We’ll show you how easy it is to set-up behaviorally triggered email messages that deliver the right message to the right subscriber at the exact moment he or she is most engaged and likely to respond using Listrak’s automated event triggered messaging solution.

You will learn how to:

- Add a powerful, automated email responder system to your integrated marketing mix

- Trigger specific email responses according to your customer’s behaviors or targeted events

- Have one-on-one conversations with each of your customers and prospects

- Increase your email’s relevancy, open rates and your sales

Participation in this webinar is free, but space is limited. So, reserve your seat today.

While we’re putting the finishing touches on our webinar, here are five tips from Target Marketing Magazine for Triggered Communications success.

• Thoughtfully defining your triggers – this is the heart of your program
• Prepare your sales team to handle these leads – without making customers feel like “they’re being stalked.”  You want to your customer to be loyal to your brand and feel, “Hey, this company really gets me and understands my needs.”  That’s a big difference from a creepy, “I’m-being-watched feeling!”
• Put contact frequency in your process so you don’t bug your best customer and burn-out your sales team
• Continually improve your triggered-based program using feedback from your best sales people

I’m excited about what Triggered Communications can do to grow our clients’ businesses and I’m looking forward to meeting you online on April 15 for the Webinar!  I hope you can join us!

I like Target Marketing Magazine’s research summary overviewing the growth factors in SEM, SEO, online advertising (a.k.a., Pay-Per-Click) and Email Marketing which are among the listed 16 online marketing trends.

More than 80% of marketers are using paid search and SEO and plan to expand search into more segments. As consumers search more online, Google’s AdWord inventory continues to grow.  All music to marketers’ ears as you expand your paid search and SEO efforts. 

Online advertising, “performance-based” media buys and integrated email marketing are also slated for substantial growth through 2014.

What’s the Difference? As marketers, we can get into a rut with our buzz words and even use some words interchangeably. This can inadvertently affect our strategies.

For example, you’re going to tackle your Web site very differently if you’re thinking about attracting qualified leads and how to manage those leads versus trying to get the most possible “hits” to your site.

More Leads, Better Qualified, Now What? Well, if you were opening a storefront, you would make sure that everything was organized and setup properly before flipping-on the “open” sign. The same is true for your Web site. You need to make sure that you’re ready to handle those online leads once they’re in your “door.” Make sure your sales funnel structure is ready to handle the leads properly – or you can loose that prospect forever.

Also, I can’t say it enough – INTEGRATION. To get the most out of your Web site and online marketing, you need to integrate across all of the channels that touch your customer – both online and offline.

These four trends are what ICS is all about and what we’ve been preaching for increased sales lift, better Marketing ROI and overall business growth.  Now, direct marketers across the country are finally starting to see these four tenets as "hot trends for 2010" according to Deliver Magazine.   

Targeting — With our advanced analytics, data management tools and direct marketing experience, you can target on a one-to-one level with specific customers and prospects using a tailored offer at the right time in the customer’s preferred channel.  Plus, you can focus your marketing dollars on targeting your most valuable prospects. 

Measurement/Analysis – Data not only gives you the clearest view of your customers for targeted marketing, but collecting and analyzing data is critical in matching-back sales to specific marketing efforts.  Now more than ever, marketers are on the hook to prove that every dollar you spend is growing the business. 

Integration –  Marketers who execute cross channel campaigns experience a 50 – 400% better response rate than singularly focused campaigns.  To learn about integration trends and what leading companies are doing in multichannel integration, view our on-demand webinar:  "Transforming Practices in Integrated Marketing Communications."

Prospecting — I like the quote in this article, "Today, everybody at every stage of life is open to marketing."  However, you can’t have great sales lead generation without well-honed targeting AND channel integration.  Lead generation is where it all comes together… in my opinion, this is where this article misses the 2010 mark BIG TIME.  Plus, online lead generation didn’t even get a mention!   SEO, SEM and paid search (where customers are actively searching your product/service) are only getting hotter in 2010 and beyond.

Sometimes the most targeted campaign is still missing something.

By: Adam Henige

While more and more organizations have at least begun to dip their toes into the world of search marketing, some still fail to see how it will fit into a traditional marketing campaign or precisely how it supplements more traditional methods.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have this discussion in-person with a variety of audiences. It’s been well documented how successful email marketing and direct marketing campaigns can be, particularly when built on excellent lists.

Add onto your mail/email marketing with traditional media buys in print/radio/television with highly targeted demographic ads and you’ve really covered your bases, right? Well, from a push marketing perspective, you sure have (and we’re not even getting into newer media like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook). 

But, what about those people whom you just can’t seem to target?

There will always be a group of people who want what you’re selling, but either don’t know they can get it, or don’t know that you provide it. But when they finally decide to look for a solution, how will they find you?

Well, think about it yourself. How do you find things? Conservative studies have shown that from a retail perspective over 42% of people find Web sites by using search engines. More importantly, compared to the other forms of advertising, a Web site provides you with a stationary audience.

