MOVE BEYOND BATCH AND BLAST EMAILS WITH MARKETO S DIALOG EDITION

MOVE BEYOND BATCH AND BLAST EMAILS WITH MARKETO S DIALOG EDITION

MOVE BEYOND BATCH AND BLAST EMAILS WITH MARKETO S DIALOG EDITION Like many marketers, you ve included email in your marketing mix for years. And you ve probably gotten pretty good at it. But while email remains a vital channel, traditional email blasts often fail to help you achieve your goals. And it s no wonder your audience is already drowning in marketing messages. So what s the secret to cutting through the noise? To connect with and engage prospective buyers, you have to look beyond impersonal, batch and blast campaigns. After all, one-to-one personalization and individual relationships increasingly drive the action during marketing communications. And that means you need to move beyond the limitations of your email service provider (ESP). Instead, you need a platform that helps you achieve your marketing goals whether you re looking for higher open rates, higher click-through rates, higher audience engagement, or higher marketing-driven revenue. 2

THE STATE OF MODERN EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDERS (ESPs) Don t get us wrong: we know that ESPs have served and continue to serve a valuable role, helping many marketers send large volumes of marketing messages. But email marketing requirements have become more sophisticated as consumers have become more demanding, and ESPs have struggled to move beyond their original batch and blast origins. While it s true that some ESPs have tried to evolve, they are fighting a losing battle. That s because ESPs are constrained by their very nature. Their databases are simple and don t easily integrate with other enterprise systems. Moreover, they were built to rapidly send the same message to many, not to orchestrate intelligent, one-on-one conversations. As a result, marketers who rely on ESPs are destined to see the world through an email-centric lens, not an omni-channel one. Your customers, on the other hand, live in an omni-channel world. If you re limited by your ESP, how can you reach them? 3

INTRODUCING A NEW PLATFORM With the Dialog Edition from Marketo, you ll have the full-service email capabilities that consumer marketers need, plus the ability to automate and personalize conversations with prospects and customers. Essentially, the Dialog Edition offers a first step for marketers to transition from ESPs to the world of marketing automation. The Dialog Edition provides a complete view of each customer, including their activities both online and offline. This view lets marketers send the right emails to the right people at the right time, driving higher opens, clicks, and revenue. In this ebook, we ll explain the advantages of using Dialog Edition and all of the ways you ll benefit as a result. 4

TURN UP THE THROTTLE ON CAMPAIGNS: INSTANTLY GO FROM MANUAL TO AUTOMATED In today s buyer-centric world, marketers are tasked to do more with less. But if you re going to reach more prospects and customers with more targeted and relevant messages, you need to automate it s the only way to boost productivity without putting in longer hours. Unfortunately, most ESPs don t support much in the way of automation. For example, you can t use an ESP to set up campaigns that engage people automatically, based on their behaviors and demographics. But you can do that with the Dialog Edition. That means you can engage more people, more frequently, without additional resources. Smart Campaigns First, you ll set up Smart Campaigns these are the workhorses of the Dialog Edition s automation. Smart Campaigns are automated workflows for campaigns that constantly listen for individual behaviors and immediately take action. Smart Campaigns can be simple, such as: Send out an email, wait two days, then send another email if the recipient didn t open the first one. But they can also be advanced, such as: When a person shares one of our products on Facebook, email them a 5% discount coupon, ask them to join our referral program, and add them to our next outbound social campaign. Most importantly, these campaigns take only minutes to build and, once built, are constantly listening for these behaviors and taking action no need for the marketer to oversee every response. And you can set up as many of these campaigns as you d like the only limit is your creativity. 5

