Off Madison Ave has served as the designated Southwest regional partner of Worldcom Public Relations Group, www.worldcomgroup.com, the world's largest consortium of independent public relations firms, for the last five years. A sampling of the firm's clients includes: Nike, DMB Associates, Inc., APS/Pinnacle West Corporation, Allied Waste, National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), Phoenix Art Museum, Avnet, Cruise America, Arizona Federal Credit Union, DrWeil.com, Kimpton Hotels and many more. Visit www.offmadisonave.com for more information.
About Juice Media:
Based in San Diego California, Juice Media Worldwide develops JuiceMetrIQs, a SaaS on-demand Marketing Intelligence platform. The JuiceMetrIQs application automatically unifies distributed consumer data from multiple IT systems in real-time to enable marketers to deliver highly personalized one-to-one communications based on purchasing patterns and previous marketing interactions. JuiceMetrIQs empowers marketers to deliver marketing messages to customers through the right channel, with the right content, at the right time. For more information please visit http://www.juicemetriqs.com.
--Find out how to collect and analyze the cross-company data needed for effective marketing programs without the struggle of working with IT.--
Marketers who look for ways to work better with their IT counterparts will find ample references and suggestions from any search engine; the cyber world is littered with "how-to" papers and thought pieces. With all this information readily available, one would think the business units could easily find common ground.
Think again.
Reality shows us that the opposite is true, and for understandable reasons. While marketing relies heavily on corporate and internet networks to conduct one-to-one lead generation, branding campaign and customer service initiatives, IT departments are usually knee-deep with other mission-critical support requirements, particularly in operations and finance. These disparate pain-points invariably lead to conflict in priorities that, in today's world of shrinking budgets and staff, will not resolve itself simply by instituting a "Can't we all just get along" executive order.
Instead, successful organizations are deploying third-party web-based systems to enable marketers to search disassociated customer databases to build customer profiles and update segments in real-time; all without creating IT work requests in the process. These platforms streamline the marketing process by enabling companies to store customer interaction data -- such as sales transactions, demographics, website data and email addresses -- and segment that information to build relevant targeted marketing campaigns. Customer data is housed in a single warehouse that is tied to a concise central reporting dashboard.
This real-time information empowers marketers to plan and execute stand-alone or comprehensive cross-channel marketing programs that can include email, direct mail, online video, voicemail, surveys, live chat and lead management. The results include higher conversion rates as well as increased customer satisfaction and client retention.
Here's an example. A Midwest-based retailer wanted to create an email campaign targeted to past purchasers in order to acquire repeat business. Doing this effectively meant knowing what the customers had previously purchased, and thus required integration between the company's loyalty and POS databases with an email marketing system. The company leveraged an on-demand, marketing intelligence platform to facilitate the channel integrations and segment past purchasers who were opted in to receive commercial email messages without tying up the IT department's resources in the process. The retailer then executed a targeted campaign with pinpoint accuracy. The result: The retailer witnessed a 150-percent uplift in email marketing ROI from that one campaign.
What's more, the marketing department was able to quickly combine POS and web data on its own within the technology platform to better understand customer behavior and deliver only the most relevant promotion campaigns to subscribers. Subsequently, the retailer's website traffic increased by 40 percent within 60 days.
Steps to integation
To get started, marketers must first evaluate if such a system would be of benefit to them. Start by identifying all the areas that customer data is currently held within an organization. The outcome may surprise some. In addition to a central CRM system, accounting systems, e-commerce and product marketing departments typically have other customer data not captured anywhere else.
Once all the proverbial stones have been overturned, organizations should consider all the marketing initiatives they do, such as direct mail, online, advertising and in-store promotions. Companies that maintain more than two customer data houses and conduct at least three distinctly different marketing promotion campaigns throughout a given business year would benefit greatly from a marketing intelligence platform.
If a more in-depth analysis of market dynamics, messaging and tactics is required, companies may consider hiring an outsourced research firm. There are numerous ones to choose from of all shapes, sizes and fee structures. Wikipedia offers links to several of them here.
When evaluating web-based intelligence platforms, marketers need to ask the following questions:
- Can the system hyper-segment data from various sources based on customer behaviors and preferences?
- Can the system "Mash Up" this data into a central dashboard for up-to-date reports and analyses?
