SMART MARKETING: UNLOCKING THE POWER OF AUTOMATION A Q&A Session with WhatCounts

Transcription

1 SMART MARKETING: UNLOCKING THE POWER OF AUTOMATION A Q&A Session with WhatCounts

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 4 Welcome to the Automation Q&A 5 What is Smart Marketing? 5 What is automation? 5 Is it true that marketing automation is impersonal? 5 Is marketing automation the sloppy way to do things? 6 marketing automation is difficult to implement, right? 6 Pulling Content 7 From where does the automatically-generated information come? 7 Will automation work with my company website and blog to create content? 7 Can I automatically pull content using RSS and API (Application Programming Interface) feeds? 8 How do API and RSS feeds work with automation? 8 What is an Auto FTP? 9 Do You GET It? 10 What tools do I use for automation? 10 What is SmartGET? 10 What is CacheGET? 10 What is XSLT GET? 11 How do I make sure my automated s stay personal? 15 How do I get started? 15 Creating Tags 16 Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

3 What is the key to making automation work for your company? 16 Are tags important when creating automated s? 16 What types of tags can I add to my s? 16 What are Subscriber Data Tags? 17 What are Custom Field Tags? 17 What are social tags? 18 Smart Scheduling and Deployment 19 What types of things can I schedule? 19 How do I schedule an automated deployment? 19 What do I do when I get to the Campaign Deployment screen? 20 In what formats am I able to send s? 21 How do I set up automation for an ? 21 How do I know the automated was actually sent at the right day and time? 22 How do I tell the system to exclude some people who may be on my list? 22 Is there a way I can see all the automated campaigns I have scheduled? 23 Smart Reporting 24 What s reporting got to do with Smart Marketing? 24 Is scheduling an automated report as simple as it looks? 24 Preparation 25 What does my website need to look like? 25 What should my data look like? 25 How often do I have to update my content? 25 How do I decide from what sources to pull and how to set up my automation? 26 Key Takeaways 27 About Us 28 Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

4 INTRODUCTION Do you want the s you send to be personalized? Of course you do! Organizations that personalize their s see a 72 percent improvement in open rates and an 81 percent increase click-through rates (Marketing Sherpa). When s are personalized, people are more likely to respond and take action. Smart Marketing and personalization are the keys to driving your campaigns. We re here to help you through every step of your automation journey and this ebook is the first step to get you on your way. You ll learn about what automation is, why you need to be using it, and how to execute it for success with your marketing goals. In this ebook, we ll be answering top questions asked about automation with explanations and examples. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

5 WELCOME TO THE AUTOMATION Q&A You may have seen our new Smart Marketing video and are wondering what it s all about. Or maybe you read our recent ebook about Personalization. You have questions and we have answers that s why you re reading this ebook. In this ebook, you get to interview us about the how-tos, the what-abouts, the pros, the cons, the down-and-dirty of automation in marketing. Let s jump right in! WHAT IS SMART MARKETING? Here at WhatCounts, we believe Smart Marketing equals personalization. It is the combination of the right data, a content strategy and last but not least automation. Many marketers think these three items work separately from each other. However, these three puzzle pieces fit together to create a framework for Smart Marketing for your company. WHAT IS AUTOMATION? Simply put, automation is a two-part system. The first part is pulling information off a chosen webpage, database or XML feed and then populating an with that information. The second part is taking that populated , or any other , and scheduling it to send regularly. IS IT TRUE THAT MARKETING AUTOMATION IS IMPERSONAL? Of course not! Instead, it is an efficient way to drive segmentation, produce system-generated data, and bring your customers the content they want to see. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

6 IS MARKETING AUTOMATION THE SLOPPY WAY TO DO THINGS? Just because you are doing a lot less busy work to get a lot more return on your investment doesn t mean automation is the lazy person s alternative to marketing. Once you ve set up automation parameters, you can sit back and let it do the hard work for you. Of course, you should definitely continue to monitor your s to make sure everything is working as intended. Sending is a constant process of strategizing, planning, testing, deploying, and refining. Automation is simply a tool you can use to help you send the most relevant, dynamic messages to your customers. MARKETING AUTOMATION IS DIFFICULT TO IMPLEMENT, RIGHT? Wrong again. automation is a tool, and once you ve learned what that tool can do for you and how simple it is to use, you ll never want to send s without it. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