Engage Your Audience with Content One of the challenges we see marketers constantly struggle with is audience engagement. Segmentation is challenging. Manually sending content to all or part of an audience is challenging. Developing that content is even more challenging. But an engaged audience means a larger, more marketable database and fewer unsubscribes. The Dialog Edition keeps your audience engaged with content streams, which are series of content intended for a specific audience you might set a content stream for people who signed up for our newsletter or people who haven t purchased anything yet. At whatever cadence you prefer (for example, you might send emails every Wednesday at 8am), each individual in your target audience is delivered the next piece of relevant content in the series. Once you have your first stream set up, you can add additional streams for each audience. You might build a stream for repeat purchase customers or advocates who share on social networks. Better still, the Dialog Edition can then automatically move people between content streams based on individual behaviors, effectively managing communications across each customer s lifecycle without manual intervention by you. Finally, the Dialog Edition intelligently tracks which content has been sent to whom, ensuring that nobody receives the same content twice. That means when you develop great content, it will be used repeatedly as new people are added to the content series. This extends the life of each content asset you create, increasing your ROI. Set it and forget it You can add to, refine, and tweak your campaigns at any time, but with Dialog Edition, you don t have to think about them every day. Once you set them up, they will run automatically. You and your team can even subscribe to alerts and reports, ensuring everyone is up to date without having to oversee every function. Reinvent email With Dialog Edition, you can trigger communications based on cross-channel online and offline activities, including: Social network shares Web pages visited Emails opened and clicked on Coupon codes redeemed Abandoned carts Marketo content streams 6

A/B Testing in an Automated World For modern marketers, the value of A/B testing cannot be overstated. In the past, marketing was considered to be less of a science than an art marketers had to rely on their intuition, because there was no way to predict what would drive the best results. Today, marketers can test a nearly unlimited range of possibilities for every email send. You might test your layout, your call-toaction, your use of imagery, your subject line the sky s the limit. A/B testing allows you to isolate one of these variables, and then change it in a test group this way, you can compare two versions of an email against each other without risking your entire send. But how does this apply to automated campaigns, you ask? Unlike any ESP on the market, the Dialog Edition can run tests on your triggered, ongoing campaigns thanks to Champion/ Challenger A/B testing. Let s say you trigger an email every time someone makes a purchase on your website. The Dialog Edition can send a test email as a small percentage of those triggered emails. That test email is called the Challenger; if it outperforms the reigning Champion, we immediately inform the marketer, who can then take appropriate action. The Dialog Edition allows you to define what constitutes a win, but goes way beyond opens and clicks as your only winning criteria. Because we re constantly tracking cross-channel behaviors, the winning version can be chosen based on any criteria you set whether it s the percentage of recipients who open your email, click a link, visit your Facebook page, complete a purchase, or another key metric you care about. 7

TRIGGER INDIVIDUAL, PERSONALIZED EMAILS WITHOUT THE HELP OF YOUR IT TEAM The ability to respond in real time to prospect and customer behaviors such as when they place an order online enables you to send more relevant emails. These triggered emails have some of the highest open rates in the industry, which is why successful marketers find a way to incorporate calls-to-action in those emails. But, as with most marketing emails, the ability to try new things is key to improving results. If it takes too much time and energy to set up, alter, or manage your triggered emails, they lose their value. To access and use behavioral information, you need to connect to behavioral systems, which require technical skills and complex queries. Since most marketers aren t able to execute at this level, traditional ESPs leave them blind to valuable buyer behavior and, therefore, unable to build meaningful relationships with prospects and customers. The Old Way: Leaning on IT In most ESPs, setting up new email triggers is difficult to do. You ll probably need technical assistance (if it s even possible), which makes it challenging to adjust these emails once they re up and running. Plus, ESPs primarily target audiences based on demographics and flat subscriber files. This kind of targeting ignores valuable information about buyer behavior, which can be obtained by examining a buyer s actions or lack of actions as they engage with content and trusted sources online and offline. 8

The New Way: Easy-to-Use Campaign Builders With the Dialog Edition, you can trigger emails as part of any campaign. The Dialog Edition allows you to listen to audience activity across channels, and respond (in real time) with the right message, at the right moment. In fact, you can trigger emails (or other actions) from over 40 different behaviors, such as when a person visits a website, shares something on a social network, or provides his or her email address. You can also trigger emails with a negative key behavior, such as not logging into your website for 30 days. If you re sending emails based on individual behaviors, you can engage in hundreds of thousands of individual conversations at scale. And you can build these campaigns in a matter of minutes, thanks to Marketo s easy-to-use, drag-and-drop campaign builder. That means you ll never need to call in a programmer for support again. 9

