CRM/Marketing Automation vs Traditional Marketing

CRM. Marketing Automation. Campaigns. Analytics. Integrated.  Innovative.  

There, did I drop enough buzzwords on you at once?

For those wondering what I’m talking about, I’m talking about keeping track of your customers, and setting up marketing items that target your leads at specific timed intervals and after customer initiated events.  In other words,this is about communicating with your customers in a way so you remain relevant to them, and to offer them products or services when they need them.

First, I’ll break down a couple of the words I listed above, for those that don’t know what they mean.  A CRM is a Customer Relationship Management (usually followed by the word software or system).  Basically, it’s like a Rolodex of information regarding your past or potential customers, with as much information as you can fit.  It is edited every time a customer makes a connection with your company, and tries to maintain a grasp on where he or she is in the purchase cycle.  Marketing Automation is a system that reaches out to your customer or potential lead based on parameters that are inputted into it, (hopefully from some CRM).  These are two different systems, that when paired together work really well.  A campaign is based on what you want to advertise.  It has a start, middle, and end, based on the intended outcome.  Several campaigns can run at the same time.

Okay, so now that we went over the definitions, we can focus on the actual business use.  The easiest way to wrap your head around this to think about a more traditional marketing avenue first, like a print ad in a magazine. When you put an ad in a magazine, you are aiming at anyone who reads that magazine.  Your creative needs to be attractive to the demographic of the magazine subscription base. It’s great for attracting brand new customers.

Now, an advertisement generated by a Marketing Automation tool tied to a CRM is going to look at specific groups of customers, and target them based on an experience they had.  So, for example, you are running a furniture store.  An advertisement from a system like this would send an email out to customers who recently bought a couch, and offer them a discount on a matching recliner.  Or, if you ran a flower shop, it would send you a reminder to buy your Valentine’s flowers in advance, promoting a specific product based on the customer’s last purchase.  It is a personalized, direct ad sent only to customers that you know.  One that allows you to diagnose the effectiveness by using analytics based on real numbers.

Of the two, the more traditional advertisement, in this case, the magazine ad, is hoping to attract business based on a whimsical need.  You hope that the person reading the ad will need your product or service at that moment, and take advantage of the offer.  A CRM ad is targeting a customer that you are pretty sure needs some level of service, based on past experience with that customer.  It is much easier to calculate an ROI (return on investment) on this type of marketing.

Both targeted ads and open invitation style ads are extremely important, and Davis Advertising can help you with both.  We have the creative team to create great design and copy, as well as the technical skills to program an automated system based on your own customer base.  We can provide targeted marketing for those that could be in your customer base, or market to your past customers.  If you don’t have a system in place, call today

Media Buying Agencies Are Dead

According to an article in today’s Business Insider, the traditional media buying agency is dead.  

Okay, so maybe that’s an overstatement, but we are glad to hear that the tides are changing back to a customer centric point of view, driven by poignant creative direction and an emphasis on relationships.  The savings that occur due to aggregated buying power are being eaten up by commissions, and due to elevated costs, there has been a decreased funding of quality content.  When the emphasis is on buying media at the lowest prices, the concerns typically shift to focusing solely with reaching the highest level of potential eyes, instead of reaching the RIGHT eyes.  The creative agency targets your potential customer, focusing on several different types of media instead of simply one or two, and uses analytics that focus on real impressions rather than simple page loads or run times.

This means, in our humble opinion, that the agency of the future is an agency that focuses on values of the past, like building solid relationships between the brand and the customer.  One that uses a deeply integrated approach to blend all of the different types of media to provide a holistic experience for the customer, and one that the customer can interact with on many different levels.  The agency of the future uses all of the tools of the future to accomplish all of the goals of the past, because it understands that the technology is simply a way of connecting with people on a personal, individual level.

Welcome back.

Driving Through the Funnel - Landing Pages

We’ve made mention of building landing pages on several occasions.   As a quick reminder, a landing page is simply a separate web page that customers are directed to in order to complete a contact form in exchange for additional information or savings.  Today, we discuss the key factors that make landing pages successful, and how to quickly create them.