- Does the system integrate with email marketing platforms, thereby allowing companies to plan, execute and analyze such campaigns in one click?
- Does the system automatically push updates and new versions without interrupting operations or requiring in-house IT support?
Today, marketers are in greater need for data-driven business intelligence, hyper segmentation and behavioral targeting that they can leverage to create dynamic and relevant promotion campaigns. The introduction of web-based systems helps define the aggregation, analytics and automation of customer interaction data to drive campaign optimization while still keeping marketing and IT departments out of each other's hair.
The following is an excerpt from the Internet Retailer article "Do You Know Me?", by Don Davis.
20 Touchpoints
Just slightly ahead of Petco in implementing a cross-channel customer data strategy is Recreational Equipment Inc., which expected its new customer data warehouse to go live last month. Project planning began three years ago, and implementation took 18 months.
The REI project was more complicated than most because the company had customer data in 20 databases. Not only did REI store data separately for store, web and catalog, but also for its Adventure tour business, clinics and other activities.
A customer could be in one database with an old address and e-mail address, and another database with newer information. And, like most companies, much of the information was flawed, with names misspelled, invalid addresses or duplicate data, such as a customer identified as Jim in one file and James in another. AMR Research Inc. estimates 30% to 50% of customer data in multiple systems across retail companies is dirty, and REI’s data quality was on that order, says Jennifer Cofer, business intelligence analyst for the customer data warehouse project.
“We had to clean all that data, so it’s standardized,” Cofer says. “It’s been a bit of a nightmare. But the end result is nirvana.”
Once fully functional, the data store will let REI deliver highly targeted messages, such as to a customer who signs up for an Adventure canoe trip. “We’ll know what supplies they’ll need and from their transaction history we’ll know what they’ve already purchased from REI,” Cofer says. “Then we can target e-mail them to let them know what they might need for the trip, along with promotional coupons.”
“Before we could see this information, but we couldn’t tie it together,” says Ben Viscon, online merchandising manager. “We could see what you bought online, but to see what you bought from retail we’d have to look into separate places.” REI can track most store purchases to an individual by member number because the 3.4 million active REI co-op members—who receive annual dividends based on their purchases—account for about 85% of transactions.
The data store will maintain the last six years of transaction data, plus the current year’s. Members eventually will be able to access their data online, perhaps next year, Cofer says. Four full-time REI staffers will maintain the database, ensuring data quality and helping REI departments use it effectively.
Implementation required 15 to 20 REI employees and outside consultants, including six working full-time. To facilitate easy communication, the company moved the team into a single building and tore down cubicle walls to create an open space.
“We all just sat next to each other, with a big table down the middle. If we needed to have a meeting, we just turned our chairs around and rolled in,” Cofer says.
Almost every multi-channel business has seen a reduction in the number of orders flowing through the call center and, conversely, an increase in the amount coming in via the web. The focus of e-mail campaigns and other Internet marketing is quickly shifting in emphasis towards retention. For many firms, convincing an existing customer to buy again may only require a single e-mail.
But not all customers respond to e-mail campaigns. What should you do with those for whom you do not have an e-mail address?
Try this test: Segment your customers by the existence or non-existence of an active e-mail address, and measure the response differentials.Those who do not provide it are probably not buying from your website – especially since most sites require an e-mail contact address to place an order.
Here are a few major reasons why customers do not provide an e-mail address.
- Some people are not web savvy. While this group of customers is becoming a smaller portion of your housefile, not everyone is computer literate – not yet, anyway. Certain merchandise categories cater to certain demographics. Be aware of your customers and their online comfort level.
- Fear of identity theft. In reality, this can occur anywhere, but many individuals still feel more vulnerable making online purchases.
- Some visitors may be B2B or SOHO shoppers who have never purchased on your site. Many B2B customers place larger orders, purchase orders, or custom orders that cannot operationally be placed online and consequently, require more personal attention.
- Customers opt out of receiving e-mail promotions. It goes without saying–these folks cannot be marketed to online.
Review your house file. Check to see the percentage of records without e-mail addresses. Be sure to include customers who have provided addresses but have opted out of receiving e-mail promotions.
We have run recent tests have found catalog response rates of older non-e-mail customers to be as much as 20% higher than customers with similar RFM attributes who have given you an e-mail address.