TRIGGERS IN MARKETO MOVE FROM STATIC LISTS TO A SMART DATABASE BUILT FOR MARKETERS To effectively automate campaigns, you need a single view of your customer. in order to engage with them effectively. If you re like most marketers using an ESP, you maintain one or multiple databases. Each time you execute an email send, you have to manually export lists from these databases to your ESP. This time-consuming system can t possibly keep up with the speed at which your customers act. That s why the Dialog Edition maintains a smart marketing database that will sync with your other data sources, keeping track of the information you need. Tap into Rich Data for Better Segmentation The Dialog Edition s smart marketing database stores data relevant to you, the marketer whether it s demographic, behavioral, or transactional. By continually learning about your contacts over time, this persistent database allows you to tap into rich data for better segmentation. As you learn more about your customers, Dialog Edition builds segmented lists, allowing you to reach contacts with more relevant, automated emails. The database uses Marketo s proprietary Smart List technology, which allows you to segment based on any fields in the database. Most importantly, Smart Lists constantly update without any intervention by the marketer. So if a person updates their address, for example, any geography-based Smart Lists will automatically update. Let s say you want to engage with people who recently visited your website. A Smart List of people who have visited any of your web pages in the past seven days can be easily deployed. This list will be updated each day, adding new visitors and removing those who haven t returned. How to drive better results with engaging email campaigns: 1. Listen at scale to each person s behaviors 2. Be relevant with the right message at the right time for each person 3. Converse across channels 4. Engage throughout each customer s lifecycle 10

AUTOMATE ACROSS MULTIPLE CHANNELS In the olden days of the 1990s, marketers could engage buyers on one or two channels, such as retail stores or product showrooms. In the 2000s, marketers could rely on websites and email campaigns. But today s buyer continuously and quickly shifts from one channel to another, engaging with email, social media, websites, and mobile apps, all before breakfast. But because traditional ESPs were designed to be email-centric, they can t provide sophisticated support for cross-channel marketing. Even when ESPs integrate with other channels (such as social media), they can t comprehensively capture all of an individual s online and offline behaviors in other words, they don t know what makes your customers tick. 11

Integrate Your Email with Web and Social Channels Email that s integrated with other channels is better than email that s trapped in a silo. Put another way, multi-channel, symbiotic campaigns are more effective than single-channel campaigns. This is true whether your web and social activity is driving email opens, or your emails are driving web and social interactions. However, achieving this requires a single system that integrates a person s activity across all of these channels. And that s where the Dialog Edition comes in. Dialog Edition was built from the ground up as a multi-channel platform, meaning you can listen and react to behaviors across channels. It starts with a channel like your website, where the Dialog Edition listens for and stores each individual s interactions with each page on your site. From there, most marketers start to think about social media sites. The Dialog Edition not only tracks visits to your Facebook tabs, but also interactions with social applications like share buttons, polls, and sweepstakes. Next, you might wonder about direct mail and offline events once again, the Dialog Edition has your back, seamlessly integrating with direct mail and event platform providers. To put things simply, if there is demographic or behavioral data you d like to use in your marketing, it can probably be stored in the Dialog Edition s smart database. Given the situation with today s buyer, standalone email is insufficient to produce or effectively judge engagement. In fact, email can be worse than inadequate. Instead of engaging buyers, improperly managed email can push buyers away. International Data Corporation (IDC) Workbook: Graduating from Email to Engagement: Using Marketing Automation to Achieve Success with Today s New Buyer Dialog Edition was built from the ground up as a multi-channel platform 12

MEASURE ENGAGEMENT AND IMPACT, NOT JUST OPENS AND CLICKS When marketers started relying on email, two metrics emerged as king: opens and clicks. This wasn t because opens and clicks are the most important metrics; it was because opens and clicks were the easiest to measure. ESPs only track email marketing metrics specifically opens and click-through rates so they can t accurately gauge your email s omni-channel effect. What if you could measure success based on what happens after that email click? What if you could tell an email led to a website visit, even if the visitor didn t use the email s link? The Dialog Edition provides a holistic digital view of each individual, meaning marketers can measure and improve the campaigns driving real action. And that includes purchase data, providing full visibility into how every marketing dollar influences revenue. 13