As far as design elements go, your primary branding message needs to carry through.  I recently loaded a landing page that looked completely different from the traditional website, and I thought I was in the wrong place.  Make sure that for returning customers, the landing page has similar color schemes, logo positioning, and font choice that the customer is familiar with on your website.

If you’ve driven customers to this landing page, it is important to keep them moving through the funnel, without the options to detour.  Therefore, make sure your traditional navigation tools are not visible.  You don’t want someone accidentally falling out of the landing page, and continuing onto your traditional site instead.  A landing page must be streamlined to heighten only the special deal it was written to promote, not act as a secondary website.

Excellent “Thank-You” pages are crucial to sharing.  If your customer likes what you’re offering, and has provided you with contact information, there is a better chance for anyone to share your offer with others.  Therefore, it is important that your “thank you” page easily allows for sharing.  It is important to note that you don’t want customers to actually SHARE your thank you page.  The last thing you want is for people to be able to go around your funnel.

One of the areas that many have trouble with is figuring out what to put on the form.  We hear, “What should we ask for? How much is too much?” a lot.  The answer is, the minimum you can to manage the level of communication you are looking for.  For example, if you are targeting a specific demographic, you need to ask if the potential customer is a member of said demographic.  If you are looking to get an email conversation going, asking the customer for the physical mailing address would fall into the “Too much” column.  A landing page is great for finding future information, so as to better direct market to customers that have filled out information, but do not try to get every single item of information from one landing page.

Can you tie into your landing page permissions and API keys rather than filling out forms all the time?  As a customer, if I have the ability to simply click, “Use Facebook Login” rather than filling out a long form, I’m going to take it every time.  There’s a chance that later on, the customer may take away that permission, but that is irrelevant.  Once you have the contact information in your database, you own it.  Therefore, I strongly recommend using the Authentication from Facebook as an option to filling out form after form.

Don’t forget, after customers fills out the form, they are looking for excellent content.  Content is still king!  Landing pages that provide nothing but a form, or that do not provide the customer a benefit, will not collect customer information well, and can turn people away from your brand.

The Power of Texting

Smartphone users hear a lot of different rings, beeps, blips, etc. There’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, personal email(s), work email(s), texts, picture messaging, chat clients, app alerts,the list goes on and on. And there’s phone calls, less we forget the prime use of the device... That means these wonderful devices are alerting the user a lot, and it is up to the user to define a hierarchy of the order of importance for each type of notification. Imagine each different type of alert had a completely different sound. Which, out of all of these, would you think ranks highest with most users?

My “guess” is text messaging. It is the easiest to read, and respond to. It only comes from people that actually have your phone number. They are typically from people that you know, and have regular dialogues with. Plus, it’s not exclusive to smart phone users, as everyone can get text on their phone. This “guess” is based on the fact that text messages have an astounding open rate of 97%. The average email open rate is around 20%.

Sufficed to say, Text messaging rules the roost, when it comes to communication methods.

What does this mean for marketers? It means that you’d better start texting! Here are some rules and suggestions.

• Don’t extend past the 160 character limit. If your offer extends beyond one message, it’s too complicated for a text message.
• Make the offer good. You are making an offer via a more personal form of communication, and if the offer isn’t good, you can actually harm a relationship.
• Remember to offer an “unsubscribe” message. You can offer an unsubscribe message for 28 characters a message (reply "stop" to unsubscribe.)
• Don’t overdo it. I recommend against texting more than once a week. You don’t want to overextend your welcome.
• Short links are your friends. Need to bring people off the text message? Use a short link to bring mobile users to a mobile landing page, and make sure that traditional desktop users that enter the short code into a traditional browser have a pleasant experience as well. 
• Don’t forget calls to action! Interaction is key. If the person receiving the text message wants to call right away, or respond with some form of answer, you’ve been effective. Read and delete messages are not memorable, and you’ll receive a lot more “Unsubscribe” or “Stop” messages if there is no call to action.
• Everyone likes games, and everyone likes winning. Set up some contests, random drawings, and games, like trivia, with winners being awarded some prize. Signing up for a newsletter is much more fun if I can win an iPad when I do!

Have any suggestions or rules of your own? Leave them in the comment section below!