(continued from Internet Retailer: Do You Know Me? Part 2 of 8)
The following is an excerpt from the Internet Retailer article, "Do You Know Me?", by Don Davis.
More Design Work
In term of making use of the integrated customer data, Petco initially will use it to produce customized monthly e-mails. Each e-mail can be personalized with up to 12 items the customer has purchased or shown interest in.
In the second phase, Petco will customize the web pages visitors see based on their profiles. Customers who have made online purchases in the past or signed in to ther PALS account can be identified by cookies placed on their computers.
"The biggest challenge is the amount of creative you need for targeted home pages," says Lazarchic. "If I know you're a cat customer, the center theme of the home page and the offer shouldn't be dog-focused, it should be cat-focused."
Lazarchic expects to be sending personalized e-mails using the new data store by May.
The first phase of Lazarchic's plan should be standard practice, or at least in the plans for any progressive email marketing campaign and any decent email service or marketing software provider should be equipped with the tools required to deliver personalized, dynamic content. The foundation of behavior based marketing is the ability to tie customer records with sales data. That single connection gives marketers the ability to develop and execute a variety of email campaigns including: customer reengagement/win-back, customer retention, and customer acquisition.
The second phase to the Petco plan may not be for everyone, but is an innovative marketing move for those who do have an e-commerce component. If graphic elements other than featured products are made dynamic, too, then that extends the idea of relevant marketing to "relevant branding". If the look and feel of the website reflect the identity of the customer and/or the relationship between the individual customer and the product, then increases in customer acquisition and retention can be expected.
"More design work" is definitely needed to initiate these campaigns but the bulk of the work would only need to be done once, and the pages/emails generated by dynamic combination of the various elements would result in the equivalent of potentially hundreds (if not more) of static marketing messages. It may seem like a big undertaking at first, but in the long run, automated marketing solutions will undoubtable save time and resources while strengthening customer relations.
A recent report performed by the CMO council reveals some staggering results: 50% of over 450 marketers worldwide said they had only a fair, little or no knowledge of their customers.
The report focused on where and how “marketers are ‘operationalizing’ customer intelligence and insight to reduce customer churn, increase lifetime value, improve the customer experience, and increase the effectiveness and targeting of marketing spend."
While Web 2.0 is developing at a breakneck pace, marketing technology seems to be left behind (or at least its effective implementation). What’s great about Web 2.0’s is that it spreads user-generated content; its value comes from those who ultimately use it. Marketing departments need to tap into the proven success of this model: content succeeds when it’s based on the customers themselves, but right now the majority of companies seem to be missing out.
According to the report, a major obstacle for the companies surveyed is the unification of disparate customer repositories, resulting in the inability to garner adequate customer intelligence and insight.
The CMO Council believes that “investing in integrated systems that harvest customer insight is critical to driving both marketing and business performance.” Simply put, comprehensive marketing solutions should be designed to leverage customer data for the creation and delivery of relevant marketing that reduces customer churn and increases loyalty.
Here are the CMO Council’s key findings:
- Only 15 percent of marketers say their companies are doing an extremely good or effective job of integrating disparate customer data sources and repositories; 55 percent note there is room for improvement or a deficiency in this area.
- More than 31 percent of companies surveyed had customer churn rates of more than 10 percent and 32 percent reported turnover of five to 10 percent. In comparison, more than 62 percent said they desired or expected a churn level of less than five percent
- Respondents believe customer churn significantly impacts business performance through revenue loss (59.9 percent), reduced profitability (39.6 percent) and greater marketing and re-acquisition costs (36.3 percent)
- While churn is a big issue, nearly 67 percent of those surveyed say they have no system for re-activating dormant or lost customers, while just over half of respondents have a strategy for further penetrating or monetizing key account relationships.
- While more than 35 percent of respondents report that the CMO or marketing department (38.9 percent) has primary responsibility for the customer analytics function, they are not leveraging its value. Over 31 percent of those surveyed do no data mining at all and 63 percent are only doing moderate levels of data mining for intelligence and insight.
- The top six strategic applications of customer information by marketers include:
- Up-selling and cross-selling
- Segmenting and targeting
- Driving retention, loyalty and promotional programs
- Identifying new opportunities and unmet needs
- Improving customer service
- Shaping personalized and customized communications
- Key initiatives to increase customer retention include improving customer communications (65.2 percent); addressing complaints, problems and pain points (51.8 percent); and enhancing the customer experience (54.8 percent). Unfortunately, fewer marketers noted their companies’ willingness to modify business practices and policies to accommodate customer needs.