7 PULLING CONTENT FROM WHERE DOES THE AUTOMATICALLY-GENERATED INFORMATION COME? automation pulls information from various sources on the Internet, including data-driven blogs. It can also pull information off of RSS feeds and API feeds. You decide what information you want in the automated you are creating, and then you choose from which sources to pull that information. Here s a snapshot of the WhatCounts RSS feed and blog that information could be pulled from to populate an WILL AUTOMATION WORK WITH MY COMPANY WEBSITE AND BLOG TO CREATE CONTENT? Yes. Your website and blog are full of information about who your company is, what your brand is, and how the products and services you offer can meet the needs of subscribers. After it has been set up, the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine takes the content from your website and blog and uses it to populate an . Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

8 CAN I AUTOMATICALLY PULL CONTENT USING RSS AND API (APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE) FEEDS? In the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine, you can easily leverage an API or RSS feed to pull information. Get in touch with our technical services team for more information and help setting up RSS and API feeds for automation. HOW DO API AND RSS FEEDS WORK WITH AUTOMATION? You can use an API to get information from a library to mash up with your information. Linking your automation to RSS feeds that regularly update with the exact content you are looking for is also another way to go. In fact, you could set up different RSS feeds for different types of scheduled s you want to send. For example, you could send an every Tuesday for cooking news and pull information to populate that from an RSS feed that follows a cooking magazine and two cooking blogs. You could also schedule an to go out every Thursday about cooking deals, and you could pull the information for that from an RSS feed that pulls information from grocery stores and kitchen supply chains. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

9 WHAT IS AN AUTO FTP? An Auto FTP allows you to schedule file transfers of data elements between WhatCounts and your company, i.e. WhatCounts can transfer data to you and you can transfer data to WhatCounts. Auto FTP lets you transfer data elements to or from WhatCounts on a schedule daily, weekly, monthly whatever works best for you. Scheduling what and when data is transferred is an important part of automation. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

10 DO YOU GET IT? What we mean is, do you know how to automatically grab content off the Internet and populate it into a marketing ? Take a moment and dream: You have dynamic content sitting on your website, on your blog, and on various other web pages where you publish your content. Then someone pulls the information from those pages and creates a compelling, relevant from them to send out to one of the Smart Segments into which you have organized your subscribers. This isn t a dream, marketing friends; it s a reality! WhatCounts has several ways it can pull content from the Internet and populate an out-of-this-world with that information. Let us show you how one of our clients has made this dream a reality and inspire you to do the same! (See page 11 for a client example). WHAT TOOLS DO I USE FOR AUTOMATION? WhatCounts has built a series of GET tags that enable automation for our clients. This includes SmartGET, XSLT GETand CacheGET. WHAT IS SMARTGET? SmartGET is a simple scheduled pull that is set up to grab content from specific online pages and create an . For example, you could set up SmartGET to pull content from your company blog every Wednesday and populate an with that content. That would be pulled, created, and stored in the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine until you are ready to send it out to the segmentation list of your choice. WHAT IS CACHEGET? CacheGET works with the WhatCounts Client Hosted Broadcaster to pull data in the same way SmartGET does. CacheGET differs from SmartGET slightly; it allows you to pull in content that is dependent on subscriber data. It will make a call once per unique subscriber value inside the Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

11 CacheGET tag. The Broadcaster is an on-premise, super-fast appliance in the form of SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform for clients who send a high volume of . WHAT IS XSLTGET? XSLTGET is the most advanced tag in the GET suite. It takes data from a structured data source, such as an API that returns XML data or an RSS Feed and applies logic and formatting to that data so it appears perfectly in your template. A WhatCounts client that uses this automated content pulling feature is SweetJack, a daily deals company. SweetJack sends hundreds of s containing discounts and deals each day. Let s take a peek at a SweetJack and what types of information are pulled for this multi-part campaign. Then, we ll break down each part to zero in on the various pieces of content being pulled in. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

