Search results matching tags 'digital' and 'data'

One-to-One Marketing goes 3D

1845437 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:49:00 GMT

Lord Leverhulme famously said that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the problem is I do not know which half”. In a downturn it is vital that none of the marketing pound is wasted and as planning director at Leeds-based direct response agency PCD, I can reveal how to be smarter with your marketing spend.

Whether you call it direct marketing or one-to-one marketing, the all important goal is to promote your message to your customers in a more targeted way. Achieving this goal becomes ever more vital as company boardrooms insist marketing teams justify their budgets and as such decisions, strategies and plans will become more customer data insight driven.

Digital opportunities and channels provide marketers with never before seen levels of interactions with customers and prospects. Integrating in a single process, for example via direct mail, sms, web or email, with levels of personalisation that are no longer restricted to simple variables but include imagery, product messages and copy to fit an individual customer’s particular purchasing habit and lifestyle, help to engage with target audiences.

Yes, this comes at a higher cost, however experience has shown that cost per pack whilst increasing is countered by an overall increase in conversion, lowering overall acquisition costs.”

To reflect this explosion in alternative on and offline media platforms, we at PCD have refocused the business and developed a 3D approach – data, digital and direct.

• Data means knowledge and provides insight, information and understanding which results in targeted planning, segmentation and a well defined strategy.
• Digital means one-to-one dialogue, delivering relevant and personalised comms. This means that the right message is being delivered the right way at the right time, both on and offline.
• Direct means accountable and results in brand building, generating response, measuring, learning and improving.

I believe that we needed to develop this unique 3D approach in order to provide clients with targeted methods to reach their consumers and increase customer value.

What’s different about our 3D approach is that you will realise it’s not just about sending complex mailing packs, building the biggest websites, sending the most emails or developing ‘flashy’ online campaigns. It’s about taking data and using it to understand your customers. It’s about understanding a customer’s journey with your brand, the touchpoints and conversations you’ll have and those you should have. It’s about segmenting data to target creative more effectively and then delivering campaigns that embrace and engage the customers.

This is all before a creative concept is hatched and means that clients fully understand their customers, allowing them to embrace and engage with them in a way they have not been able to do before.

I believe that our approach begins by understanding our clients data, the segments they form, the impact these segments can have on your business and then the creative message we can deliver, ultimately ensuring the right customer receives the right message by the right channel.

For more information visit www.pcdagency.com or telephone 01943 872505

Is the rush to embrace digital eclipsing the traditional?

2652554 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:25:00 GMT

Digital digital digital – isn’t it wonderful?! With its power to engage, its speed, the huge choice and access it offers consumers and, not least, the vast opportunity it provides for marketers to get under the skin of prospects and customers like never before.

Well, a resounding ‘yes’ to all of the above and more. As marketers we must all learn to adopt and adapt to all things digital if we are to maintain currency, credibility and capability. Traditional DM agencies can no more afford not to have some kind of digital skills now than their above the line colleagues and, in the heady world of data in particular, digital’s role is rapidly moving from peripheral to central.

The richness and depth of the data that can be captured, analysed and manipulated takes us closer to real-time customer insight and understanding than ever before. Clickstream and web analytics are just a couple of the many tools now at our disposal to track consumer behaviour and preferences in minute detail. There seems to be daily coverage on some clever new way of using web, e mail and mobile data to better effect, eclipsing other channels in a frenzy of new technology-itis.

And at this point we need to sound a cautionary ‘But’. Yes, the speed of technological change in the digital channel is exponential and very, very exciting – of course, this brings its own challenges with almost instant obsolescence of the latest gadgets – but let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture. Data to drive consumer insight comes in all shapes and sizes – at campaign level, at channel level (including digital) and at customer and household level. Clever tools such as web analytics are excellent when well-used at campaign and channel level. The problem is that they only give a part of the picture, so whilst the digital channel and the data-rich benefits it brings are growing rapidly in importance, a little perspective can go a long way.

High streets may have suffered in the last few years but we still see millions of people browsing and shopping in-store every day of every week. Direct mail volumes may be dropping but there’s still plenty piled up waiting for us when we get back from holiday. Call centres are also still seeing a brisk trade for both sales and service, and for more complex, big ticket products (especially such as pensions and mortgages in the financial services market) many consumers still prefer the reassurance of dealing with someone face to face.

So digital, although growing very rapidly, is still only part of the whole channel mix. What’s more, most consumers will often use a mix of channels - sometimes over a sustained period of time – to make their purchase. Using data from all relevant channels and bringing it together at the customer level is where we get the real insight for improving communications and targeting.

So the value to be gained from data sourced from digital activity is enormous, but let’s not lose sight of the basic (and still valid) principles of what makes great direct marketing. By looking at the picture from the customer perspective the whole really does become greater than the sum of the parts.

Adding value to the PPC equation

2517221 — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:17:00 GMT

Regardless of the techniques used to entice customers, a standard acquisition strategy generally has the potential to deliver prospects of both high and low value. On the positive side, prospects who are converted into active customers may prove themselves to be worthwhile targets because of the revenue they generate in the short and long term. On the flipside, other new customers may not allow such a fruitful relationship; they may take advantage of an introductory offer or only make a single purchase, costing more to acquire than the brand can ever hope to secure a return from. And of course, yet more customers will fall somewhere between these two extremes.

New customers delivered through investment in search marketing – both SEO and PPC – can deliver both types of customers. However, PPC, in its prime role at the entrance to the sales funnel, can be used in a much more tactical way, in order to encourage the acquisition of consistently higher-value customers.