Read the original article: "Marketers are Flying Blind When It Comes to Leveraging Customer Data and Analytics, Reports the CMO Council."
Consequently a company, Juice Media is addressing the ever growing demand for these types of integrated multi-channel marketing technology solutions. Part of the JuiceMetrIQs solution is its ability to connect and report across multiple points of sale and access all those records and information from a single application. It's all about having the ability to really know your customers and develop behavior based marketing.
Read the article except below to learn about the motivation behind Petco's big move, what it took to make it, and how they plan to use their new marketing technology for improved customer acquisition and retention.
The following is an excerpt from an the Internet Retailer article, "Do You Know Me?" , by Don Davis.
Data Silos
Many retailers would like to follow Petco’s lead, but find their efforts stymied because customer data is held separately by store, e-commerce and catalog/call center systems. Nonetheless, a growing number of multi-channel retailers are creating cross-channel data repositories, and using them to provide more relevant offers and improved customer service.
Driving these efforts are the growing numbers of multi-channel consumers who want to receive offers that matter to them. 64% of consumers said they went online to do research before making a purchase within the past three months, including 77% of those with incomes of $75,000 or more, according to a study by e-commerce vendor Sterling Commerce.
And the best thing a merchant can do to ensure repeat patronage is “provide special offers based on my prior purchases,” said 59% of respondents last year, in a survey by interactive marketing firm DoubleClick Performics and research and consulting firm The E-Tailing Group.
But technical and internal political issues prevent many retailers from sharing data across channels. While a survey last fall found 75% of retailers collect customer-specific data in stores and 45% online, the most common way that data is stored is separately by channel, an answer given by half of merchants responding, according to Retail Systems Research.
“They’re collecting a tremendous amount of information about customers, but haven’t figured out how to share that across channels yet,” says Brian Kilcourse, managing partner at the research firm.
Why? Lack of both time and senior-level support, suggests a study released in January by the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group. In that survey, the top two challenges to cross-channel integration were “time required to evaluate promising practices” and “difficulty in measuring return on investment,” each chosen by 84% of respondents. Close behind, at 83%, was “organizational culture does not support integration.”
Some have overcome the obstacles, such as Petco, which expected to complete this spring merging store and web data into a single customer data mart. Lazarchic says there are three main tasks: collect the customer data, gather it all in one database and then figure out how to use it.
For many multi-channel retailers, he says, identifying store shoppers is difficult because many transactions are anonymous. Petco has the advantage of a long-standing loyalty program called PALS that has signed up millions of customers with offers of discounts and rewards. When a PALS member makes a purchase, that information goes into the file for that customer.
For Petco, the toughest piece was creating the customer data mart, which took an internal team six months to complete, Lazarchic says. Each customer’s profile will include, besides online and offline transactions, information drawn from analytics provider Coremetrics Inc. about what the customer searched for and viewed at Petco.com. “Before we only knew what you purchased,” Lazarchic says. “With the Coremetrics data we’ll know your interest and intent.”
The customer profile has 150 or more data points. Petco not only tracks what type of pet a customer owns, but whether he buys premium or organic food, and which purchases he makes in store versus online.
It’s all aimed at making offers relevant. “If a customer buys 40-pound bags of dog food in the store because he doesn’t want to pay shipping charges, I want to keep marketing messages for store stuff store-specific,” Lazarchic says. “But if he’s buying three and a half pound bags of cat food online, I’ll send him online cat offers. I want to keep it specific by channel and pet type.”
According to the following article, Petco is planning to take an ambitious step toward personalized behavior based marketing. Petco's Director of e-Commerce has announced that they are going to engage in more comprehensive multi-channel marketing campaigns to improve their customer acquisition and retention rates.
The following is the first of several excerpts from an the Internet Retailer article, "Do You Know Me?", by Don Davis.
--With relevance as the goal, more multi-channel retailers seek a clearer picture of cross-channel customers--
As a shopper at Petco.com clicks on pages showing cat food, the pet supplies retailer can make an educated guess about which cross-sell offers to feature. But there would be less guesswork if Petco knew that the same customer had visited a Petco store in Syracuse, N.Y., last week and purchased a self-cleaning CatGenie Cat Box for $300.
