Customer World

How marketing automation software need to tag the quality of leads better.

Sharon Drew Morgan makes very interesting points in her article where she draws attention on how marketing automation software needs to add decision facilitation technology to their offerings.

She writes, any such marketing software like Marketo, Eloqua,  just help capture some names - email addresses, telephone nos etc. which is great but there is no way to understand at what stage is the prospect in the buying process. This is the precisely where such software must add value to any company's lead management process.

I agree with her, as "stage of buying/decision process" decides in the lead's mind, the kind of information they need & plays a huge role in evaluation & purchase decision. According to me, each person, who is a lead, could be in different stages in the buying/decision process:

1. Trigger stage - where the person is just evaluating the need
2. Consider stage - where the person is considering to buy or not
3. Search stage - where the person is actively looking at all choices before making the decision
4. Choose stage - where the person is close to making the decision & is in a compare mind-set
5. Buy Stage - Where the person looking at all offers/discounts and ready to pay the cheque

Marketing automation software need to "integrate" or "tag" this decision-based thinking that goes through a prospect's mind to ensure a precise method of tagging the lead. This will certainly have downstream effects on what information is shared at each stage with the prospect by both the sales  and the marketing team that can accelerate decision making or conversion.

Capturing the name alone is not good enough. Calling it Hot/Cold/Warm may be better but not good enough too. It is important for marketing automation softwares to "tag" the leads by the the stage in the decision cycle to truly value-add to the marketing automation process.

 

It's time for companies to think of a Chief Marketing Technology officer!

When I talk and work with people and clients on many assignments, the challenge I find for enterprises to be customer-centric is, how to bring marketing & technology together. Increasingly, technology is getting adopted in many customer-centric channels like never before and marketing is getting more & more real time & thefore technology is becoming a nerve-centre for marketing. The future , I have always thought is the changing( or can I call it merging) role of marketing & technology folks and the need for them to work together.

I read an interesting article today, if there is a need for a CMTO ( Chief Marketing Technology Officer)! I thought this was quite interesting. Who  is a CMTO and what does he or she do?

" A chief marketing technology officer (CTMO) — use whatever label you prefer — is simply the lead marketing technologist, organizing and managing that team. He or she reports to the CMO, not the CIO. Again, this is ultimately a marketing responsibility. There should be collaboration with IT, of course, assuring that marketing fully leverages its infrastructure and complies with technical governance standards. But collaborating is better than being solely dependent."

I find this very thought provoking and I do feel this is doable. The role of the CMTO is to ensure the right technology - either already invested is leveraged across the enterprise or if to be invested is partnered and led by this role - to collaboratively ensure this is adopted enterprise-wide.

Finally, customers must see the benefit of technology in their interaction experience with any company. The role of the CMTO is to make this happen.

Dear customer, you are downgraded!

I recently received a mail from my favourite airline Jet Airways, that I have been downgraded! I am a member of their loyalty program for years now! And this is not the first time this has happened to me. It also happened in 2001 and 2002 too.

The letter read - "...since you have not had enough flights with us, you will be downagraded. Our Dynamic Tier Review (DTR) formula, unique to Jet Airways - DTR is an award winning, multi-period and multi-criteria-based tier review. It has no precedent anywhere in the world. With DTR, upgrade to the higher tier is quicker and tier renewal is easier. The DTR evaluates a member's tier based on Tier Points and Tier JPMiles earned....."

I was disappointed. As a customer, it did not matter to me if the DTR was award winning for Jet Airways! It surely did not work for me ( the downgrade letter was templated too with such high sound words and sentences!). 

It made me think about the structure of current loyalty programs across the world and their relevance when loyal customers like me are click away from the next best offer!

Here are some questions that came to my mind:

1. In a year of recession and tough 2 years for business, I was suprised how the DTR did not take care of this business environment. I did'nt fly so much as Jet would have wanted. So, Jet's view of my loyalty is transcational - fly more( at full price or premium prices and get rewarded more!). I too will behave the same way in the future, I presume. Question #1: Can't loyalty programs be flexible, adapt to new environment, and why reward only transactional loyalty?
2. Given the unsettling business environment that it was over the last 2 years, why would me even as a "fiercely" loyal customer, travel in Jet if the fares were not competitive. Finally, if there is no value, loyalty cannot be bought with points. Question # 2: When there is a challenge of intrinsic value in the product,  will loyalty progams deliver - No. It is better to focus on the product rather than upset customers. Companies must know, customers will move on in such circumstances!
3. I have been surprised with their loyalty program  not paying attention to customer experience, in spite of being a Citibank-Jet Platinum card member. Every time redeeming their upgrade vouchers was a pain. The little travel that I did in these 2 years, whenever I presented the voucher, I was told it was applicable only on full price tickets! Funny, not sure what world they were living in. Question # 3: Do companies that run loyalty programs pay attention to  such little details that affect customer experience? They took trouble  a few years back to invite me to their co-branded card, but forgot to look at my spends and credits to give me waivers at such tough recessionary period.The bank has no clue, whatsover.
   

