White Paper. Cross-channel Marketing: Go Mobile. Go Social.

Transcription

1 Cross-channel Marketing: Go Mobile. Go Social.

2 Cross-channel Marketing: Go Mobile. Go Social. Introduction: Mobile and Social Media and Buying Cross-channel marketing is evolving from the vast number of possible customer interactions fueled by the Internet and mobile communications. These interactions are laden with untapped buying behavior where consumers are following their own customer journey. Marketers must move beyond setting up social media and mobile channels to publish generic messages to customers, and instead actually personalize and contextualize the medium to that consumer s interests and preferences. Cross-channel marketing that heavily involves mobile and social media communications is about real-time use of structured and unstructured data. With real-time marketing, the marketer is able to focus on the aggregation of customer behavior during a specific moment and over time, and take a very deep, analytical approach to customer interactions, based on behaviors and a multitude of market and channel dynamics. For example, the idea that someone asks their Facebook friends an opinion demonstrates a certain purchase readiness. The customer insight derived from these interactions guides an optimized marketing strategy that focuses on specific buying behavior throughout the customer journey, regardless of the marketing channel. The only way to create and drive an effective cross-channel marketing strategy is to build it from the outside in through the customer life cycle, mapping the various stages to your customer journey buying behavior, channels, platforms, and data sources. 2

3 In Multi-channel Marketing: Go Mobile. Go Social., we ll dive deeper into understanding the customer journey as the starting point to effective crosschannel marketing, placing particular emphasis on incorporating mobile and social media communications into campaigns. We ll also demonstrate how marketers can evolve their cross-channel marketing programs to take advantage of buying behavior throughout the customer journey. Zeroing in on the Customer Journey Over 70% of all buyers want to interact with brands across different channels, depending on their buying stage. In developing cross-channel marketing strategy and executing campaigns, most marketers profess to be very customer-centric. But often that customer centricity is very linear. It views the customer typically in the context of new customer acquisition, and there usually is homogeneity about the interaction, e.g., disproportionate spend on one marketing channel or a lack of insight on how the customer wants to interact with the brand. According to McKinsey (The Consumer Decision Journey, June, 2009), today s customer journey forces the marketer to think about the customer s buying process along four key dimensions: 1. Initial consideration 2. Active evaluation 3. Closure 4. Postpurchase These four dimensions represent different strategies, channels, and forms of customer interaction and buying opportunities. In fact, depending on the consumer s interests and preferences, the channels, timeframe, and type of interaction, e.g. device, in store, catalog, varies from consumer to consumer at each stage. Over 70% of all buyers want to interact with brands across different channels, depending on their buying stage. Adding to this complexity is the stratification across interaction platforms, e.g., tablets, mobile, laptops, PCs, and kiosks, and voluminous customer data sources across and outside the organization. 3

4 Marketers need to think more broadly when employing mobile and social media communications as a customer journeybased, crosschannel marketing strategy. The only way to create and drive an effective cross-channel marketing strategy is to build it from the outside in through the customer life cycle, mapping the various stages to your customer journey buying behavior, channels, platforms, and data sources. The combination of buyer behavior, channels, platforms, and data sources around the customer life cycle also contains the necessary information to drive a much more effective cross-channel marketing strategy based on a real-time customer journey experience. Real-time cross-channel marketing in this instance, using the customer life cycle as a basis, creates a holistic, heterogeneous approach to engaging buyers and consumers, on their terms. Using the customer life cycle approach is especially valuable with mobile and social media communications. For example, the combination of location data with a mobile ID is a very powerful mechanism to push opt-in messages during each stage of the customer journey. As a result, the combination of buyer behavior, channels, platforms, and data sources around the customer life cycle also contains the necessary information to drive a much more effective cross-channel marketing strategy based on real-time marketing. This creates a holistic, heterogeneous approach to engaging buyers, on their terms. Your goal as a marketer is to promote not just synchronous interaction, but a conversation with the buyer. Mobile and Social: Where to Start in the Customer Journey The most obvious place to begin cross-channel marketing is to begin in the initial consideration phase of the customer journey. However, while obvious based on traditional marketing strategies, it is not necessarily the place to start when it comes to employing mobile and social media strategies. Marketers need to think more broadly when employing mobile and social media communications as a customer journey-based, cross-channel marketing strategy. Mobile and social media are very dynamic mediums that are rich in communications capabilities, extending their value to every 4

