SILVERPOP
TREND
1 Abandonment
Remarketing Moves Up the Funnel.............4
TREND 2 Digital
Acquisition Meets the Physical World..............5
TREND 3 Actionable
Data Becomes a Key Difference Maker...............6
TREND 4 Personalized
Websites Move Beyond Amazon and Netflix..............7
TREND 5 Location
Marketing 2.0 Arrives...........8
Video: iBeacon and the Next
Generation of Location-Based Marketing............8
TREND 6 Buyer Intelligence Is No Longer Limited to the Elite.....................9
TREND 7 Marketers Become the Architects of the Customer Experience....10
Video: Creating a Connected Customer Experience.............10
BONUS TRENDS
Marketers Take
Testing to New Levels
Andrew Kordek, Co-founder, Trendline Interactive.......................................................11
Being Relevant Won’t
Be Enough
Steve Kellogg, Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia............................................11
Marketing Silos
Continue to Dissolve
Zachary Notes, Organic Search Analyst, UnCommon Goods..........................................12
Marketing Automation
Expands Its Footprint
David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates Inc................................................................12
Conclusion......................................................................................................................13
Last year, Silverpop declared 2013 the year of the
customer. Well, consider the customer revolution under way. With buyers privy
to more information, more access and more choice than ever, lower prices and
better products have become little more than minimum requirements.
Given
that landscape, how can businesses distinguish themselves from the pack?
Consider that visionary companies like Apple, Lexus and Amazon.com have
transcended prices and features to create compelling and fulfilling customer
experiences. These companies have rewritten the rules of customer relationships
by leveraging every touch point and every interaction to create an experience
that is convenient, fun and even meaningful. They’ve embraced the customer
revolution and are raising customer expectations for every other business.
It’s an approach than can lead to greater loyalty
and revenue. One recent study reported that 83 percent of consumers are willing
to spend more on a product or service if they feel a personal connection to the
company — and one fifth said they would pay 50 percent more if they felt the
company put the customer first1.
The good news is that in 2014, you don’t have to
be a multibillion-dollar company with global brand recognition to deliver a
super-personalized, one-to-one customer experience. In this white paper, our
experts outline seven key trends for 2014, plus tactics you can implement to
make sure you’re shifting your technology and strategies to address the
customer revolution. In addition, several third-party experts weigh in with
their predictions for 2014.
You’ll find a common theme running through these
trends — an emphasis on building a connected, unique customer experience for
every person with whom you do business. It starts with listening to the ways
customers and prospects are interacting with you — whether it’s on your
website, in your mobile app, via email or SMS, or in your store — and then
using these behaviors to fuel real-time communications and content unique to
each individual.
2014 is here, and the
customer is more in control than ever. Are you ready?
TREND 1: ABANDONMENT REMARKETING MOVES UP THE FUNNEL
Loren
McDonald, Vice President of Industry Relations, Silverpop
In 2013, cart abandonment remarketing crossed the
chasm and became a mainstream tactic for retailers and ecommerce companies. So,
assuming you’ve started to realize some success with a cart abandonment
program, where can you go in 2014?
Perhaps you’ve noticed that while cart abandonment
campaigns typically yield off-the-chart conversion rates since the contacts are
so close to purchasing, the downside is that the number of people who fill up
your carts comprises a relatively small percentage of the total people visiting
your site.
With that in mind, one possibility is to move up
the funnel to browse remarketing. For most companies, there’s a huge number of people
browsing on your site every day who have previously established an email
relationship with you, whether it be by subscribing to your promotional emails,
registering an account or making a previous purchase. These people have already
established that they have some affinity for your brand, yet most companies
don’t remarket to them.
In 2014, the best marketers will be taking
advantage of this revenue-generating opportunity and initiating browse
abandonment campaigns aimed at nurturing select Web visitors toward a purchase.
From a technical perspective, this requires that you insert Web tracking code
on your pages that’s integrated with your ecommerce and email platforms. Your
tracking code — such as Silverpop’s Web Tracking, which matches cookied browsers
with email addresses — then triggers a message whenever a known visitor’s
behavior matches your criteria.
