The Art of Marketing: Building a Multichannel Marketing Database

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The Art of Marketing: Building a Multichannel Command Center

The Need for a Multichannel Command CenterIn the past, traditional direct marketing efforts such as direct mail were enough to reach consumers, because these were the channels used most for marketing communications. Back then, marketers didn’t need cutting-edge software or discerning marketing systems to find customers. The sophistication of direct marketing was fairly easy: mail a lot and hope it got a return on investment.

However, time spent with traditional media is down, and time with digital media is up. A Nielsen s tudy in October 2011 found that 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners use their devices while watching television on any given day, with 60 percent of those checking email both during the program and during commercial breaks. A Yahoo! study from 2011 puts the number of multiscreen users even higher when including a laptop or desktop computer, up to 66 percent. These numbers will likely increase dramatically in 2012, and the lesson is simple—digital offers plenty of options for consumers, and consumers are responding in large numbers. Email, mobile, and web marketing offer consumer’s easy access to information and purchase options, and social media like Twitter and Facebook make connecting with companies simpler and more personal than in the past. The question becomes: What do marketers need to make sure every new path to purchase is covered? The answer: a command center that incorporates the right data sources with an ongoing data processing update, as well as the ability to apply analytics that deliver strategy and insights to speak in the right channel.

66% Stores Where I am a part of a loyalty program should deliver me a more personalized shopping experience than those where I don’t participate in their programs

50% The retailers where I shop should offer promotions and merchandising tailored to my past purchasing and browsing behavior

46% I would buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across all of their channels (store, website, catalog, mobile, call center)

42% I would value a retailer or brand more if it remembered my buying and browsing behavior from all the channels where I have shopped (store, mobile, website, catalog)

42% I would prefer that emails I receive are personalized based on my past browsing or buying behavior

40% I would purchase product from websites that suggest product based on past browsing or buying behavior (often listed as “you may like” or “people like you bought”)

31% I would expect retailers where I have browsed their websites previewing speci�c product to attempt to sell me similar/like product across the web on content-related sites (e.g. searched for HP printer and later saw ann ad on WallStreetJournal.com to purchase HP printers)

Personalization Factors that Are Important to Create an Ideal Cross-Channel Experience According to US Cross-Channel Shoppers

% of respondents

Note: “somewhat” or “very important”Source: eMarketer.com, the e-tailing group and MyBuys, “Closing the Cross-Channel Gap,” June 28, 2011



Powering Up the Multichannel Command CenterThe digital era has altered the consumer lifecycle—just as floppy disks no longer fit into modern computers, tools of the past no longer work with modern customers and marketers must upgrade equipment. Consumers are taking more paths to purchase in ways that can be dif ficult to track. Modern multichannel marketing can help fill the void and find customers in their chosen routes to purchase if you have a central solution to manage all the components of multiple c hannels. A true multichannel solution isn’t simply an impersonal machine that cranks out bland marketing communications either. In fact, customers prefer to be targeted and customized communication across multiple channels. As the table below shows, a recent eMarketer survey found that 50 percent of those surveyed want companies to offer promotions and merchandising personalized based on past purchase and browsing behavior and 46 percent said they would buy more from companies that personalize the shopping experience across all channels. 42 percent would prefer emails that are personalized based on pas t purchase behavior, and that same number pr efer brands to remember buying and browsing behavior across channels that have previously been used f or purchase.

Of course, with so many channels available to find customers, it’s easy to spread marketing too thin and miss customers, but marketers must also be careful not to focus too heavily on a sing le channel. By finding which channels customers prefer and targeting them there while using tr aditional marketing methods to promote new digital efforts, the right multichannel communication solution can tailor marketing efforts to work together and find the best balance to increase conversions.

The Functional Command Center:Intelligence at the Helm

To truly integrate all communication channels, marketers need an intelligently designed system to get the whole marketing machine working efficiently to avoid errors and missed opportunities. This means creating an insightful strategy that gets all marketing communications working to complement each other, directing customers to the right place—and using a central solution that includes a rules based optimization engine which understands how to flip the right switches at the right time to avoid over communication and customer fatigue.

Although digital channels are becoming more of a focus, it’s important not to neglect traditional marketing efforts. A recent B2B Marketing report found that although email marketing delivers the highest quantity of leads, telemarketing continues to drive the highest quality of leads. The lesson her e? Understanding and managing channel preferences will help deliver the right message at the right time – leading the best customers to purchase.

Directing customer traffic to the best channels takes a great backbone of agile data and deep analysis. It’s all about balancing, if one channel is emphasized too heavily and others are ignored, customers on the neglected paths to purchase will end up giving their business to someone else. However, the marketing machine becomes an efficient system when it’s running through a comprehensive command center, helping prospects find their way to conversion with ease.

With more avenues for purchase than ever before, it’s easier than ever for customers to find what they want when they want it, using whichever purchase method they prefer. Smart data paired with insightful analytics optimizes marketing efforts for each channel, ensuring customers are found where they want to be reached.



Processing Smart Data and Leading Customers to PurchaseBut the efficient multichannel marketing system doesn’t just happen. It takes the right data, and a lot of it. Data is the key to targeting the right customers at the right time, and getting each channel to enhance the others—it’s about giving t he green light to the right traffic at the right time to keep customers moving efficiently toward the sale, and this takes a solution t hat can process and make sense of the data load by understanding a customer’s current promotions, previous responses and purchases as well as channel preferences.

