Archive for June, 2012

The Future Will Be Personalized

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

In 1999 I championed one of the first personalized newsletter initiatives online. Our growing interactive entertainment hub had nearly four million unique visitors, and we wanted to increase customer visits, engagement, and page views. We also had formidable competition and wanted to create a vehicle that would drive reader affinity. A newsletter that delivered targeted compelling content was the solution. (Remember that there were no smart phones or social sign-on tools in 1999.)

It took months of engineering and a genius engineer to create a newsletter that allowed each reader to choose both the content and frequency for their newsletter. Servers ran at full speed all night to deliver these complex newsletters; a task that today’s IT infrastructure can do in minutes or hours. As a result, customer registrations increased, as did clicks, page views, advertising impressions, and most importantly, revenue.

Today, this type of personalization – and the monetization of personalization – is an ongoing challenge for marketers.  Many marketers have the email engine, but not the comprehensive repository of customer data required to deliver compelling, personalized marketing.  Some marketers have both the engine and the customer data, but are lacking the social graph data and analytics that would take their outgoing marketing to the next level. (more…)

The Intelligent Enterprise – Optimal Analytics Requires Data Integration

Monday, June 18th, 2012

As today’s companies explore the possibilities of data collection for business optimization, the vision of an ‘intelligent enterprise” is gaining converts. Intelligent enterprises use enterprise analytics in a detailed, integrated way across the entire company – an approach that offers a host of benefits.

Enterprise analytics itself is a collection of capabilities that can span your company. They include organizational capabilities, human resources, marketing, and technical capabilities. An integrated strategy for these capabilities has clear advantages. For example, research indicates a relationship between the use of analytics and business performance. Davenport and Harris (2007) found that the majority of high-performing businesses strategically apply analytics in their daily operations and 77% of high performers indicate having above average analytic capability within the industry.

When you integrate analytics from different departments, you offer power and insight into new opportunities.  Marketing, for example, will be able to utilize their data and share it with the rest of the enterprise.

When done properly, integrated data from other departments can fuel more targeted offers from marketing, reduce costs, and increase profits. It can help your organization better understand your customers. It can help you to identify quality customers, acquire these customers, and retain these customers. It may even unify your business strategy.   (more…)

Behavioral Segmentation: Why You Should Care

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

Are you baffled by bounce rates?  Pained by unexplained exits and dropped shopping carts?  Frustrated by low conversions?  You’re not alone, and there are many reasons for these issues. Most commonly, your consumer is responding to irrelevant content, out-of-context offers, or hard-to-use interfaces. And as more customers become accustomed to tightly focused information that is directly relevant to what they want and need at any moment in time, the harder it is to make sure your message gets through.

Very often, the root issue of the “irrelevant content” problem will be the approach you’ve taken to audience segmentation and targeting. In a world where increasingly tech-savvy consumers expect personalization, traditional methods of targeting – particularly demographic attributes – are simply insufficient. You need to know more. A lot more.  And then, you need a way to use everything you know to serve your customers information that will encourage the behavior you want: repeat visits, more time on your site, and more purchases.

Understanding consumers based on their membership in behavioral segments is a powerful step toward unlocking the personalized 1:1 marketing capabilities that will help you get results. By tracking customer behavior on your site, and correlating it to other data you have (or can easily obtain) about those customers, you can develop many more specific segments that do a much better job of telling you who you are selling to and what they may want.  These segments are also much better predictors of future purchase behavior, which is exactly what you want. (more…)

The New Customer Satisfaction Scorecard

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Today, the Customer Satisfaction Scorecard is changing at break-neck speed and many brands are being left in the dust.

What is causing the change in the scorecard’s DNA? Consumer expectations that go beyond the traditional bare bones of customer satisfaction categories: product/service, delivery, price, customer services, etc.  This new set of expectations is being driven by consumers’ participation in the digital space – from social networks, to gaming platforms, to mobile devices.

The new Customer Satisfaction Scorecard categories include brands’ ability to play in the digital space and:

  • Show up and bring their A game: Consumers expect brands to “show up” whether it’s the social network du jour or mobile device of their choice.  They expect brands to bring their A game by employing  creativity in everything from innovative user experiences on Facebook,  to engaging contests on Pinterest, to full-fledged shopping experiences via smartphone or tablet….and at minimum, they expect optimized mobile websites. (more…)

Map to Your Consumer Touch-Points

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

Achieving a state of marketing maturity in what would generally be accepted as a proven channel is not a small accomplishment. To replicate this success in multiple channels and then to expand into emerging channels requires significant understanding of your consumer’s multiple touch-points. A fragmentation of consumer experiences has created “opportunities” for brands, however, the initial reality is brands simply aren’t able to keep up with the demands these new channels have on their organizational structures and processes.

Proof that the consumer has more opportunity than ever before to experience your brand isn’t hard to find. A quick search for #yourbrand on Instagram, Twitter and even Google+ will reveal the expansion. Even in recently emergent channels, like Facebook, the challenge continues to evolve. As consumption shifts to mobile for this platform, even cutting edge experiences must evolve to stay up-to-speed with consumer behavior.

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Why Customer Loyalty Programs Matter More Now Than Ever

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

If stakeholders within your organization still view customer loyalty programs as purely a promotional marketing expense, or worse, a margin killer, they’re sorely mistaken. In today’s omni-channel retail environment, strategy-infused loyalty programs can be amortized across the organization to: fuel sales; inform customer insights; amplify brand awareness; accelerate promotions; and most importantly, to maintain an ongoing dialogue with customers.

Why do many organizations still shudder at the thought of implementing a customer loyalty program? Well, because they don’t understand the new mechanics of customer loyalty. Who’s doing it right?

Nordstrom’s Fashion Rewards program not only benefits the customer with “points” that can be redeemed with or for purchases, but they unlock services that play into Nordstrom’s core strength and brand promise: customer service. High-touch and valued services such as complimentary alterations, concierge service, access to exclusive events, free shipping, and more.  (more…)

What Can Your Brand Give Away?

Monday, June 4th, 2012

In 1984 an architect named Richard Saul Wurman held an event that brought together some of the best minds in design and technology. The goal was simple: To provide a platform where these thinkers could share their most powerful ideas. The invitation-only event included demos of a new technology called the “compact disc” as well as previews of advanced 3D graphics from Lucas Arts.

The event was a hit and would become so popular, that every year some of the most brilliant minds in the world (people who typically got paid to appear at events) would pay thousands of dollars themselves to attend – if they could score an invite.

The event continued for a number of years, growing more exclusive and more expensive, when one day the organizers decided to tape the conference and put it online for anyone to watch – for free. They also gave away the name of the conference – TED – and allowed organizers in cities around the world to put on similar events free of charge. Today, the TED brand, is more exclusive, and at the same time more well-known and available than it ever was. And organizers accomplished all of this by giving it away for free.

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