The bottom line is that you can reach out to many
times more browse abandoners than cart abandoners. True, you’ll typically see a
much lower conversion rate because these browsers aren’t as close to completing
a conversion, but even if you can get a small percentage to convert off a large
number of browsers, that could still have a huge impact on the bottom line.
Key tactics for initiating browse abandonment
efforts in 2014:
•
Concentrate on a few key Web pages or categories. Rather than having
dozens of pages on your site trigger a browse-related email, begin with a few
key categories or “fulcrum pages” that are suggestive of an engaged prospect
that’s looking to go to the next level.
•
Start simple. Don’t worry about sending a multipart series,
incorporating behavior-driven dynamic content and using technology integrations
to pull in relevant ratings and recommendations – yet. The goal is to get your
program up and running, and then fine-tune down the line.
• Deliver
educational content. Since these contacts are typically in the research
phase, leverage existing content — such as calculators and wizards, buying
guides, how-to videos and tips from other customers — that will help them in
their decision-making process rather than just sending an incentive or
discount.
TREND 2: DIGITAL ACQUISITION
MEETS THE PHYSICAL WORLD
Loren McDonald, Vice President of Industry Relations,
Silverpop
If you’re like most marketers, you’ve been focused on online acquisitions
and database building: optimizing Web forms and landing pages, employing
popovers and progressive profiling, using search and social to drive opt-ins,
and more.
While efforts to fine-tune online acquisition
efforts will continue, in 2014 many marketers will be turning their attention
to the next untapped opportunity for database growth: physical locations.
Although physical store opt-in opportunities have always been there – take the
classic “drop your name in the fishbowl and get a birthday discount,” for
example – mobile and POS technologies have evolved to the point that it’s
become much easier for company employees or consumers themselves to opt in to
your email program.
From a strategic perspective, the opportunity is
one of mass – with so much foot traffic in your stores, capturing a few opt-ins
can make a huge difference. A company with 1,000 retail outlets that captures
five opt-ins per day per store would be looking at nearly 2 million new
subscribers over the course of a year. Even with 50 stores, you’re talking tens
if not hundreds of thousands of new subscribers annually.
More importantly, you’re capitalizing on the
opportunity to build relationships with people who are showing some level of
interest and engagement by coming into your store – whether they buy or not.
You can use digital channels to strengthen and deepen these offline
relationships.
Naturally, you’ll want to send these customers
communications encouraging them to purchase online when convenient, but you can
also use the digital relationship to drive them back to the local store and
keep your company top of mind in between visits.
With integrations between POS and mobile channels
and central marketing databases becoming easier to implement, 2014 will be the
year that more sophisticated marketers will be using in-store location to drive
email opt-ins, and then using the email channel to make these new subscribers
more valuable customers.
Key tactics to drive in-store opt-ins in
2014:
•
Have employees ask for the opt-in. Instruct cashiers to invite customers
to subscribe and get a special offer, or ask if they want their receipt via
email – or both. Even more cutting-edge: have a roving employee with a tablet
invite customers to opt in.
•
Take steps to avoid process abuse. Educate employees about how to ask
for opt-ins and why it’s an important part of their role. If you offer
incentives, base them on deliverable email addresses only. And leverage
third-party email validation services to limit bounce issues.
•
Use SMS and QR codes. Put flyers throughout your store inviting
customers to text you to opt in to your email program. Or, include signage with
a QR code that takes shoppers to a mobile-optimized page where they can opt in.
• Go beyond
email: The above tactics could also be expanded to capture mobile numbers
for SMS alerts and promotions, as well as physical addresses for direct mail
offers, coupons and catalogs.
TREND 3: ACTIONABLE DATA
BECOMES A KEY DIFFERENCE MAKER
Ellen Valentine, Product Strategist, Silverpop
Today’s mobile, social and Web-savvy buyers favor
a personalized experience. But if the data you have on a contact is lacking,
you’ll be limited in the tools you can use to connect on an individual level.
In short, your marketing is only as powerful as the data at your fingertips.
Think of it this way: If you put two competing
companies side by side, the one that has the best actionable data is going to
win in 2014. Yet rather than investing in building an agile marketing platform
that can capture and respond to customer behaviors in real time on an
individual level, some companies have been heavily investing in data warehouse
initiatives.
