Triggered Communications Webinar & 5 Tips for Success

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Triggered Communications is a great way to increase your email marketing’s timeliness, relevancy and ROI.   To help get you started, we’re hosting a Webinar on April 15, 2010 at 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. EST — “How to Use Event Triggered Communications to Increase Email Relevancy, Response and Sales.”

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!

All Aboard the SEM Bandwagon!

A recent Forrester study shows what all of us already know.  Marketers will continue to shift dollars from traditional media and traditional direct marketing to online direct marketing. 

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.

Hot 2010 Marketing Trends Getting Hotter

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

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

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.  

2010 DMA Should Be Interesting

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.

Advantages of Creating an Integrated Marketing Database for Your Business

Integrated marketing is creating growing complications for most businesses to manage their customer data.  Customer Email data management requirements for opt-outs and bounces are often difficult to maintain, and creating intelligent landing pages for customers to provide you with updated customer data adds yet another level of complexity.

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.

Leveraging Legacy “In-Market Shopper” Data for Automotive

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. 

Multichannel Integration and Optimization: The Direct Marketer’s To-Do List that’s NEVER Done

I’m sure you’re right there with me…there’s nothing more satisfying than crossing-off action items on my to-do lists – whether it’s in the office, at home and those places where both worlds blend. 

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

Are you ready for “Cash for Clunkers”?

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.

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