The more complex, innovative or differentiated your product is, the more important it is to provide a detailed and immersive Web experience. Companies who get this have integrated their marketing strategies - using traditional media as a vehicle that often supports a strategic Web experience that captures and maintains the interest of potential customers, hopefully for multiple visits.

So while traditional media can certainly be an effective tool to finding your target audience and generating leads and sales, online search helps widen the net.

Especially in this day and age — it’s just not an option to leave money on the table by missing customers who may literally be heading to Google and asking for your product, which is why digital marketing makes more and more sense as a piece of the marketing mix.

Adam Henige is Managing Partner of Netvantage Marketing, a Strategic Partner of ICS located in East Lansing, Michigan.

While email response rates are continuing to be challenged, Triggered Communications are a key component to adding relevancy to the communications.   And just like any form of communications, the more relevant and engaging, the more likely it is that you will get your message not only opened, but responded to.

A new conversation can be triggered from almost any customer touch point:

• External factors – website forms, shopping cart abandonment, customer service, etc.
• Messages – email activity (opens, clicks, unsubscribe, etc.), address change, etc.
• List – subscribe, profile update, and address change
• Link – specific link in email message

Once the “customer or prospect event” is captured, you can set a communications cadence around the key attributes of this event.  These campaigns allow you to communicate with each subscriber individually based on his or her behavior or response.  Because the messages are related to the specific action taken by the recipient, the conversations are natural and progressive, not sporadic and interruptive. 

For example, a prospect clicked on an email to find out more information on your product, but did not take advantage of the offer.  In the case of triggered communications, we can capture all “like prospects” and design communications cadences specific to this marketing situation. 

These automated campaigns can be structured to follow up in a period of time after their initial response, or even so many days before the offer expires.   Content can be specific to the link they clicked, or specific to the fact that they opened the email and didn’t click on a link.  Testing strategies can be easily incorporated into the process as well.

According to Forrester Research’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2009-2014, marketers are taking on a more strategic leadership role in organizations because of their close connections to customers and prospects.   Transactional, triggered email communications are on the rise because they improve open, click and conversion rates dramatically.  

This builds off from the marketing foundation that a “handraiser” is one of your most effective prospect segments (from a percentage basis).  Adding relevant and engaging follow-up communications will nuture leads through the sales cycles to drive more sales.  

Give one of our account managers (or myself) a call to discuss triggered communications in more detail.  

2009 Direct Marketing Association's Annual Conference Oct. 17-21

I can’t remember a year where we have had as much change in our marketing world.  With the economy struggling, this alone has had significant impact.  Add onto this the evolution of new digital tools such as Search, Social Media and Mobile and this year’s Direct Marketing Association’s national convention is bound to be interesting. 

Yet my initial day at the conference reinforces much of what I thought.  While  new tools and mediums evolve, much of the foundation for targeted marketing remains the same:

• Test, test, test:   Continues to be the foundation for targeted media.  With today’s powerful analytics, you can set up your testing strategies to optimize your marketing efforts whether it is your direct marketing acquisition effort, search or your web site. 
• Permission-based:  Permission-based marketing comes in the form of many names now (i.e. opt-in, preference centers, social media invitations), but a constant thread has been forming in marketing for over a decade.  Today’s marketers realize that putting the consumer in the driver’s seat of their communications is the key in today’s world.  Now there are just more targeted consumer options to opt-into than ever before.
• Technology Centric:  Technology continues to drive our advances on many fronts.  More user friendly tools to use without tapping the IT department.  Increased abilities to personalize the medium to known customer attributes, easier and lower cost tools to manage all these efforts.
• Integration:  A couple of decades ago, it was integrating targeted marketing with mass media to deliver improved performance.  Today, these integration points are still important, but can be taken much further.  Web site integration, retail point of sale, digital targeted media campaigns are now all thrown into the mix as well. 

My point in all this is that while times are changing, likely 99.9+ percent of what we see at this year’s DMA will be based on the foundation already set.   Should be an interesting time to see how the industry is doing and where the experts see it all going.  From my first day in attendance, what is being touted as “new” looks very familiar.

But as marketers, that satisfaction is forever elusive when it comes to Web site optimization and making sure you’re being strategic across online and offline mediums.  Why?  Because your job should never be considered “done.” 

At ICS, we’re constantly looking at our Web site optimization AND how our online marketing efforts integrate with our offline efforts… as well as, doing the same for our clients!

Maybe that’s why I thought you would like to see this article on 5 Ways to Get Your Website Up to Speed.  Don’t let the title mislead you.  It’s not just about online marketing, but more about multichannel integration and amending the age-old saying to:  “targeting the right consumer with the right offer at the right time via the right channel.”

If you haven’t done so already, add these action items in this article to your “to-do” list and start reaping the sales benefits.  If you’re not sure how to get started, just drop us a line and we can help. 

http://www.insidedirectmail.com/article/are-you-prepared-moment-your-prospect-whose-interest-piqued-your-mail-piece-visits-your-website-409180_1.html