For that customer, an accessory like the CatGenie Washable Granules might be just the thing. And, knowing that the same customer has bought dog food at that Syracuse store for years, the site could also feature the spring closeout offer on fleece dog vests.
That’s the level of personalization Petco Animal Supplies Inc. hopes to offer on its site this year. It’s the product of an initiative that combines in a single customer database not only what a customer has purchased in stores and online, but also information about what products she viewed on the web site and which e-mails she responded to.
Petco already has used the data store to test personalized e-mail campaigns, and the results make the retailer confident that the project will pay off, says John Lazarchic, director of e-commerce. “E-mail campaigns that are personalized have the highest response and conversion rates, with some campaigns up to 100% more effective than generic e-mails,” Lazarchic says. “Even if web site personalization is half as successful, it will be well worth the work and expense.”
by Morgan Witt
The ISPs and domains that you are sending to are measuring how many people mark your emails as spam. It is essential that complaint rates stay below the ISPs individual thresholds to ensure optimized delivery to the inbox. AOL has historically been the tightest with a threshold of less than 1%. So that means that if more than 1% of subscribers that receive your email to their inbox mark it as spam the probability increases that you will see your email delivery rate slow down or blocked all together.
With this being said, it is important that “complainers” be purged from your email marketing lists to ensure that you do not aggravate them further with subsequent email campaigns. The best way to automate that process is to get connected to the available feedback loops that some of the major ISPs offer.
What is a feedback loop?
A feedback loop is a mechanism by which complaints are recorded by the ISP (to calculate complaint rate) and recipients are unsubscribed when they mark your email as spam within the email client they are using to recieve the mail. For example, lets say a subscriber (recipient) receives your email to their Gmail inbox and takes the action to hit the “Report Spam” button. The complaint is then recorded by Gmail and a report is generated to the email service provider (ESP) and/or to the sender (you) so that the recipient can be unsubscribed.
Who offers feedback loops and how can I get signed up?
1. abuse.net
Contact: update@abuse.net
Required Information: Domain Information
Description: Abuse.net database entries can be verified by doing a look up on the submitted domain using: http://www.abuse.net/lookup.phtml
2. American Online (AOL)
Contact: http://postmaster.info.aol.com/tools/FBL.html
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information
Description: AOL will return an automated response to abuse@(domainname.com) with a confirmation link that must be clicked to confirm the AOL feedback loop request. Upon confirmation, AOL will provide a response within 24 hours.
3. Excite
Contact: emailadmin@cs.excite.com
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information
Description: A response should be received within 3-5 business days. The response will be sent from the Excite Postmaster. If accepted, be prepared to process feedback loop data.
4. Hotmail/Windows Live (Junk Mail Reporting Program)
Contact: http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information, Practices Information, Sender ID (authentication)
Description: Hotmail will review the application and provide one of two responses:
- Acceptance- Next steps to complete enrollment, which includes a signed agreement to complete online. Once this is signed, additional information will need to be provided. Once this final step is completed, Hotmail will provide communications to confirm that the feedback loop is set up.
- Decline - This occurs if critical information is missing, clarification is needed, reverse DNS is not in place, or IP contact information does not match the company information.
5. Hotmail/Windows Live Smart Network Data Services (SNDS)
Contact: https://postmaster.live.com/snds/index.aspx
Required Information: Domain Information or Autonomous System Number (ASN), Sender ID (authentication)
Description: Enter a network that you are responsible for via IP, IP range, or Autonomous System Number (ASN) that you own. The authorization algorithm works using reverse DNS, WHOIS, and the global Internet routing table. If successful the authorization algorithm will return a list of email addresses it found to be associated with the provided IP range in a properly authoritative manner. If it does not return any addresses, try following the advise it provides. Click on the link in the email you receive at the chosen authorization email address. This will provide the authorization token to the SNDS website.
6. Outblaze
Contact: postmaster@outblaze.com
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information, Practices
Description: A response should be received from Outblaze within 3-5 business days. The response will be sent from the Outblaze Postmaster. If accepted, be prepared to process feedback loop data.