Loyalty programs are still in their 1.0 version.  Imagine a product that has not changed for 25 years! They still are in an old world order - "spend with us to earn rewards". Sometimes they have to recognize the value that customers get when they are out shopping for options, may not justfiy the reward they earn everytime if they have to stay within these products/brands. They need to transform given the new environment and options in front of customers.

Customer seek value and surely are willing to pay premium for loyalty but recognition, surprises and instant gratification will need to be weaved into these programs - on the assumption value needs to be earned in the customer's mind & wallet.

Rest assured, this is not a rant but earnestly these are thoughts that I had in my mind and coming out of experiences I have had with such programs over time.  

 

 

How will customers change their shopping habits with mobile?

With mobile device in the hands of customers and quick adoption of smartphones, will it redefine the shopping habits of customers? I believe it will. 

Mobile will increasingly act as research and shopping tool in their hands. Right now, I don't think it is widely used but with increasing app downloads & penetration, mobile internet adoption etc. this is certainly going to change shopping experiences - right from the way they search for products/brands/services and helping them choose & buy them too.

I believe it will  be a " check, learn, ask & walk "(CLAW) shopping model on the mobile. It will be a mix of ' text & mortar' shopping. Mobile will overtake internet shopping in my opinion and adoption of mobile in certain categories will be significant.

Which categories need to get ready for this change?  An nice study by emarketer can used as a benchmark by marketers to ensure they get ready for this shopping  habit transition. In countries like India, China & Japan where the mobile penetration & growth is high - the impact will be felt the maximum.

 

 

This mobile shopping habit will have to encompass a mix of mobile apps, call-in advisors, chats, mobile alerts, location based services, mobile coupon downloads & redemption@ the store. Marketers will have to plan for an Integrated Mobile Shopping Experience (IMSE). 

 

 

 

Exponential adoption not exponential growth is key in 2011 for marketing automation

I have been reading a lot of blogs, views of consultants & research reports over the last couple years on the growing need for marketing automation in companies to manage customers better.

This is an irony that has always suprised me - the companies that have made the marketing automation investments don't use them enough and the ones planning to invest don't really plan well on how to get enterprise-wide acceptance.

It was interesting for me read an article by Carlos Hidalgo

• “Less than 25% of organizations that have implemented a [marketing automation platform] fully currently utilize its potential.”
• According to a recent study, 78% of marketers state that generating high-quality leads is still their biggest challenge.
• Various reports have between 70-90% of leads still being ignored and going to waste.

This was quite relevant points that corraborated with what I have been observing over the last few years.

Here's what I would like to see in 2011 for exponential adoption first,  lest marketing automation will die its natural death:

1. Organizations must break-down silos and exponentially adopt marketing automation across various departments as customers don't do business with departments in companies!
2. Determine metrics that are relevant to each of the departments and all these must roll-up to an enterprise-level metrics on lead management( lead capture, lead nurturing & scoring),  lead fulfillment and post-sales customer management.
3. Practice byte-sized execution plans across mutliple customer-facing departments and clearly think multi-channel -  web,  mobile, call centre etc.
4. Create a marketing budget across customer acquisition and customer retention and look at the ROI across both these parameters.
5. Build a "marketing automation tree" across both acquisition & retention and determine when the grid-lock link breaks across various stages of customer interactions.
6. Build a test and control group for various marketing automation campaigns to clearly benchmark success &  incremental lifts - to enable other deparments see the benefits for quick adoption.

To be successful, there must be a sound foundation, definition of the business process across marketing, sales & customer care - alignment across these departments  is critical &  key to exponential adoption of marketing automation across companies.

The right way for marketing automation to grow is to now focus on exponential adoption as it will act as the much needed catalyst for growth in the coming few years.

 

 

Treat social media data as the new customer information

I often see a lot of digital marketing specialists treat social media data almost like traffic lights- a kind of sentiment monitor - Red, green and amber - here are the positive scores, negative scores etc. I wonder what marketing actionability does such visualization and presentation give to marketers. For the first few months, it may sound interesting to marketers, after that am 100% sure, they will get bored and start questioning the application and business impact of such data.