These warehouses can be helpful in identifying
trends and key market segments you might not be able to spot otherwise. But
they also have limitations – the number-crunching process can be expensive and
slow, the data anonymous and aggregate, and the systems ill-equipped to use individual
customer data to immediately trigger an email, initiate a new campaign or send
an SMS message.
At the end of the day, it’s all about being able
to “listen” to customer and prospect behaviors so you can respond at the right
time and place with the right message. And in order to accomplish that, you’ve
got to have fabulous data stored in a database in your marketing platform — not
just sitting in a data warehouse in aggregated, siloed form.
So, how can you begin strategizing about an
actionable database? Start by thinking about the five or 10 data elements you
need to personalize your marketing and target contacts on an increasingly
one-to-one level.
Remember the old adage, “How do you eat an
elephant? One bite at a time,” and begin by capturing your top data elements
for your most important database records. Sure, it’s probably going to take a
while to get all those data fields on your wish list perfectly populated, but
the key is to put a plan in place for capturing these data elements over time.
Key tactics for building an actionable
database in 2014:
•
Try some new techniques for gathering “explicit” data — surveys,
progressive forms, popovers or modal windows. Test and see what drives the best
results.
•
Consider reaching out to a third-party data service provider for data
append tools that can help you get more information into your platform and
boost your data intelligence.
•
Set up Web tracking and system integrations that enable you to capture
the behaviors of your customers across the various channels they use to
interact with you – mobile, social and offline.
• Design some
business rules that leverage this data. You might, for example, set up a
triggered email that’s sent if certain behavioral criteria are met, or build a
larger-scale nurture program that continuously takes into account what contacts
tell you about their interests.
TREND 4: PERSONALIZED
WEBSITES MOVE BEYOND AMAZON AND NETFLIX
Ellen Valentine, Product Strategist, Silverpop
If you’re among the millions of people who visit
Amazon and Netflix’s websites, you know they’ve set the bar high for providing a personalized
customer experience. Visitors to these sites see customized content based on
their unique viewing history, ratings and purchases. In other words, the
website content gets better the more you engage.
Today, technological advances have made the
personalized website available for all marketers to deploy. No longer are you
stuck serving up generic content for every person – now you can filter out the
noise and make the experience more relevant to the visitor as an individual. By
providing a more personalized experience, you’ll find people stay on your
website longer, download more offers and purchase more products.
The key to accomplishing this is marrying your
content management system with your marketing platform to make the management
and presentation of dynamic Web content much easier and seamless. Once you’ve
got the systems tied together, you can think about how you want to tailor the
user experience and what data you can use to personalize your Web content.
For example, if a site visitor’s trial offer is
within a week of expiring, you might have a content block on your site that
shows the date and time the trial expires. Or, for customers who have left
items in their shopping carts, you could display a reminder with a link back to
the cart.
Regardless
of how you leverage this functionality, the bottom line is that the days of the
static corporate website are numbered. In 2014, savvy marketers will be tapping
the latest technology to understand who website visitors are, how they’ve
interacted with you and where they are in the buying cycle. Then, they’ll use
this data to improve the Web experience for their customers and prospects.
Key tactics for personalizing your website
in 2014:
• Figure out how you want to connect your
digital marketing platform with a CMS. Different integration and
plug-and-play options should be available that enable you to tap the marketing
richness of your platform’s database and use it to customize your website.
•
Start small. You don’t have to customize every area of your website
right off the bat. Pick one key area and start there. Just personalizing a
single section of your site can make a big difference, and it will make it
easier to get the ball rolling.
• Choose a
place to start that will really move the needle. If you’re a B2C marketer,
offering product recommendations based on past purchases or pages viewed can be
a powerful starter tactic. On the B2B side, persona-based content
recommendations and offers that match the prospect’s position in the buying
cycle can make an immediate impact.
TREND 5: LOCATION MARKETING
2.0 ARRIVES
Dave Walters, Product Strategist, Silverpop
Knowing where your customers are is an immensely
powerful part of delivering the right message at the right time. In recent
years, forward-thinking marketers have communicated with customers based on
whether they crossed a geofence or checked in via Foursquare or Facebook.
