Marketing departments need a thinking, feeling central nervous system to respond in real-time to consumer data.
Over the last decade we have seen and read about all the progress being made in marketing data collection and analysis. Today we can track an abundance of channel-specific data about how many people come to our Web sites, respond to our emails, click on our ads and get lost in our ordering processes.
But all this learning has yet to drive much more than macro-level adjustments and tweaks at a very tactical level, as we restructure the Web site and refine our banners.
In short, today’s marketers have an abundance of actionable intelligence -- and a shortage of response mechanisms. We have all the data we need to identify emerging opportunities, but no efficient means of capturing them.
Let’s look at what we know today. Your ad server can identify that Customer X is in-market for your competitors’ products, based on his activity across third-party research sites. Your Web site can tell you that he hasn’t spent much time researching your equivalent products and is, therefore, not brand-loyal. And your marketing database can tell you that he is a highly-profitable customer who owns most of your other products and contributes an inordinate share of his wallet to your bottom line.
If you could put all this data together, you would get the picture of a highly-profitable customer who needs a special cross-sell offer and a great big hug. This is the customer you cannot afford to lose. But even if you could piece the picture together in time, how are you going to react if you only see him online? Or if your only interactions occur through the call center or via the interactive voice response (IVR) system?
If your right hand caught on fire, wouldn’t your brain instruct your left hand to put it out? Yes, right (I hope)? So why doesn’t your ad server notify your call center that the customer currently on the line is actively researching your competitor’s products instead of your own? And why doesn’t your Website tip-off the ad server that the browser requesting a banner recently abandoned a purchasing process and therefore should get the special “please come back and complete your purchase” banner?
Sticking with my earlier neurological example, the left hand knows to immediately help the right hand because the brain is processing the real-time input from one extremity and triggering an immediate and specific response in another. If we are going to drive growth and value from our existing marketing systems and pool of consumers, we need to process and respond to a never-ending stream of new information immediately, not in a batch process that runs weekly.
What tomorrow’s marketing departments need is a “central nervous system” to coordinate the interpretation of, and reaction to, real-time consumer data and events. If you are like me and did poorly in high school biology, then think of it as a football team. Here’s what it would sound like if your operational marketing systems had a quarterback”calling the plays: “Direct mail, run a screening pattern! Web site, draw the unqualified prospects off to the left! Ad server, break right and go for the Hail Mary in the end zone! Test and refine. Test and refine. Hike!”
Just like we humans only use 10 percent of our total brain capacity, most marketers only use 10 percent of their marketing systems’ total capacity.
Tomorrow’s marketing pioneers -- especially those across industries such as automotive, travel, financial services and telecommunications -- are already driving substantial growth and savings from their existing systems and channels by simply shifting their focus from customer insight to customer action.
By leveraging existing mass marketing systems (ad servers, call centers, Web sites, email, etc.) to deliver coordinated one-to-one messaging, these market leaders are driving demonstrable bottom-line growth by providing cost-effective channels through which to act on their volumes of consumer intelligence and millions of consumer interactions.
Having spent the better part of the last decade helping Fortune 500 companies bridge the insight-to-execution gap, I have found that those marketers who consistently drive growth from existing resources all adhered to the following four best practices.
1. Leverage Every Inbound Interaction as a 1-to-1 Dialogue
Every time someone views a banner, visits the Web site, calls the call center or listens to the IVR, we have an opportunity to develop and evolve a personalized dialogue designed to further our relationship and our next sale. Consider one of the most undervalued assets around -- the banner ad. When a gold medallion frequent flier begins requesting your banners from a third-party travel site, you know that this person is in-market for airfare, and you also have the opportunity to deliver a specific message. Unfortunately, most marketers today lack the resources to interpret the data and respond with a targeted offer. Put another way:The next banner in the rotation is served.
2. Better Integrate Online and Offline Information with Processes
It is very common for today’s consumers to consider products online and consummate the purchase offline, and vice versa. You might test drive the car at a dealer and order the car online, or you might research vehicle options and pricing online and purchase through a dealer. Therefore, it is critical that all relevant information about consumers’ needs and wants not get lost as that consumer traverses online and offline channels. To use the automobile industry as an example, online leads that are passed to offline dealers should include propensity-to-purchase scores that predict each prospect’s intent to purchase, based on how diligently they have been researching vehicles online.
3. Develop Centralized, Seamless Messaging Logic Across Channels
Many organizations have tried to simulate a coordinated cross-channel approach by synchronizing the messaging logic across multiple, disparate systems. In smaller niche markets, this approach can have limited success. But when consumers engage in their consideration and purchasing processes across multiple channels, it becomes critical that any one system be able to convert the customer based on input and feedback from the others’ systems. Therefore, it is critical that decisions surrounding consumer segmentation and messaging be managed and implemented from a centralized location, and not manually synchronized across multiple-point solutions.
4. Leverage a Centralized Quarterback for the Operational Marketing Systems
Once you have a centralized set of segmentation and messaging logic defined, invest in a solution that can automate the collection of profile information, coordination of messaging logic and execution of system-wide responses. When you consider the millions of consumer interactions that the average organization has per month, you will find that bandwidth and automation are essential in order to truly capitalize on the opportunity.
By acknowledging and addressing the untapped potential in their marketing systems and execution capabilities, today’s leading marketers are driving greater profits from their existing systems without installing more software, without creating new databases, and without altering their marketing infrastructure.
Art Melville is SVP of application strategy at CentrPort, Inc. CentrPort provides a suite of enterprise marketing solutions that enables organizations to convert each mass marketing interaction into a unique one-to-one dialogue designed to better acquire, retain and grow customers. For more information, visit CentrPort at www.centrport.com.