7. Road Runner
Contact: http://security.rr.com/spam.htm#FBL
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information
Description: A response should be received from Road Runner within 3-5 business days. The response will be sent from the Road Runner Postmaster. If accepted, be prepared to process feedback loop data.
8. Yahoo!
Contact: mail-abuse-bulk@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information, Domain Keys (authentication)
Description: Upon review, a manual response will be received from Yahoo! Customer Care confirming setup.
9. United Online(Juno/Netzero)
Contact: http://www.unitedonline.net/postmaster/whitelisted.html
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information, Practices
Description: Once the feedback loop request form has been submitted, United Online will return an automated response confirming that the application has been received. Additionally, it provides a communication stream to add any additional information that may have not been provided in the original request. After United Online has reviewed the application, two possible responses can be received:
- Confirmation that the information provided has been added to their Trusted Sender List and feedback loop setup.
- Denial to be added to their Trusted Sender List and feedback loop setup with provided reasons.
10. USA.net
Contact: http://fbl.usa.net/
Required Information: Company Information, Domain Information
Description: Once the USA.net feedback loop request form has been submitted, they will return an automated response from unblock@support.untd.com to the confirmation email address provided. This email will contain a confirmation link that will need to be clicked in order to activate the feedback loop.
11. Spamcop.net
Contact Information: http://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
Required Information: Domain Information
Description: Spamcop.net sends an authorization notice, including login information. Once logged in, the IP range to be monitored can be entered by going to http://spamcop.net/
by Morgan Witt
1. Ensure you have received permission
For all email acquisitions it is essential that you receive online verifiable consent of opt-in. This is easily accomplished through using a closed-loop or double opt-in process. This will drastically reduce the level of spam complaints against your email marketing campaigns. Spam complaint levels are the top metric that the ISP’s look at when making the business decision as to where your mail should be delivered (inbox vs. spam folder).
2. Allow subscribers to easily update their profile information
More than ever, people are managing multiple inboxes. Subscribers are jumping from email client to email client based on ease of use, features, and functionality. Its highly unlikely that subscribers will take the time to provide you their updated email address when they make a switch if the process to do so is a hassle. Make it easy for subscribers to provide updated profile information and customize their subscriptions by providing an email preference center. Link to this preference center in the footer of every email you send.
3. Optimize bounce handling
Whenever an email address bounces a very specific bounce error code is passed back from the domain or ISP it belongs to. This bounce code states the reason for the bounce (ie. spam block, discontinued address, connection issue, etc.) as well as an email address, phone number, or link to a web form that provides additional information. Make sure that your email service provider is processing bounces appropriately based on the error codes that are passed back to them. For example, an address that bounces with an error code that states it is a dead or discontinued account should be flagged as invalid on the first bounce. Sending to a high percentage of dead email addresses can lead to deliverability issues as the ISP’s view this as lack of proper list management.
4. Friendly “from” address and subject lines
The “from” address and subject line of your email campaign are the first things that the subscriber looks at when they are scanning through their inbox. With ever increasing volume of email that your subscribers recieve on a daily basis its essential that the “from” address be consistent and recognizable to mitigate the risk that the email is passed over, deleted, or even worse, marked as spam. The same mentality should be applied to your subject lines. You want to ensure that your brand is referenced along with an attractive offer that will empower your subscribers to open and click through.
5. Get in the address book
A large number of email clients are defaulting images to “off” when an email gets to the inbox. So when your subscriber looks at the email in the preview plane it may have a number of empty boxes in where the images should be. In order to ensure images are turned on when the mail gets to the inbox, it is essential to get your subscribers to add your “from” email address to their address book or “safe senders” list. This will also improve the probability that future emails are delivered directly to the inbox.
Ex. To ensure delivery of future emails please add newsletters@xyz.com to your email address book.
6. Authentication
The “phishing” problem that has plagued the financial services industry spawned authentication technologies to fight online fruad. These technologies are now being leveraged as anti-spam tools. There are two flavors of email authentication: Microsoft’s Sender ID and Yahoo’s Domain Keys. Authentication will allow you to differentiate your email from that of spammers. Email authentication tells the domains that you are sending to that “I am who I say I am” and “I give (enter ESP here) permission to mail on my behalf.” In addition to Microsoft and Yahoo, a handful of the other major ISP’s will be leveraging authentication in the next year including AOL, Gmail, and Comcast.
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