Of course, simply having a big pile of dat a is the easy part. Putting that data to use is quite another, and it starts with scrubbing the data clean. Data hygiene is a major component of the functional multichannel command center, maximizing marketing impact and minimizing cost. Around 3 percent of data goes out of date every month, which adds up to very costly errors. Direct mail costs are rising, and marketers can’t afford to throw away dollars on wasted postage, printing and lost opportunities. In digital, bad data kills email campaigns before they can get started. Whether it’s getting blocked from the inbox or being flagged for spam by a low-value prospect, bad data will land marketers a bad reputation with ISPs that’s tough to recover from. There are less obvious costs associated with bad data as well—wasted time, increased pressure on customer service, and missed chances for sales all factor in. Making sure marketing campaigns are working with trustworthy data provides a cost-effective foundation to build from.

The Fully Equipped Command Center:Listening. Understanding. Speaking.

Once the foundation of clean data is in place, the command center must be equipped with premium modeling and campaign optimization tools to further refine data and find the best prospects. A great backbone of the right data gives marketers a picture of what the high-value customer prefers, and modeling will tailor communications based on customer preference. This also helps to move marketing spend to the channels that most efficiently lead to conversions. Incorporating push efforts for target prospects with direct mail and email initiatives that direct them to other digital purchase paths while pulling in customers looking for you with SEO and SEM efforts helps campaigns work together for maximum impact across the entire revenue cycle.

The optimized multichannel command center also incorporates triggered digital communications. Triggering customer emails based on purchase history and website activity ensures always being prepared to help customers find their way to purchase, yet doesn’t over saturate one channel—the command center knows how to avoid overload that can work against the overall marketing system—think preventing that dreaded moment when the cursor becomes an hourglass or rainbow wheel.

Triggered transactional messaging that incorporates marketing material is an of ten-overlooked opportunity to enhance the customer experience and boost ROI. It’s a chance to do more than simply communicate shipping information or order confirmations—it’s an oppor tunity to increase revenue by connecting with customers, delivering relevant marketing information at a point when t he customer is already listening. Triggered messaging can also be an oppor tunity to show customers you are focused on them personally – birthday triggered messages and of fers are an example of this.



Although transactional messages are not opt-in marketing messages, they must follow CAN-SPAM guidelines that require the primary message of the communication to be regarding the transaction itself—the subject line as well as the body of the email must be primarily in reference to the transaction. According to a study by Marketing Sherpa, 54 percent of B2C marketers found improving email deliverability to be a significant challenge to email marketing effectiveness. However, 20 percent of transactional email content can and should be leveraged for marketing opportunities, including promotional and educational material tailored to customer purchase history. By injecting dynamic product images and content into transactional messages, customer communication becomes personalized for customers adding value to the brand and boosting revenue and ROI.

The Multichannel Command Center:Optimization through Customized Integration

This takes a rock solid foundation of data from which to build, as well as a solution that can not only ensure clean data, but also provides multichannel intelligence for optimum execution. Without a comprehensive view of the entire marketing machine, it’s impossible to optimize channels to work together.

The fully integrated command center can maximize marketing spend and target the best customers by applying business rules and constraints that govern when a customer should receive a communication, what the communication should be about, what channel it should be sent t hrough and how often should additional communications be sent. . Key insights into customer preferences takes deep data capabilities, which leads to efficient modeling in each channel to target high-value customers in the right avenues and avoid wasting dollars on low-value targets and incorrect addresses.

Most importantly, the intelligent multichannel command center isn’t clunky or inadaptable—it’s agile and can be tailored to each business individually. The marketing landscape is constantly changing, and template solutions will lead to disappointing returns. The optimized multichannel command center can mold to each individual business, allowing each customer path to adapt and work together to convert high-value customers based on their preferences.

It is up to the marketer and their service providers to fully develop the ultimate command-center; one that creates interaction in real-time.

Tips for getting the most out of your marketing command-center:

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1. Unify all of your compiled data sources

into one hub

2. Use an outside specialist for regular data processing

and make sure to stayconsistent, remember, data

in today’s world canbecome obsolete much

faster than it used to.

3. Know your data intimately, and create sound strategies –

spend the time and resources now in order for

strong return later.

4. Speak to the right person in the right channel – some

prefer direct mail still, others, email, others – twitter. You

need to know your customers channel of preference.



Case StudyBusiness Need Overview

A well-established multi-brand apparel and general merchandise direct marketer needed an advanced database technology and surrounding solutions to improve customer insight, immediacy, and multichannel marketing.

The Solution

A fully operational command center solution would consolidate the client’s transactional data, offline promotion history, triggered and scheduled email promotions, email response, customer demographics, co-op purchase behavioral characteristics and relevant information inputs from other brands within their enterprise. In addition, the command center would support all of their business objectives and strategies.

With built-in predictive models to drive all multichannel acquisition and reactivation campaigns, post analysis reports were designed to provide performance views for customer attributes beyond source key. Results from ongoing promotional streams and holdback testings were used to drive contact strategy. SKU level product affinity analyses were developed to support catalog and web space allocation and pagination.

Results

Once the command center was fully functional, predictive catalog models showed a double-digit performance lift versus models from the client’s former analytics provider. As a result of lifetime value analyses, greater emphasis is now placed on extended size products, and they are promoted through specialty catalogs to targeted customer segments.

About Yes Lifecycle MarketingYes Lifecycle Marketing is a full-service, holistic services and technology provider which integrates data, technology, analytics and insights, communication strategies and creative to deliver measureable customer acquisition and loyalty solutions.