5 phase of the customer journey. The best place to start is where each type of customer is in their own life cycle literally at any of the four phases. Again, here is where location data employed with mobile communications can even affect buyers at the closure stage of the life cycle. How to Tie Mobile and Social Profiles to the Customer Journey The obvious question then becomes, how do marketers know where buyers are in the customer journey? Closed loop marketing environments, offering marketing automation or campaign management, and CRM can help, but those systems do not necessarily do an effective job of bringing together a complete customer profile. Today, marketing automation platforms do provide the capability to match customers on social and mobile id, but this is also inadequate. The challenge for the marketer is to create a complete customer profile that spans mobile and social customer user experience, online and offline interaction history, service experience (if applicable), and purchase history. Traditionally, some of the online customer interaction history could be brought together by marketing automation platforms that matched customers based on id. This was an inadequate way to create a true customer profile for cross-channel marketing purposes and underscored the need for marketing databases. Today, marketing automation platforms do provide the capability to match customers on social and mobile id, but this is also inadequate. True and comprehensive customer profiles for multi-channel marketing need to include all forms of customer data online and offline, to get a 360 degree view of the customer. Once that occurs, it is then possible for marketers to use a marketing database within a marketing platform, where customers are matched on , social, and mobile ids, along with their purchase and service history. Unstructured data from social media and SMS text messaging can also be integrated into those marketing platforms to drive true buying experiences based on buyer conversations. 5

6 At the most basic level, there are two types of insight cross-channel marketers need to consider when leveraging buying behavior Effective Cross-channel Marketing Requires Insight One of the central ideas behind effective cross-channel marketing is the degree of personalization that marketers are able to use. Real and sophisticated personalization goes far beyond the use of salutations in s, SMS text or over social media. Personalization is about understanding buyer needs. Insight associated with buying behavior creates what marketers need to deliver on for a truly personalized buying experience over any channel, timeframe, and customer journey stage. At the most basic level, there are two types of insight cross-channel marketers need to consider when leveraging buying behavior share of wallet / customer retention and customer acquisition. The former focuses on customer retention or brand loyalty, while the latter is critical to new customer acquisition. In each case, cross-channel marketers must take their organization s business objectives into consideration, rather than assume that new customer acquisition and increased market share is the defining corporate goal. There have been several instances where QuickPivot clients have competed in mature markets, increasing market share marginally. But, by formulating a specific strategy around share-of-wallet, they have significantly grown their company s top and bottom lines, fueling new sources of growth. Applying insight to a customer retention strategy leveraging cross-channel marketing yields the following types of information that are critical in the mobile and social world: How many customers do I have, what do they look like, what have they purchased, where did they purchase it, who influenced them, and what is their purchasing behavior? What online conversations are taking place and how do they influence buyer behavior? Can location data demonstrate patterns of behavior? What is the measure and level of product and service saturation generally within your customer base and by specific customers? 6

7 The buying behavior principles of customer retention carry over to cross-channel marketing for new customer acquisition. Are there correlations between customers who are low volume purchasers vs. the high volume ones? What can you learn from the latter to offer to the former to improve saturation? How can you tell from a contact s interaction and, if appropriate, purchase history that the person may be ready to buy your offering or something like it? Note a couple of key considerations in patterns emerging from the above questions and the intelligence that is implicit from them. First, customer service, sales history, online support communities, user groups, and social media are all fruitful channels for a cross-channel marketing strategy, depending on the type of product, to drive buying behavior. Given that these channels produce live interactions and that ample insight exists to create a message and drive an offer, optimizing revenue in real-time can become core to your cross-channel marketing to retain or acquire a customer. Second, implicit in the above questions is the need to engage existing customers at every stage of the customer journey. Indeed, existing customers can work their way through the customer journey all over again, culminating in a new purchase, and in the process, solidify their brand loyalty based on their level of interaction with you. The buying behavior principles of customer retention carry over to crosschannel marketing for new customer acquisition. In fact, building a data strategy around optimizing customer acquisition and retention yields competitive advantage. Go Mobile. Go Social. Don t Just Publish, Drive Channels. To drive multiple channels, marketers need to think and behave as crosschannel marketers. Thinking about outbound and inbound marketing does not drive a holistic cross-channel strategy, and reduces effectiveness. Marketers need to embrace the idea of their closed loop marketing environment, replete with an interactive marketing platform, based on a marketing database, as the mechanism to publish and drive messages and offers in real-time. 7

8 In a previous example, we explored the idea of using location data via mobile in more personalized ways. Using the interactive marketing platform enables marketers to drive campaigns that place the right social media buttons, for example, on the right landing pages or in the right messages for that particular buyer. The placement of social buttons or directing messages through a social media channel can even be personalized through matching content to clusters of customers. In a previous example, we explored the idea of using location data via mobile in more personalized ways. In this instance, the conversation moves directly between buyer and seller. With each of the instances, whether through mobile or social media communications, the expectation is that the buying experience becomes conversational, and not only on the terms of the buyer, but also their extended influencer group, which can involve Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts, or Twitter followers. To achieve this level of conversation, marketers must combine the use of an interactive marketing platform that drives the intimacy of the conversation, leveraging customer history, with the dynamics of mobile and social media conversation. It s this combination, which enables the marketer to accelerate buying decisions during the customer journey. 33 Arch Street, 9th Floor Boston, MA T: F: About QuickPivot QuickPivot is the leader in real-time cross-channel marketing automation and services for B2B and B2C enterprises. QuickPivot delivers insight plus channels plus content in one marketing platform to enable marketers to listen, connect, learn, and adapt to the changing needs of customers. For more information, visit or call , or [email protected]. All content Copyright 2014, QuickPivot, Inc. All trademarks are property of their respective holders. 8