Powerful stuff, but it’s about to get even cooler:
Apple’s announcement of the iBeacon functionality as part of its iOS7
technology is a game-changer for how businesses will conduct location-based
marketing in the future. Think of iBeacon as a form of micro-location
geofencing that makes it much easier for retailers to use a person’s exact
location within a store to deliver targeted, relevant content.
Here’s how it works: A customer with an iPhone 4S
or later model who’s downloaded your app walks into your store. The iBeacon in
the customer’s phone – powered by Bluetooth Low Energy so it only consumes a
small amount of battery power – exchanges data with beacons in your store. Your
system has been configured to send push notifications to customers who meet
certain criteria, so at the moment the customer strolls into Aisle 12, they
receive a push notification on their phone with offers or content related to
where they’re standing.
Taking the concept a step further, you could use
any demographic and behavioral data you have about that customer to customize
the content you send based on age, gender, purchase history, online shopping
cart, products viewed online and hundreds of other variables.
The possibilities are endless for marketers. You
could use iBeacon to serve up customized coupons, send sales alerts based on
real-time external data (such as weather changes), display personalized product
information and videos, curate shopping lists based on past purchases, and
drive email opt-ins. Moving beyond mobile, you could use iBeacon activity to
trigger communications in other channels.
Bottom line? As we move into 2014 and 2015, the
most successful marketers will be those who develop smart ways to take this new
iBeacon technology and use it to make the in-store shopping experience more
rewarding.
Key tactics to implement location marketing
2.0 in 2014:
•
Plan which segments of customers you want to send location-related content. Develop
a plan for what content will enhance their in-store experience and how you’ll
introduce the program to them.
•
Work with in-store personnel to put the correct technology in place and
train retail salespeople. As with any in-store technology, the reps in the
store needs to understand what’s going on if you’re going to deliver on the
technology’s promise.
• Complement
your iBeacon-driven push messaging with email communications. Depending on
the person, exiting your store might trigger an email promoting products in the
areas they browsed, upsell offers for items related to what they purchased, or
a summary of their rewards benefits based on their latest store visit.
TREND 6: BUYER INTELLIGENCE
IS NO LONGER LIMITED TO THE ELITE
Dave Walters, Product Strategist, Silverpop
Does a lack of email clicks for two, four or six
months signal trouble? If a customer abandons a product on your page and you
send a follow-up message, what’s the best offer strategy – a discount or free
shipping? And how does the impact of customer interactions decay over time?
Marketers have wondered about these and similar
questions for some time, but unless you worked at a big corporation with huge
marketing budgets, the answers eluded you. But in 2014, savvy marketers at
companies of all sizes will be using buyer intelligence to build really smart
programs that engage customers more strongly.
Starting to tap into deep data-driven intelligence
might involve simply changing the way you collect information, gathering
“implicit” customer preferences to complement and inform the “explicit” data
contacts have given you. Or it might mean tapping a predictive analytics or
business intelligence partner, such as AgilOne or Windsor Circle, to gain
insights about propensity-to-buy and lifetime customer value based on the data
you already have.
Either way, the goal is to use your data to start
modeling behaviors, and then use these models to help you reach your goal of
delivering the right message at the right time – taking this intelligence as it
boils to the surface and making it customer-facing via really smart programs.
For instance, if you learn that customers who buy Product A often go on to
purchase either low-margin Product B or high-margin Product C, you may want to
give them a “10 percent off” offer to incent them to go with Product C.
Of course, you could also add Web tracking, page
level visits, SKU considerations and more into the mix, with the combination
pushing select customers into an automated program. Maybe only 10 people a day
meet the criteria, but they get this phenomenal offer that pushes the revenue
needle for you.
So if you’ve been focused on big, high-volume
blast messaging, make it a goal in 2014 to take one or two really intelligent
campaigns and layer them into your messaging mix, gradually making your content
more relevant.
Key tactics for using buyer intelligence to
your benefit in 2014:
•
Look at aggregate data for new insights about your customers’ and
prospects’ needs throughout their lifecycles. Then, think about what content
you could provide that would deepen their engagement at different stages.
•
Mine your purchase history data to identify customers most likely to
generate long-term value. Brainstorm new retention programs you might implement
to build stronger relationships with these high-value customers.
