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!

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.

In our opinion, one of the easiest ways for organizations to address these new complexities is to create a replicated marketing database driven from your enterprise customer data management tools.  Rather than trying to make your enterprise tools something that they are typically not meant to be, creating a replicated marketing database provides the security and fully functioning marketing features for integrated electronic and traditional communications to your customer base. 

While you may be concerned about costs, we find that this approach provides significant advantages:

• Typically costs much less than trying to customize your own enterprise system
• Can be launched much quicker and with less hassle than changes to your own system. 
• Immediately offers more features (i.e. Landing pages for customer email and general updates, customer preference centers, activity reporting, demographically enhanced customer data) that would require even more costs and development time if done internally

Given the growing demands for integrated marketing communications, you are likely looking at this area if you haven’t already set a strategy for your organization.  We recommend that you consider this approach when you do.

Feel free to give us a call to discuss options in this area, or listen to our recent webinar How Changing Communications Trends Drive Integrated Marketing ROI for more concrete Direct Marketing Association facts in this area.  You will also find an overview of ICS’s Integrated Communications Platform (ICP) which may be consideration for your business as well.

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

It struck me that the author overlooked some important points to keep in mind when setting-up a profitable paid search budget.

In many cases – including ICS’s – the company has a diverse product / service mix.  So when thinking about what to spend on key paid search terms, don’t just look at the price tag of the search term and the profit margin of the product / service you’re marketing.  Consider search terms that may provide cross-over sales opportunities as well.

Also, ask yourself if you’re using the best possible search term that would provide the highest quality sales leads at the best price… and if you can get some cross-over marketing into other areas of your products and services, then even better.

Chances are there are some lesser cost (and higher sales value) alternatives to that high price search term that could blow your budget’s profitability.

And don’t forget to keep a close eye on your paid search program.  Don’t just set it and forget it.

The great thing is… if your initial keyword selection isn’t giving you the results you thought it would, then you can always adjust your program immediately based on what your response data is telling you.

http://www.dmnews.com/Set-your-search-budget-to-be-based-on-its-profitability/article/139312/

I am sure you can relate this to your every day shopping experiences.  You are shopping at a store or online for something you are looking for.   Through your shopping experience you are exposed to the product or service, but you are just not ready to pull the trigger at this time.  Possibly you want to shop around a bit, or receive additional details on the items you are looking at.  While we tend to think retail, it could be any thing from a new car, to a charitable cause, to a service you need for your business. 

If you haven’t developed a Handraiser channel for your business, you really need to make it a priority.  It is typically not expensive, and it will provide you access to a very productive prospect segment.  We typically see a handraiser Channel converting to customers a 5 to 15 times the best targeted competitive prospects.  Often, they will even outperform your current customers when soliciting new business.

Where do you get started?  Typically business owners will provide an opportunity within their website or retail location for prospects/shoppers to receive more information or to stay in touch with the company.  This can be as simple as a sign up for a newsletter or an opportunity to receive “special value offers” from the company. 

To fully maximize the potential of the Handraiser channel, every prospect / shopper touchpoint should provide an invitation to easily engage in this communication.   Examples of these might include:

• A link on your website that offers prospects an avenue to stay in touch
• Point of Sale within your storefront that invites shoppers to sign up for special offers
• Reference in your marketing efforts (newletter, mass media, targeted media) to go to a landing page to sign up for ongoing special values

Handraiser Data Capture Example

The Email channel is an excellent avenue to communicate with this audience … taking advantage of the low cost and delivery speed of the medium.  

Have you developed a Handraiser channel for your Business?  While many businesses have integrated these systems as a part of the Lead Management process, still the majority of businesses have not.  If you are one of these organizations, you are missing out on a powerful and inexpensive way to develop new customers.

But how do these new marketing tools really compare to the fundamentals in the Digital Services arena like Search Engine Optimization.  As Adam explains below, this is more of a longer term investment and very analytically/metric driven.  While the new social networking tools have their place, SEO has proven to be a constant contributor to targeted digital lead generation in the long run.  Take a read through his thoughts below:

We live in an instant gratification world anymore, and it somehow manages to become even more instantaneous with each passing day. Twitter is a perfect example of this.  If you haven’t “tweeted” yet, you’re probably going to be considered unhip by teenagers and the tech savvy, and you’ll also be left out in the dark as to what everyone you know is doing at every second of the day.  Businesses, of course, have jumped on this bandwagon and are courting followers and fans through these channels and (some better than others) promoting products and services and attempting to build brand loyalty.

Some of us who earned our stripes in more traditional online marketing (does anyone remember SEO, pay per click and banner advertising?) are going to have to continue to get better at selling the value of a service that often seems to be getting no results, or moving at a snail’s pace.  Social media appeals so well to the instant gratification crowd, as you can get huge blasts of traffic through to your site from Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon, but often this success is fleeting.  Twitter can be a great tool to engage customers and prospects, but still lacks a great ability to target.

I’ve spent months, and sometimes years on sites to finally get that high ranking that starts driving the “dream traffic” you want to your site.  The hard part is trying to keep someone paying for this service, when all you can show them is an increased ranking…but no revenue.  The truth is, even for highly targeted terms, being on page one of search results simply isn’t good enough to get a significant portion of traffic.  If you’re not in the top three listings, you’re still not even playing the game.  In competitive markets, getting from 15th to 1st can be incredibly difficult, and may take months or years.  But depending on what product or service that keyword relates to, getting to the top can mean literally thousands of visitors coming through to your site who have already expressly stated they want what you have.

Let’s put it this way, if you sold coffee, this would be the equivalent of magically appearing in front of someone right after they decide, “I need a cup of coffee.”  No trip to Starbucks, or the grocery store to look at competitive products, they ask for coffee and you’re there, and you have the first opportunity to sell.  How much is that worth?  And can you afford not to make that investment?  The truth is, if you don’t, someone else will, and those who do won’t be worrying about jumping on the next digital marketing bandwagon, at least not with the same urgency.

Adam Henige is a Managing Partner at Netvantage Marketing, an ICS Strategic Partner specializing in paid search management, SEO, and web analytics.

Our MarketSmart Technology Suite was able to provide this client with advantages in two distinct areas:

First, our technology platform was able to provide clients with a start up advantage.  Our “object-oriented” approach leverages pre-built modules of functionality.   While we completely customize the application around the unique business processes, our development approach allows us to build solutions for a fraction of the cost, in a fraction of the time of a traditional new build, and with more advanced features right out of the gate.

While startup advantages are critical, the real eye-opener for many clients is the ongoing administrative advantages of today’s technology solutions.  Through the typical lifecycle of marketing programs, ongoing efficiencies will pay even greater dividend for clients:

• Clients can now have direct access to real-time reports right from their desktop — versus having to make a call, connecting with a coordinator and having a report run.  This takes time and the client will likely be charged for the processing.
• Questions and issues can be quickly resolved via administrative access to the system
• Communications can be structured to clients or participants via email versus traditional print and mail communications
• Updates and alerts can be built into the application to notify you when key issues develop
• Customer Fulfillment activity can be electronically managed … saving you hours of administrative logistics (and expense)

While we will see if we win this business, this is another perfect client situation where we can really change the business model for the marketing organization.  Through advanced, data-driven technology, we can reinvent administrative processes … allowing our customers to become more efficient, more productive, and more cost-competitive for their clients.  And similar repeat business will become even more profitable.

Today’s marketing technology solutions directly translate into lower costs and higher customer satisfaction.  If you are still working in an outdated legacy system environment, you may have an uphill battle long-term. And you are likely battling with competitors who have already made the transition.