On the other hand, I see traditional direct marketers or database marketers or analytical professionals lost when it comes to social media. It is almost like finding their way in a maze and they often treat this as technology or a statistical problem that has no application in this medium. Also, they  have very little clue about this medium. There is  huge opportunity to apply  both powerful direct marketing principles, database marketing and analytical techniques to this social media data. In fact, digital marketing specialists too need learn from these  principles & techniques.

In fact here my view of how social media data is changing  all of this.

1. Direct marketing was always restricted because of lack of customer address, behavioural data and information - social media data changes all of that.
2. No more physical address is important. An address on the web, posts on social media sites can help identify the customer and their current behaviour, attitudes and concerns. Treat all of this as 'information for action'  rather than ' positive words or negative words of sentiment'. In fact sentiment on the web is dynamic. Action must be swift and dynamic to sentiments as they have a potential to make real-time impact.
3. Treat comments & posts data as response which can help build individual relationships and communities. This could have never been possible without social media.
4. Relationships in the past were based on only transactional data, today social media enables relationships based on individual behaviour - positive and negative emotions which can be deciphered. They need to managed as emotion-led customized campaigns with clear relationship metrics.

It was interesting see an article  by Bob Maclnnis & Sari Tamilio who also urges us to think similarly about social media data.

Do you agree? Would love to see your comments and thoughts on the same.

How will search move to discovery for the empowered customer?

In the recent past, i had written saying that we will move in the near future from "search" engines to "do" engines. Looks like Eric Schimdt recently has been talking about serendipity engines as the future. 

Forrester writes about this.

As you look into the future, the distinction between “search” and “discovery” gets muddy.  While it sounds like science fiction to suggest that technology can help search for things you don’t even yet know you want, the opportunities to improve human discovery are very real.  Combining a person’s context—where they are, who they’re with—with their past opinions and actions and the opinions and actions of others can create tremendous value and relevance.

Imagine you’re someone who has positively rated Mexican restaurants in the past.  As you drive through town around lunchtime, your device alerts you to a well-rated Mexican restaurant that is nearby and likely to suit your tastes.  This information may not be welcome at 8 a.m. or 2 p.m., nor would it be welcome to someone who hasn’t expressed an affinity for Mexican food.  It is the combination of social media, individual preferences and context that creates the opportunity for proactive discovery rather than reactive search.

This isn’t about opening your Yelp application on your smartphone and seeing the same search results as everyone else; it’s about having hardware and software that intuits and presents the things you really care about.  There are already examples of simple "Serendipity Engines" available, such as Netflix's rating system—the more movies you rate, the better the recommendations you'll receive.

What is exciting about this future is the continued progress toward empowering consumers. 

How will this evolve over the next few years will be interesting to track. Service & solution providers will need to build and integrate their development around these trends.

Airtel's India's first mobile app centre- A case for Open Apps - Did they miss a trick or two here!

Airtel in India launched a massive advertising campaign today for their India's first Mobile Application centre today. It has been in a soft launch mode for some time( 4 months) and Airtel claims there have been over 13 million downloads, over 71,000 apps and compatibility of these apps with over 780 devices.

Airtel is looking at this  App centre as a huge value-addition to their current customers.

How do consumers benefit?

• If am an Airtel subscriber, I can download a host of applications from the app centre for a price.
• If am new subscriber, may be some of  the apps look so interesting that I may want to prefer them over competitors if I need a new mobile connection.

The questions really for me are as follows for a mobile phone service provider w.r.t to Mobile Apps:

1. Do Apps for a mobile service provider increase stickiness?  Am not so sure as yet with these applications. If for example, Airtel had an App which constantly analyzed mobile tariffs based on  current usage and recommended the right tariff & savings, it would be far more subscriber-centric and valuable. This can lead to better retention, higher usage and lower churn. Also, not to mention strong word-of-mouth that it would generate. 
2. Is it just a buzz or is it truly differentiating given that fact that many consumers are still not GPRS/WAP savvy in India.  The jury is still out on this. Sure there will be a select few who could be interested but adoption is quite critical for widespread success of mobile apps.
3. What about non-Airtel subscribers? I am a not an Airtel subscriber. I tried to download the app and it denied the download . Would it not be far more beneficial for Airtel to have "Open Apps" compatible with any device. This can in fact become a "valuable lead"  for them as I could use it my Nokia or LG or Samsung or Blackerry Phone and also serve as a strong branding & communication platform. This is new world of mobile marketing. The key really here is that they lost my lead once the download was denied.