• Look at the
marketing/sales relationship in new ways. How might the order, combination
and frequency of marketing touches impact sales? Does interaction with certain
pieces of content designate a stronger engagement level? Questions like these
can help you optimize your initiatives.
TREND 7: MARKETERS BECOME THE
ARCHITECTS OF THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Bryan Brown, Vice President of Product Development, Silverpop
Marketing has always been the bridge that connects businesses and
customers, but in the past the emphasis was on communicating brand offers. The
problem? Marketers didn’t know which customer needed which offer, what channel
to provide it in, or where the customer was when they were delivering it.
In 2014, successful businesses will need to engage
with each customer when and where that customer prefers with content that is
perfectly tuned and individualized.
Of course, this has always been the case to some
extent, but now the technology has caught up. With the right technology in
place, you can capture a range of customer behaviors — in your emails, on your
website, in your mobile app, at your physical locations, even on your
customers’ morning runs — and attribute them to individuals.
Once technology helps you capture these
cross-channel, cross-device customer behaviors, it’s up to marketers to weave
an engaging story. Imagine, for example, that a customer walks into your
physical store, and within a few moments his phone vibrates. Voila, there’s a
text message thanking him for being a loyal rewards member and reminding him he
has 6,000 reward points he might want to use today. A few minutes later, a
customer enters that store for the first time and receives a text thanking her
for visiting and highlighting a few unique aspects of that location.
Think of marketing as a travel company and
customers as tourists. Most marketing today does little more than herd a large
crowd of tourists toward a small set of the most popular destinations. More
advanced marketing is like a tour bus — more destinations and smaller crowds,
but with a fixed sequence and generic experience. The future of marketing is
like having your own private concierge who knows your interests, budget and
pace. This guide walks alongside you, delivering a completely unique and
personal experience perfectly tailored to you.
Once you’re laser-focused on the customer experience,
you can start thinking about ways you can become a personal concierge for your
customers, using the behaviors you’ve harnessed to deliver individualized
content, across channels and in real time, that guides them through their
unique buyer journeys.
Key
tactics to enhance the customer experience in 2014:
•
Pick a channel you’ve never individualized before and add an element of
personalization. Or, add more customized content to an existing channel to
make it more helpful, fun and/or engaging.
•
Look for creative ways to use customer behaviors to drive cross-channel
interactions. Maybe a mobile app interaction is reflected on the website.
Or an in-store exchange drives an SMS. Or a retweet leads to an email.
• Make real
time your mantra. Whether it’s a contact who just abandoned a shopping
cart, exited your store after a test drive or posted a product review, the
timeliness of your response can make a difference. Configure your business
rules and automated programs to make it happen.
VIDEO LINK: Creating a Connected Customer Experience
In
addition to tapping our in-house experts for their 2014 predictions and tips,
we asked a handful of third-party experts to weigh in on what they saw as the
key trends for 2014. Here’s what they had to say.
INDUSTRY INFLUENCER
Marketers Take Testing to New Levels
Andrew Kordek, Co-founder, Trendline Interactive
As most savvy email marketers know, testing takes
commitment, passion, patience, resources and, most of all, a willingness for
things to dramatically change and impact their program. While split and simple
multivariate testing have been around for years, the truth is these tests limit
the amount of factors that companies test and learn for dramatic impact to the
programs.
In 2014, some marketers will take the words “test
it” to a whole new level by conducting Taguchi-based tests. Taguchi is a
testing methodology that allows for accelerated testing without having to build
and validate every possible combination of test factors. By systematically
choosing certain combinations of test factors, it’s possible to isolate their
individual contributions to an email’s success. Taguchi allows for testing of
six to 15 factors, with total possible testing combinations between 2,000 and
32,000. Testing in 2014 can and should reach a whole new level when conversions
and ROI become more difficult to attain.
BEST PRACTICES CONSULTANT
Being Relevant Won’t Be Enough
Steve Kellogg, Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
As more and more businesses adopt marketing
automation in 2014, the Age of Relevance will become more predominant. In the
past, while everyone else was batching and blasting, early adopters of
marketing automation were quietly achieving dramatically improved conversions,
because their content was so much more relevant.
But as marketing automation heads towards the
tipping point, being relevant will no longer be enough. Even now, we’re
starting to see more and more customer inboxes dominated by relevant marketing
content. Now what? How do you get through all the noise, when most of it becomes
relevant? Well, you have to get good at creating seducible moments.
