MindFireInc Spotlight
Fast Fact
According to a 2009 DMA Survey titled "Response Rates," marketers are diversifying their budgets to derive more value out of their print investments.
Sales Tip / Learning
MindFireInc has provided different channels that you and your company's salesteam can use to learn how you can best leverage the power of technology to create highly impactful campaigns and grow your business. Webinars, Social Media Networks, and Knowledge Base are great places where you can find helpful information and valuable insight.
Webinars - MindFireInc has a series of webinars that are hosted on a regular basis. The topics of these webinars are segmented into functional areas within your business. The monthly "Coach's Corner" is primarily targeted at helping owners and sales people learn about selling the MindFIreInc technology. Topics include best practices, industry case studies, and sales tips. While Coach's Corner webinars are exclusive to MindFireInc's Solution Partners, there are other monthly webinars with highly educational content that you can attend or watch the recorded version. Here is a list of some these webinars:
- Creating successful solution sales professionals- selling integrated marketing services
- The power of personalization- real campaigns response rates reports in 12 different vertical markets
- Transforming from printer to marketing service provider offering high value services
- How you can leverage MindFireInc's business development tools to grow your business
- Expand your sales in new vertical markets
- Integrated marketing for revenue growth
Since you may not be available for every webinar, MindFireInc has also started to create a library of recorded webinars that can be accessed on demand from the resources tab in your control panel or from MindFireInc's News and Events webpage at: http://www.mindfireinc.com/info/news.html.
Social Media - In the fast paced world of cross media marketing, new concepts and ideas arise every day. To create a community to share thoughts and ideas, MindFireInc has created a number of social media outlets that allow you to participate in the conversation. You can follow MindFireInc on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook, and join MindFireInc on LinkedIn. Please connect to us at the links below so that you can join the conversation.
Twitter - @mindfireinc
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/MindFireInc/129600142577
Linked In - http://www.linkedin.com/companies/mindfireinc?trk=co_search_results&goback=%2Ecps_1256250163830_1
Knowledge Base - Many of the most common questions that arise about the MindFireInc platform can be answered using the MindFireInc Knowledge Base. By accessing your control panel and selecting the resources tab, you can have access to all of the recent release notes, FAQ, and help documents.
Tech Tip
The ongoing surge in social media has created as many questions as it has answers. Many marketers recognize that social media has an important role in their communication efforts, but they cannot understand how to monetize the "new media." The MindFireInc technology has a simple method to help marketers measure the effectiveness of promotions launched through social media channels.
In most multi-channel campaigns, a good strategy is to version landing pages based on what you know about the respondent. This may be as simple as providing one page for clients and one for prospects. This same concept can be used to help measure results from social media outlets. Recently, a MindFireInc Solution Partner wanted to help a client build results from a cross media campaign. The Solution Partner created a landing page using a sub domain of the primary campaign. This URL simply had mycampaign.com/twitter. This page welcomed people by acknowledging that they are a twitter user. A similar secondary page was created for Facebook users.
The client was then able to "tweet" a message about the great offer that was available. Within the tweet they included a tiny URL that linked back to the sub domain that was specifically designed for twitter users. A similar post was done in Facebook driving "friends" back to the unique Facebook landing page within the MindFireInc environment.
This process took less than fifteen minutes for the service provider to implement. While the amount of work is relatively simple, the value to the client is huge. Now the client can directly measure how many "followers" from Twitter engaged in the campaign. Once again, by solving a business issue for the client you can build value in your solution. In this case the business issue was how to measure the effectiveness of social media.
Data Management
Cross media marketing continues to show stellar results in client management and lead nurturing. But with the increased data that is collected through cross media, some clients are looking for improved integration with their CRM (customer relationship management) software. Here are three methods on how to ingrate data:
The simplest and perhaps the most common way to integrate data back into a CRM is by providing a client with a "flat file" at the end of a campaign. This flat file is nothing more than an Excel spread sheet that can then be imported by the client. The advantage of this process is that it is very simple and requires no special coding. The down side of this process is that the data can take weeks or months to be integrated.
The second level of integration is using the automated data output function of the MindFireInc platform. This automated output will take a flat file and "dump" the file into an email or FTP site. By passing information to an FTP site on a daily basis, many CRMs will have the ability to "consume" this information directly into the database by watching the FTP folder. The advantage of this is that data is input on a regular basis. The downside of this process is there is still a lag between the respondent hitting their micro site and when the data is input. This also requires your client to have a certain level of expertise to configure the CRM.
The most sophisticated integration would use the MindFireInc API (Application Programming Interface). The API allows two different software applications to speak a common language when passing information back and forth. The advantage of this interface is that data is passed real time into the CRM. This allows companies to use existing business infrastructure to route leads and track customers. The disadvantage to this type of integration is the complexity. Many Solution Partners may not have the technical skills on staff to complete this type of integration. Fortunately, the MindFireInc professional services team is very familiar with this type of integration. They have completed several integrations using the API, and are particularly comfortable with Salesforce.com.
Case Study
A MindFireInc Solution Partner effectively supported a university on a successful enrollment campaign that improved results 10x over historical levels. The marketing service provider was challenged with several goals for this multi-channel marketing campaign including, increasing enrollment in a declining market, measuring the effectiveness of multiple marketing channels of communication, and gathering information about respondents. The marketing channels that had to be measured included print, online advertising, direct mail, and email. In addition, the university wanted to test different offers and messages to learn what would be most effective.
The target audience was both current students and new prospects. The primary objective was to identify which program each respondent would be most interested in for the university's summer program. The tactics included a one to one marketing campaign consisting of email, direct mail, and a personalized URL. The campaign also included both online and print advertising. The initial touch of direct mail was versioned by customer segment and tested different content. The versions segment high school students, undergraduate and graduate students. Each of these segments could be measured in real time by the university's marketing team using the MindFireInc client dashboard.
Once the respondent hit the personalized landing page, he/she was asked a series of questions to help identify which summer program they would best fit. This process gathered specific information on which programs the university should plan for next semester.
The campaign returned exceptional results. Online enrollment was up nearly 100 students from the same period the year before. The campaign also drove more than 700 students to informational sessions provided by the university. Finally, the survey questions helped the university clearly understand at the prospect level what they should be marketing.