12 Let s start at the bottom and work our way up the . This piece of content is coded to pull from the Jack365 category on SweetJack s blog and links to SweetJack s Facebook page. This is an example of pulling content that is already present on another web page, in this case, SweetJack s blog. This piece of the SweetJack automated multi-part is hardcoded into the HTML. This part always stays the same, always linking to the same pages on the SweetJack website. This is an item SweetJack wants to consistently market to their customers, and if anything changes with this item, the information can be updated directly on the SweetJack website pages that directly correlate to these products and services. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

13 Remember how we talked about pulling content from your company blog? SweetJack does this in their daily deals . As you can see, the automation is coded to pull in the title and description of the most recent blog post from the specified SweetJack blog URL. Main deals like the one above are populated from an XML feed via XSLTGET. This feature allows subscribers to get different deals based on location. One of the places SweetJack pulls content from is its CMS, NimbleCommerce, as well as its CRM, Zoho. Thus, the deal at the top of the page is pulled from data stored in NimbleCommerce. Keep this option in mind as you consider how you would populate a multi-part, automated . Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

14 Below is a breakdown of how the SweetJack daily deals works. The template is stored in the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine, which receives data and the schedule, as well as daily deal data from NimbleCommerce, SweetJack s CMS. Subscriber data also gets fed into the template. Deal & Schedule ZohoCRM Deal Data (Pricing, Creative) Template NimbleCommerce Subscriber Data WhatCounts Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

15 HOW DO I MAKE SURE MY AUTOMATED S STAY PERSONAL? In order for s to be personal, you must remember to include dynamic content. The GET suite from WhatCounts can certainly pull almost any content you want and translate it into a plain-text, HTML or multipart-mime . However, we can t change the content once it is inside of the . If your blog post has a typo in the title, then that typo is going to be pulled into the automated and there s nothing we re going to be able to do about it. This is why starting with smart content is so important! Of course, you should definitely still continue to Q/A your s to make sure no errors get through. Not only should you send tests of your s to yourself, you should also ask internal stakeholders to review the s. Other people will be able to pinpoint errors you may have missed, and will be able offer suggestions you haven t considered. HOW DO I GET STARTED? If you re a client of WhatCounts, you can contact your Technical Account Manager to discuss the process of setting up one of the GET tags. Want to be a part of the Smart Marketing buzz? Then contact support@whatcounts.com to see how we can help you get started. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

16 CREATING TAGS WHAT IS THE KEY TO MAKING AUTOMATION WORK FOR YOUR COMPANY? It s creating up-to-date content on the pages that are a part of the automation process. The information on the website from which you automatically pull content needs to be relevant and important to your subscribers. ARE TAGS IMPORTANT WHEN CREATING AUTOMATED S? One way you can create dynamic s to be used in your marketing is by using tags. Since there should be different tags for every , there should be different tags for the content that is automatically pulled for those s. For every sent, the tags included should be unique, personalized and different from other ones. The WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine includes a feature to add tags during the creation process. WHAT TYPES OF TAGS CAN I ADD TO MY S? You have the ability to add standard tags to your s, as well as social tags. Below are the options available for standard tags, including display message, subscriber link, preference site, built-in data, subscriber data and custom fields. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

17 WHAT ARE SUBSCRIBER DATA TAGS? Subscriber Data Tags allow you to enter automated, personalized features into your based on the data you have gathered and stored. For example, you could personalize your by including the recipient s name in the greeting of the . In the body of the , you write Dear. Then, you insert the first name field from the Subscriber Data Tags dropdown menu. WHAT ARE CUSTOM FIELD TAGS? Custom Field Tags should be looked at as creative options for building your smart, personalized . If you can dream up a tag, this is where you create it. Let s say you wanted to include your company s address in the . Create an area inside your that you want this information to go. Next, go to the Custom Field Tags dropdown menu and choose from_address. To insert the tag, copy and paste the tag you are given where you want it to go in the . If you don t know how to do this, we can help you set up all of your custom fields in the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