A seducible moment is that point at which a
potential customer gains enough trust, AND is feeling a positive emotional
connection toward you and/or your offers. This is at the heart of every
conversion. This can happen on any device using any channel. Big data,
marketing automation tools and new processes allow you to enter the Age of
Relevance. And while finally being able to target the right person at the right
time is a huge win for most companies, the big winners in 2014 will also focus
on ensuring the right content includes seducible moments.
SILVERPOP CLIENT
Marketing Silos Continue to Dissolve
Zachary Notes, Organic Search Analyst, UnCommon Goods
In 2014, email will continue to play a critical
role in the multichannel marketing landscape. Other free email tools will
likely follow Gmail’s lead, changing the way users manage their inboxes. These
kinds of changes will continue to make marketers change the way they do things,
needing to deliver more targeted and relevant messages than ever before.
In mid-2013 Gmail started its rollout of the new
tabbed inbox, separating personal and promotional emails automatically in
consumers’ inboxes. While this led to a short moment of panic for many email
marketers, it was just a confirmation of what many of us already knew – in
order to get noticed in the inbox, messages need to be personalized and
relevant to each individual’s needs. Some time in the next year, I expect other
email tools like Yahoo! Mail and AOL to follow Google’s lead and create some
kind of tabbed inbox. I also think Google will expand its marketing offerings,
perhaps opening its own ad platform for Google + and working to increase the
use of Google+, eating into the big social players’ market share.
Social media as a whole will continue to be
important. Buyers today are in more control than ever before, doing a large
part of research (often on social networks) before ever interacting with a brand
to make a purchase. As this trend matures, the connection between these
channels and email will increase in importance. Social activity will need to
play a role in the personalization of emails and, as a result, will help
marketers better understand their customer bases.
Whether it’s capturing a tweet mentioning your
brand, or using social sign-in to capture a user’s information, this
multichannel way of life will need to tie in the email component seamlessly.
Marketing silos (or what’s left of them) will continue to dissolve, making
predictive marketing a critical part of 2014.
INDUSTRY INFLUENCER
Marketing Automation Expands Its Footprint
David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates Inc.
In 2014, look for increased integration of
traditional marketing automation with ad buying. We’ve seen integration with
search advertising such as Google AdWords campaigns for some time now.
Extension to display ads is starting to happen with some larger vendors. It
makes sense for marketing automation to expand its footprint to other marketing
activities, and media buying is one of the biggest.
More generally, marketing automation could move
into other types of marketing procurement, such as direct mail and print
purchasing. This is something that some B2C marketing automation systems have
done for a while, as part of their marketing resource management features. An
intermediate step might be more robust marketing planning features, since those
create calendars with projects that result in purchasing activities.
CONCLUSION
In
2014, marketers will have two choices: they can keep running
marketing for marketers, delivering generic promotional messages when the
company has an offer it wants to push out, and focusing solely on driving
customer transactions. Or, they can start running marketing for customers,
delivering content uniquely tailored to each individual’s needs and
expectations, and focusing more on discovering why their most engaged customers
love them – and then doing more of that.
In 2014, choosing the latter path will be critical
to achieving success. True, audiences, segments and targets are not going away,
but the future of marketing relationships is personal and will reflect the
individuality of each customer.
There has been a revolution … a revolution of ONE!
Buyers are in control. They are no longer willing to be treated as segments.
They want to be treated as individuals, with content, offers and communications
that are highly relevant, timely and personal. Successful marketing is now about
interactions, not transactions.
By attending to the trends outlined in this white
paper, and implementing the related tactics, you’ll help ensure your
organization is creating amazing customer experiences – experiences that build
lifelong relationships, vocal advocacy and, ultimately, revenue for your
business.
Footnotes
1-rbb, “The Breakout Brand Strategy”
Silverpop is a digital marketing software company focused on helping
marketers transform the customer experience — increasing engagement and driving
revenue. Silverpop makes this possible by using customer data and each
individual’s behaviors to inform and drive every interaction in real time. Watch
our demo to see our product in action, and contact Silverpop to see
how we can help you accomplish your marketing goals for 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment