Hot 2010 Marketing Trends Getting Hotter
Filed under: Data Cleansing and Enhancement, Digital Lead Generation, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, Lead Management, List Strategy, Search Engine Marketing, analytics, integrated marketing, paid search
Targeting – Measurement – Channel Integration – Prospecting
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.
Top 10 Email Appending Mistakes to Avoid
Filed under: Data Cleansing and Enhancement, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, List Strategy
This article, Top 10 Email Appending Mistakes to Avoid, from ChiefMarketer.com not only tells you how to avoid email appending mistakes, but also gives helpful tips on what to look for in an Email Marketing Services Provider.
Whether or not you choose ICS for your next email marketing project, I want to make sure that your investment and reputation are protected.
So as you’re putting those finishing touches on your 2010 marketing plans, here are few critical points to consider when choosing an email marketing partner. And while this article focuses on email lists, the same cautionary tips can apply to almost any direct marketing area.
Triggered Communications Raise Email Response Rates and Conversions
Filed under: Email Marketing, General Marketing, Lead Management, List Strategy, Uncategorized, integrated marketing
There has been a lot of discussion from the recent DMA and around ICS regarding Triggered Communications. Why all the buzz? Quite simply it is driven from the successes that larger organizations are starting to see in this area.
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.
Leveraging Legacy “In-Market Shopper” Data for Automotive
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead Management, List Strategy, analytics
It has been an interesting Summer in the Automotive Marketing space. Tough to be in Michigan and not be impacted by the challenges faced to jumpstart this business sector.
The focus of today’s message is using Legacy In Market Shopper data in the Automotive Space. Typically, Automobile Manufacturers use the freshest data coming from sources like CarsDirect and Autobytel when prospecting for automotive sales. This makes sense, as they are likely to still be shopping for a vehicle … and influencing the prospect to consider your brand is a proven email and direct marketing strategy.
Through the past few years, we have developed an enhanced legacy database for automotive prospecting. While this might not make sense to you at first, our experience with the data has proven it to be a source of significant power for automotive prospecting:
- First, In-Market Shopper data represents a massive pool of people that historically shop for new cars. As we know in this space from our years of registration data experience, historic new car shoppers are most likely still new car buyers. That factor by itself is powerful.
- Second, Brand History is a very important indicator of future buying preferences. If you have a history of considering Mazda (for example), you are very likely to consider the brand for future new car considerations.
- Finally, with Enhanced Data, we can utilize shopping history and clustering products such as Mosaic or Personicx to analyze and identify those top clusters of the brand competitive set of the product you are focusing on. A fairly straight forward approach that has proven to yield excellent results.
While legacy In-Market Shopping data by itself is considered weak, we can use our experience and data enhancement capabilities to turn this data into very productive contributors to your email and direct marketing initiative. While you can take my word for it, I encourage you to consider testing these approaches in your next email or direct marketing intiative.
Are you ready for “Cash for Clunkers”?
Filed under: Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, General Marketing, List Management, List Strategy, integrated marketing
According to the Detroit News on July 2, 2009, June auto sales show that consumers are holding-off on purchases until the Cash for Clunkers program gets started.
“Consumers encouraged by promising economic signs headed back to dealer showrooms last month, but sales sputtered in late June as prospective buyers waited for the government to introduce its cash-for-clunkers incentives.”
This was a timely article for me as we were just putting the finishing touches on ICS AutoNet’s new data card for our “Cash for Clunkers” prospect list.
Obviously, it’s in the best interest of these consumers who qualify for this program to wait for the “clunker cash.” As soon as this program starts, they’ll be ready to purchase.
So, hopefully auto marketers and dealers realize that the time to connect with these consumers is right now.
Through ICS AutoNet’s self-reported data, our “Cash for Clunkers” list allows dealers access to auto ownership and leasing information that State DMVs can no longer provide. Plus, we specifically designed this file to target consumers who may qualify for the government program. We can connect dealers to owners of vehicles with targeted makes, models and vehicle years from 2002 and earlier within a specified radius of the dealership.
Our list is derived from a comprehensive master file compiled from multiple Shelby-compliant sources and offers more than 100 million records. Each month, a million fresh records are added to the data file – making it an effective marketing tool for one-time promotions or ongoing campaigns.
ICS AutoNet’s Self-reported data file has been successfully applied in automotive marketing, consumer marketing and service-related programs. Following is an overview of available selects:
- Make and Model
- Vehicle Year 2002 and before
- Odometer
- Postal and telephone; Email available upon request.
- Owner demographics and lifestyle (age, income and geography)
List pricing starts at $115 / M. Please note that we include make, model, vehicle year and geography at no extra charge. A complete data card is available for more information.