18 WHAT ARE SOCIAL TAGS? The WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine fully supports social sharing. In other words, you can embed links to your preferred social media sites into your template. These social media icons appear in your , and recipients are able to share the content of the on their favorite social networking sites. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

19 SMART SCHEDULING AND DEPLOYMENT Scheduling is a familiar word to everyone. Whip out that mobile device, Outlook calendar or (for a few of us) the good old paper day planner or wall calendar. Just like you have automatically scheduled budget meetings on Tuesdays, you can automatically schedule the freshest news, deals, discounts or other nifty information from your company to go out at on whatever day you want on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis. Create an template one time, schedule it, and then sit back and relax. WHAT TYPES OF THINGS CAN I SCHEDULE? Using the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine, you can schedule deployment campaigns, campaign reports, event reports, custom reports, domain reports and bounce reports. Whew! That s a lot you can get done through automation. Using the calendar application in the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine, you can choose what relevant items you would like automated. It is simply a matter of clicking on the day you would like the chosen item to be sent, and then choosing the item from the dropdown menu. HOW DO I SCHEDULE AN AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT? It s easy! When you are in the WhatCounts system, find the Tasks tab, and click on Calendar. To the right, you can see what this page will look like, as well as what the drop-down menu looks like. In this menu, choose Campaign Deployment. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

20 You will be sent to a screen that looks like this: WHAT DO I DO WHEN I GET TO THE CAMPAIGN DEPLOYMENT SCREEN? Have no fear! You re not on your own when you reach the Campaign Deployment screen. Instead, it acts as a guide, walking you through the moving parts of scheduling your . First, you must choose what type of you re sending. You can schedule to send social media updates only, an A/B test or a normal . The Normal mailing type is the one you should choose for scheduling a regular campaign. Next, choose the list you wish to send the scheduled to and the template you wish to send to that list. For example, you may choose Master List and the template called Weekly Newsletter. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

21 You may also choose to send your scheduled to a certain segmentation you have saved in the system. If you would like to send to the entire list you have chosen, then choose All subscribers. IN WHAT FORMATS AM I ABLE TO SEND S? s are able to be sent in four different formats; however, Multipart MIME is recommended because it delivers the in both Text and HTML versions. HOW DO I SET UP AUTOMATION FOR AN ? When you set up an campaign, you can choose on which date and at what time you want it to be sent out. Then you can choose whether you want it to be repeated every day, week or month. If you choose to send an out each week, you can choose the day you would like it automatically sent out. This works together to make your Smart Segments work properly. For example, you may have segmented a list that only includes new subscribers every week. You could choose this list to send to every Friday, and the would thank each subscriber for his or her opt-in and provide a deal or special offer from the company. Instead of you having to create and send a new every week, you can automate one to be sent out to this specific segment. This is just one example of how automation and Smart Segments work together to help you create Smart Marketing. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

22 This is what scheduling an automated like the one described on the previous page looks like in the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine. HOW DO I KNOW THE AUTOMATED WAS ACTUALLY SENT AT THE RIGHT DAY AND TIME? You can opt-in to receive notification s when the system has sent your automated s. HOW DO I TELL THE SYSTEM TO EXCLUDE SOME PEOPLE WHO MAY BE ON MY LIST? Suppose your competitor subscribes to your s and their address gets put into the weekly new subscribers list. You decide there is no way you are going to welcome your competitor or give them the weekly discount. There is a way to exclude, or suppress, certain addresses in the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine. On the campaign deployment setup screen, select Advanced Settings. A menu will open up, and you can choose the suppression list of your choice. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

23 IS THERE A WAY I CAN SEE ALL THE AUTOMATED CAMPAIGNS I HAVE SCHEDULED? Once you schedule an automated campaign event, it is then added to the campaign calendar. Here you can view all the campaigns you have scheduled per month, as well as the campaigns you have scheduled per day. This viewing option allows you to see what automated campaigns you have scheduled on each day before you create another automated campaign. In other words, it lets you intelligently plan out each campaign to hit your segments at the right times. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

