MindFireInc Spotlight
How can cross media affect the opinions of consumers you ask? It’s easy….start a conversation that is relevant: variable data printing, email marketing and personalized landing pages all have one thing in common. They are all channels that have the ability to be targeted and relevant. Each of these mediums can help influence the conversation that happens online by creating a unique experience for each recipient. A more personalized and relevant experience will influence how customers feel about a brand. Here are a few ways that cross media is being used to impact online dialog:
Targeting - Target marketing has been around for years, but as data has become more readily available, targeting in turn has become more precise. By driving people to a personalized website, you can micro-target prospect’s interests and create a more fulfilling experience. By delivering content that has value and creates interest, your prospect will see the benefits of having open communication with you. By opening these lines of communication, you can gather more data about your client’s interest. This in turn, allows you to develop better segmentation and stronger personas. The more precise you are with your segmentation, the more successful you will be in influencing consumer opinion.
Gather information – You may not have enough information to be truly targeted in your approach to marketing. In this case, leveraging a survey engine may be the perfect way to develop segmentation. Ask a single question to find out what area of interest prospects have. Then follow up with content that supports that area of interest. Let respondents “self select” their area of interest and you will be able to have a relevant conversation.
Social Media – This seems to be the buzz word throughout the marketing world today. Cross media can be an excellent way to help build communities. For example, a MindFireInc service provider recently built a campaign that asked every respondent to join the non-profit’s Facebook cause page. This can be made even more relevant by using the survey engine to find out where the respondent “lives” online and then offering them the opportunity to join the community that most closely matches their interest. This may be LinkedIn for a business person and Facebook for the stay at home parent. By allowing him or her to join your community where they “live” online, you begin to communicate that you understand who they are.
Satisfaction Surveys – We are becoming increasingly more vocal about our experiences online. It used to be that you would tell a few friends if you had a good experience at a restaurant. Today you can post a review that thousands will see. As marketers, you need to make sure that you are part of the conversation. One simple way to accomplish this is to use a cross media survey engine as a way to measure customer satisfaction. Be sure that there is a process in place to address those consumers that are not happy. Also, let consumers know that their opinions matter and that you value them as a client.
2009 was a year unlike most of us have seen in our careers. The economic climate created a new reality, not only in marketing, but in business in general. While some companies failed, others became stronger. While the full financial impact of the strengthening has not yet been felt, you can see evidence of improvement everywhere. Businesses run lean now. Excess has been eliminated, and good operators pay even more attention to their organizations. Here are some of the key lessons we learned in 2009:
Strategy Matters – In years past, you could send out a variable direct mail piece with a Personalized URL (pURL) printed on it and expect to get a reasonable response. In 2009, things changed a bit. Last year, we learned that strategy matters even more today. Customer segmentation drove the most significant changes on strategy. It also was a year that many new communication channels became more integrated, most notably social media. Integrated communication between print, email, personalized URLs, and social media became even more popular over the year.
Email marketing still works. - While marketers looked for opportunities to improve ROI, many went back to tried and true email marketing. Throughout the industry, results stayed strong for well executed campaigns that drove the right message to the right person at the right time. This method of marketing performed even better when tied to a micro-site or personalized URLs. The ability to use electronic communication to nurture leads became more evident in 2009.
Social media is here to stay - Many markets still do not understand how they will use social media, but they recognize the opportunity. This was a year that early adopters created some real traction in social media. New ways to measure the social media ROI began to pop up, and many campaigns included social as a component.
Looking ahead to 2010 is exciting. Most economists agree that recovery will continue in 2010. While it may be slow, most people are optimistic that things are improving. In looking at the marketing climate in 2010, we have a few predictions.
Companies are listening - Most national brands, and many local companies, have recognized changes in how business in done and have once again put the consumer first. This means they are interested in what consumers think, where and how they communicate, and how to engage them. In 2010 more companies will be soliciting feedback from their customers. They will also be monitoring blogs, social media, and rating sites to see what the sentiment is for their product or service.
Integration is critical - Looking ahead at 2010, we see that a customer centric view of the world will continue to be the foundation of many marketing strategies. It will become even more important that disparate software systems communicate with each other so that customer data can be leveraged across multiple channels. This is an excellent opportunity to leverage the MindFireInc API to help tie together systems.
Last month we discussed how important it is to clearly define key measurements before a campaign is deployed. As a service provider, you can help facilitate the development of those metrics and close the gap between sales and marketing. You can generate conversation between sales and marketing. You should ask sales questions like:
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What do you consider to be a sales ready lead?
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Who is the ideal prospect for you?
By having sales commit to these simple questions, you now have a profile of the perfect prospect to deliver to them. Assuming marketing delivers prospects that match that profile, a good sales team should be satisfied with the leads.
What about marketing? One of the biggest complaints heard from corporate marketing groups is that sales representatives do not follow up on the leads that are delivered. When talking with marketing groups, ask them what they expect from their sales team. Ask them questions like:
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How quickly do you think leads should be followed up on?
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How many times should you try to reach a prospect?
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When is a lead dead?
By understanding what all of the “internal” clients expect, you are now in a position to have significant influence over the entire process. You can now encourage the two teams to work together to craft a prospect SLA (Service Level Agreement).
This children’s charity had a few specific goals for their annual appeal. First and foremost, they wanted to raise revenue for their family of charities. Second, they wanted to learn more about their donors so that they could effectively communicate with them. Finally, they wanted to develop their online community through Facebook.
This campaign included an interesting strategy. The non-profit partnered with a few large corporate donors to create a program called $5 for 5 minutes. The strategy was simply to get potential donors to take a one question survey. In exchange for answering the question, the corporate donors would donate $5. This campaign was promoted through email, direct mail and social media. Each recipient was driven back to a personalized URL.
The personalized URLs only included two pages. The main landing page was actually a customized profile page. It simply asked for the person’s name, email, and asked them to answer one question. This question was based around which cause they were most interested in. Each of the causes related directly to one of the family of charities. The goal here was to raise $5 per response, but more importantly, create a way to segment future communications. The second page in the online experience was a thank you page that allowed them to refer a friend. They were encouraged to send this on to raise another $5. They also had the opportunity to join a Facebook cause page.
The results are still compiling, but the initial data is nothing short of impressive. The original list included 12,900 previous donors. The response showed a total of 422 completed surveys after only two weeks. This represented many previous donors, but more importantly, it represented 173 new donors that came through the "refer a friend" function. Total donation amounts are not available, but it is expected that donations will continue to arrive through the middle of January.