Best-in-Class Analytics The Dialog Edition provides best-in-class analytics for testing and measuring batch and automated email campaigns. In our drag-and-drop report builder, you can view standard metrics (like opens and click-throughs) for individual emails or a set of emails. But you can also build dashboards and graphical reports for more complicated metrics, such as click-time heat maps (which tell you when and where your emails are clicked on), or open-time distributions (which tell you the time of day your emails are opened). When you re ready to grow your analysis beyond email, the Dialog Edition can help. The Dialog Edition allows marketers to analyze their marketing campaigns based on real results, such as which campaigns are bringing in the most new people, creating the most website traffic, or driving customers to spend the most money. Not only will you define the steps your audience will take you ll also define which step constitutes a success. For some campaigns, a recipient simply opening an email might be considered a success; for others, success might be won when a recipient places an order. Overall, the Dialog Edition will give you better insight into email performance, plus a deeper understanding of how your emails, combined with other channels, are driving business. In other words, you ll understand the ROI of your email marketing and your other campaigns, so you can adjust your marketing mix appropriately. Click-Time Heat Map Open-Time Distribution 14

FOUR EMAIL CAMPAIGNS YOU SHOULD AUTOMATE TODAY So there you have it all the ways automation can help you take your email marketing to the next level. To get you jumpstarted, here are four email campaigns we recommend you automate. Email type Welcome Benefits of automating Encourage an open/buy habit early Weed out bad/invalid email addresses Start the email relationship off on a good foot Learn valuable information about your new customers (ask for email preferences) According to a recent study, welcome emails yield: 5x higher open rates 4x higher click rates 10x higher revenues Ongoing Engagement Remail or remarketing Post-purchase transactional Save time: A single engagement campaign replaces many individual campaigns Without manual effort, your brand stays top of mind Re-use content created once over and over again, because it s only sent to new recipients Low effort simply tweak copy or subject line Easily repeatable can run these at any time High return like printing money Catch those who missed your email the first time Generally higher open and click-through rates Highly personalized Continue to engage and drive back traffic to website Opportunity for testimonials and reviews Encourage reviews, cross upsells, and upsells 15

CONCLUSION: GET ON THE PATH TO BETTER EMAIL MARKETING All of the Dialog Edition s advanced capabilities enhance the traditional email capabilities marketers require, including highvolume deliverability, easy-to-use A/B testing, and dynamically generated emails. Plus, unlike most ESPs, the Dialog Edition doesn t base fees on email volume. This gives marketers the freedom to try new email campaigns and approaches without worrying about the cost of each email. In a world where consumers increasingly expect one-to-one personalization and individual relationships, batch and blast emails are becoming less and less effective. Email marketers recognize the need to easily develop personalized, long-term campaigns, but struggle to do so with their current ESPs. Marketo s Dialog Edition is the answer, empowering marketers to move away from timeconsuming, siloed, manual campaign management, and toward an automated, omni-channel solution. 16

Marketing Software. Easy, Powerful, Complete. Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the leading cloud-based marketing software platform for companies of all sizes to build and sustain engaging customer relationships. Spanning today s digital, social, mobile and offline channels, the Marketo solution includes a complete suite of applications that help organizations acquire new customers more efficiently, maximize customer loyalty and lifetime value, improve sales effectiveness, and provide analytical insight into marketing s contribution to revenue growth. Marketo s applications are known for their breakthrough ease-of-use, and are complemented by the Marketing Nation, a thriving network of more than 190 LaunchPoint ecosystem partners and over 40,000 marketers who share and learn from each other to grow their collective marketing expertise. The result for modern marketers is unprecedented agility and superior results. DG2LG-01142014 info@marketo.com 2014 Marketo, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designed by SCORCH www.marketo.com 17