24 SMART REPORTING WHAT S REPORTING GOT TO DO WITH SMART MARKETING? Just like campaigns, reporting can be scheduled. Wouldn t it be nice if once a week, you received an notification letting you know the report is ready for pick up in the reports folder? You can set up an automated pull of the information you want reported on through the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine. We can also work with you to set up custom reports, and your Services Account Manager (SAM) can walk you through specific recommendations and insights to help you get better ROI assurance from your program. Contact your SAM today to schedule a meeting. IS SCHEDULING AN AUTOMATED REPORT AS SIMPLE AS IT LOOKS? It sure is. Scheduling an automated report is a similar process to scheduling a campaign deployment. First, choose how many event days you want the report to include. If you d like to receive notifications about the weekly new subscriber s, then you would choose events for the last 6 days. To have this sent to you every week, choose Repeat Weekly and then select the day that best works for you to see the report. If you want, you can also opt-in to receive an when the system has automatically sent the report to you. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

25 PREPARATION We all know a good offense is the best defense. Translated into marketing language, that means prepare, prepare, prepare! automation may not work for your company if it is not ready to use the technology and systems associated with automation. WHAT DOES MY WEBSITE NEED TO LOOK LIKE? Your website, blog, or any other source you plan to use to automatically pull information for your s should be data-driven. WHAT SHOULD MY DATA LOOK LIKE? Glad you asked: It needs to be clean. If we use a merge tag to pull first name information for the greeting of your , and you have some last names mixed into your first name data, things will get hairy. Make sure your data is cleaned up and in the right spots so it can easily and correctly be pulled. Of course, we have an expert Data Services team to help you map, organize, and integrate your data with WhatCounts. dataservices@whatcounts.com to learn more. HOW OFTEN DO I HAVE TO UPDATE MY CONTENT? It is imperative your content be updated and relevant if you want your automated s to have those same qualities. The automation can only pull the information on your company s website; once the information is pulled, automation cannot change that content. There are no edits, no revisions, no adds or take aways. Write well and write often. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

26 HOW DO I DECIDE FROM WHAT SOURCES TO PULL AND HOW TO SET UP MY AUTOMATION? You ve just heard about a lot of choices you have when it comes to automation, from different ways to pull information, to cleaning data, to scheduling. Now you need to sit down and analyze your goals and how you can reach them with automation. What specifically can you do with automation that is going to market your products, services and brand better? Consider brainstorming a content map. You can keep it simple by asking yourself: What content does my company generate? Where is this content stored, i.e. in a CMS system, website, blog? Is this content available as an RSS or XML feed? Knowing the answers to these questions is the first step in automating your content. You ve got to crawl before you walk, and you ve got to know the basics about your content before you can automate it. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

27 KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. Automating your s will help you send smarter, more personalized messages when combined with Smart Data and Smart Segments. 2. You can use one of the GET tags - SmartGET, CacheGET or XSLT GET to pull dynamic, original content off websites, blogs and Customer Management Systems. 3. RSS, API and FTP feeds are also ways you can pull content. 4. Once your has been created, you can easily add standard and social tags to add a touch of personalization, and to entice your recipients to share the on their social networks. 5. Automatically scheduling and deploying s is a straightforward process in the WhatCounts Smart Marketing Engine. 6. Preparing to automate content for marketing is a matter of knowing where your content is stored and how it can be accessed to best suit your needs. Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free:

28 ABOUT US WhatCounts provides data management, software, and services to marketing professionals seeking to deliver smart personalized digital messages to their target audiences. Each day our team partners with over 800 customers to leverage , social media, mobile devices, and the web to drive revenue. We believe that smart marketing equals personalization which requires marketers to have the right data, a content strategy and automation. Using smart technology, some of our customers are seeing marketing ROI as high as $200 returned for every $1 invested. We re headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with offices in Seattle, Sydney, Baltimore, and other regional locations. Learn more at WHATCOUNTS, Inc Peachtree Rd. Telephone: Suite 900 Toll Free: Atlanta, GA Fax: sales@whatcounts.com ATLANTA BALTIMORE CHICAGO SEATTLE SYDNEY WASHINGTON DC Copyright 2013 WhatCounts, Inc Peachtree Rd. Toll Free: