If you're not segmenting, don't bother advertising - Improve your marketing in operational communications

A new global media report issued in October 2010 by Deloitte has revealed that online advertising is losing sway against more traditional advertising and appears to have only a minor influence on buying behaviour.

When a colleague first presented me with this fact, as written in an article of a well known South African newspaper, I refused to believe it. How is it possible that online advertising can have less impact than traditional advertising, which in many ways has lost its affect on the market through overexposure? Surely online advertising is naturally more targeted than traditional marketing? My naivety seems to have gotten the better of me. After digging a little deeper and paying closer attention to advertising online (which in fact proves the point that I was not taking note of online ads), it seems the majority of online marketing is not targeted at all.

So how does this relate to email?
It naturally follows the same line of thought. If you are including marketing material in your operational communications or sending purely marketing related messages to your customer base and not segmenting and targeting this base accordingly – you are wasting your time!

You have to employ a new strategy for digital advertising if you expect your customers to interact accordingly with your brand. Print and digital marketing are far removed from one another, yet the same methodology is applied by many marketers.

Know your customer & use appropriate trigger points
Create a Customer Lifecycle Management strategy that maps your customer's interactions with your company - from on boarding, management and retention through to the sometimes unavoidable possibility of your customer leaving. Each of these customer phases and the additional interactions they have with your company during this time provides you with vital trigger points, which will enable you to interact further with them, via email, SMS etc.

Every company representative that interacts with your customers has a responsibility to gather additional information. This can happen after the fact e.g. a text message sent to a customer asking them to rate your company's service, following an interaction with your call centre, or during the interaction e.g. asking a customer to participate in a poll or survey from within their monthly eStatement.

The feedback you receive from these interactions goes a long way. Not only will you get to know them better, but it will also give you more insight into their requirements from your brand. Customers expect you to know them and by doing so, prefer that you communicate with them with this knowledge in mind. When you have enough knowledge about your customers, segment your base and start to target your communications.

Over and above this, if you are not communicating effectively and regularly with your customers, you are not top of mind. In the myriad of email and mobile communications we receive on a daily basis; where does that leave your brand?

In short, when you have the tools available to create intelligent, customised communications that target the needs and interests of individual customers – use it. Many of your competitors already are...

Nicola Els
Head of eBilling
www.striata.com

It's all about the data!

The European Email Marketing Conference highlighted the same themes as every other email marketing conference over the last year: the importance of data, relevance, targeting and customer engagement. So I have to ask the question - if we all understand that these topics are important, why are so few companies making significant inroads in these project and process areas?

When I considered why companies aren't progressing to a greater extent in these areas, the answer was simple: data is at the core of every one of the issues highlighted and getting relevant data is easier said than done.

Without the correct data, embarking on a successful email marketing programme is impossible. You need the data in order to remain relevant, target your customer base and to trigger communications - not only when an action is taken, but also based on matching preferences against upcoming events.

What data do you have?
Getting the required data out of company legacy systems can be tough. Add to that the challenge of dealing with people who might not understand the requirement (ever tried explaining to the IT department why it's important that you have all the data?) Once you have the data you need to start slicing and dicing it - a task that could require the skills of a data and/or business analyst, which is a resource that most email marketing departments just don't have available to them. It doesn't end there - the task can get increasingly complex.

Do you have all the information?
Of course the above assumes you have all the data required. For the most part, databases have the bare bones when it comes to information, creating the need to launch campaigns, in order to augment the data on the database. It takes time to get the required information and of course there will be some customers on the database that just won't supply it.

Is the data current?
Another problem is that data ages. For example, preferences could have changed over time or - if your database makes use of age ranges as opposed to birth date - eventually you will no longer know the age of your base. Added to that, people move around and so contact details change. This creates another requirement to launch database updating campaigns.

So what is the solution?
Take it one step and one day at a time. Work with your email service provider to map out the actual data required for your triggered and targeted email campaigns and roll out projects to augment and update the data needed.

Implementing a successful email marketing programme that is relevant, targeted and triggered at customer touch-points takes time. Plan your strategy and focus on the data. Once you have the data, the rest will start falling into place.

Here are some tweet takeaways from the European Email marketing Conference from @tamaragielien: http://www.b2bemailmarketing.com/2010/11/main-takeaways-from-the-european-email-marketing-conference-2010.html

Mia Papanicolaou
www.striata.com

Email, at your service - as always

In the late 70's, Japanese electronics companies introduced the fax machine to the masses and businesses were poised to never buy another stamp again. Over thirty years later, with the number of pages sent per year exceeding 200 billion in the United States alone, I still see the mailman three days a week.

Email made the same promises not so long ago and even though the number of email users will increase to 1.9 billion in the next few years, the only dead medium at this stage is the telegram.

Email is too ingrained in our lives to become a "dead" medium

There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere and at conferences aboutthe future of email, with big names in social media even laying down the gauntlet by declaring it a "dead" medium. Even though there has beenmassive growth in social media registrations, typically surpassing new email uptake, there is still a lot to be said for the faithful email.

Asa service originally intended for "techies", its simplicity has allowedit to evolve alongside newer technologies. From the personal email replacing the informal letter to the invaluable business tool used by every corporate employee, email has become a ubiquitous service in our daily lives. Just a few years ago, email was limited to the work desk and maybe a bulky desktop at home. With the advent of the mobile revolution email has become a vital part of our daily lives, right therein our pockets keeping us in touch (almost) 24 hours a day so it's easyto see how a technology loses its excitement when it becomes so ingrained in our lives.

Email is a necessity

Being ingrained in our everyday lives is, of course, a good thing. It ensures the longevity of the medium as it has long since been upgraded from a convenience to a necessity. Spam is now largely under control with better software, filters and practices giving emails a more "official" feel. This gives the sender not only a duty to uphold the validity of their communication but also an advantage that was non-existent previously. Many customers are now expecting the emails they receive to be worth their while and no other medium provides this freedom.

By allowing targeted information and marketing, transactional data and the ability to receive personalized feedback all to the same inbox, the email address still remains the most important known piece of customer data.

To get the most out of this valuable tool you need to consider all aspects of email including distribution, best practice, effective campaign concepts and appropriatecalls-to-action.

You may own this incredibly valuable piece of customer data but are your email communications maximized for best response?Alex Papadopulosstriata.com