I am strong advocate of Open- Apps especially for Mobile Phone service provides and even device providers. The walled gardens need to break down. In fact, opengardens one of the top 10 mobile blogs do believe this trend is coming soon.

Imagine what OPEN-APPS, could have done to Airtel:

1. Why 13 million, what about the rest of the 100-200 million subscribers who are looking for an app to support their mobile lifestyle? Airtel automatically becomes a mobile service provider of choice - a preferred brand.
2. Imagine the millions of device owners who could have an Airtel App - It is a great branding and customer marketing/advertising opportunity that is waiting to be tapped.
3. Imagine the mind-market leadership that Airtel could gain out of this. It's quite incredible.

Marketing in a world when the door is already shut!

I am bombarded in a day with hundreds of emails and SMSs- many of them are promotional emails and SMSs. I simply ignore them.

I sit in front of the TV to watch my favorite program and I see a ticker running with messages.Just fails to grab my attention.

I am out to watch a movie and suddenly I realize there are "product placements" intelligently( supposed to be) weaved with the script. My mind shuts immediately as I realize I am being marketed at.

Many consumers like me are getting a lot a savvier than ever before and in one of my conversations with my clients, she was telling me how the hell do I market in a world where most of my best prospects and customers are in Do-No-Call or Do-Not-Disturb lists! 

How does one do marketing in a world when the door is already shut?!

Welcome to the world of relevance marketing. This is increasingly becoming important as many marketing messages are just being ignored or it's money wasted as the consumer is just indifferent. How does one practice the art of relevance marketing.

1. It starts with being genuine and authentic. Facebook fan club/Apps has become a fad. Soon it will lose its relevance after the initial hysteria is over. May be start a help desk page in Facebook for your brand to answer any queries or may be even have a click-to-call service as an app in your Facebook page,twitter or mobile which connects the customer with your already existing call centre.
2. Follow the customer learning journey   - It is important to understand at what stage is your customer or prospect at. It is important not lose the communication script & trigger at each stage. As the customer or prospect knows more about your brand, the intensity of her queries or help is different. It pays to focus your attention to this detail. 
3. Bring the data together for the dialog - Many a times the availability of multi-channel options creates fragmented knowledge across the company among customer facing executives. How can we identify repeat customers or  visitors and make them know enterprise wide, how can you fuse the data available at the call centre with web, how can your link service data with customer billing/purchase data? Start the data journey with small experiments and accelerate them with quick wins. Knowing this can help relevance marketing greatly.

My friend Sandra Zoratti has written an interesting article on this topic:

Step 1.Consumers want precision marketing. On the brand side, this process must begin by first deciding what problem, or pain point, you are seeking to address.

Step 2. Next, marketers need to evaluate and then leverage the data and campaigns currently in place.

Step 3. The next step is to synchronize your campaigns and determine the best message for the channel.

Step 4. Once a test campaign has been launched, the next step is to measure the results based on a wide range of criteria and, most importantly, bottom-line measures.

Step 5. After the initial test, it's time to refine and repeat the above steps to produce the same or different results.

Read more here

Driving relevancy in customer communication

CMO council has come-up with an interesting report that many marketers have faced as consumers themselves - irrelevant communication!  Many of these marketers talk about it but do nothing about it for their own brands or products. Here are some startling facts to think about:

• While 64 percent of consumers say promotional offers dominate both the email and traditional mail they receive, only 41 percent view these as must-read communications.
• 91 percent of consumers who opt out or unsubscribe to emails, 46 percent are driven to brand defection because the messages are simply not relevant.
• The threat of customer churn and disconnection intensifies as 41 percent of consumers say they would consider ending a brand relationship due to irrelevant promotions.
• An additional 22 percent say they would definitely defect from the brand!
• Nearly three quarters of consumers have received promotions for products they have previously purchased from the company
• 73 percent of consumers would be open to receiving print statements if mailed materials were recyclable or part of a sustainability program
• Nine out of ten consumers open monthly bills delivered via traditional mail, compared to 72 percent who open bills delivered via email
• When given the opportunity to choose, 51 percent of consumers prefer to receive product or service promotions via traditional mail while 44 percent prefer email.

It's really true esp.for myself  as a customer(as the report highlights)- I have seen many companies calling me to buy the product when am already their customer!

There is a need for marketers to add a relevance filter to their customer management process. It's high time they start integrating the channels of customer interaction & communication to make this happen.