Firstly let’s consider how PPC works. A good PPC agency will be constantly improving and enhancing the search terms associated with a brand campaign, to capitalise on those terms which are delivering the greatest responses. By adding another layer of insight to this process – namely identifying which search terms deliver higher-value customers - the campaign can then begin to evolve to appeal to a larger majority of these prospects.

It sounds simple, but there is the obvious requirement of developing a more detailed understanding of customer value, in order to clearly recognise and group new customers, and utilise this information within PPC activity. Value isn’t an exact science, and can be more about examining the potential a new customer can deliver to the brand, as well as considering other factors like risk and attrition. The brand may need to develop a communications strategy to successfully unlock value over the long term, based on customer insight and its own product and service portfolio. But if an accurate enough gauge can be created at the point of acquisition, the PPC campaign can develop to reflect the need to attract certain customer groups over others.

The brand will obviously benefit from the improvement in quality of new customers it acquires, and the PPC agency can use this in combination with other methods of campaign enhancement to improve its own performance; especially important if it’s working on a cost per acquisition model. If the average value of new customers increases, it can even lobby to increase the acquisition fee to reflect this.

Brands should investigate the opportunity to use PPC in a strategic and considered way. In doing so they can improve the quality of customers entering the sales cycle while simultaneously maximising their search marketing investment.

Enough of the junk mail already!

2423968 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:15:00 GMT

It seems that scatter-gun emailing still a viable way to educate consumers about a brand, from the amount of irrelevant stuff that was yet again in my inbox when I logged in this morning.

Yes, I think it’s great that email marketing is on the up; brands are increasingly recognising it as a brilliant form of targeted communication that can deliver a call to action straight to your consumer. That said, any form of marketing that is mis-targeted, badly composed or difficult to respond to should be classified as junk. And unfortunately, a hefty percentage of email marketing is just that.

Email marketing isn’t brain surgery – there are simple steps to ensure that your work doesn’t end up in the deleted items, such as be clear in your subject line, deliver the best possible content and give your customers options. Your customers should be spreading the message for you. So many companies spend huge amounts generating fresh leads for their campaigns but neglect to highlight to customers they can forward the message on.

And keep your data fresh - if your emails are part of regular communications make sure users can link through to update their data. This also means you are far more likely to avoid “unsubscribe me” and the dreaded “report as spam” button.

Consumers want to be engaged, not bombarded. Engage, make it easy to respond and keep the lines of communication open, and everything else will fall into place.

Crossing borders with email marketing

2423968 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:50:00 GMT

It really amazes me that there are still so many sloppy emailers that think they can apply the same strategy to their international campaigns as they do their UK campaigns, and use the same content and creative. Just last night I received an email from an Australian winter sports travel company telling me it was ‘dumping with snow and to come skiing this weekend’. It also thanked me for my previous booking OR enquiry. Firstly, they should know from their data capture form that I’m in the UK, where it’s not snowing (ok it might be raining constantly but it is our summer time), and popping off for a quick ski down under just isn’t feasible. And secondly, surely they should know if I’ve booked a trip with them before or if I’ve simply enquired with them so they can tailor the email accordingly?

Communicating to customers on a global level requires more time and thought than simply translating your campaign and firing it out. The other day this article reminded me just how dangerous sloppy translation is. If your brand has global reach, or you want it to, then some thought needs to go into how you make it relevant to different markets. Personalisation is key, and tailoring to local changes isn’t difficult if you use sophisticated but user friendly email broadcasting tools available such as eC-messenger, followed by testing (and more testing) to see which generates the best response.

On top of this brands need to be aware of both serious issues like abiding by foreign laws, and simple ones like being aware of different time zones and when emails will be hitting inboxes, to create an effective global campaign that resonates with a global audience.

Too many brands make the mistake of just seeing the global picture when in fact they should be thinking local whilst acting global. And whilst there are a few brands that champion this approach, there are still far too many culprits of the ‘one size fits all’ campaign, and this is what is bringing the industry under the spotlight, for all the wrong reasons.

…And access for all

2460092 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

As you may have read in a previous post, our house is currently a building site and we’re living in temporary accommodation. Although the flat is nice enough, the family and I are all starting to miss our creature comforts: my wife and I the garden and the Sky Plus HD box, the kids their trampoline. But we’re united in yearning for broadband which we’re all struggling to cope without.

My youngest daughter is a fan of the Bratz website (about dolls and accessories, for those of you without young girls), my son his Xbox live gaming & my eldest a constant stream of YouTube - let alone all their homework requirements which seem to demand internet access these days.

As well as for work, broadband access is vital for my late night binges on iTunes & paying the builders. We’ve experimented with 3G cards, but can’t seem to get a good enough reception out in the sticks, so the whole experience becomes frustrating.

We know that around 90 per cent of people who’ve just moved home would chose broadband over a microwave if they could only have one installed in the first month. How consumer behaviour has changed in the last few years. And I hope there are no doctors reading, but I read that 40 per cent of us would rather give up fresh fruit and veg than our broadband connection!

Whatever the industry’s thoughts on Digital Britain, we can applaud the decision to give as many people as possible access to broadband. Not only will it feed my families’ needs & obsessions but it’s great news for the UK’s agencies and advertisers as it expands the vibrant marketplace that the internet creates, as well as delivering consumers all the public service information they need.

It’s great up in the digital North

2460092 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:56:00 GMT

I’ve recently come back from a couple of days in the north, where I had breakfast, lunch and dinner with most of our agency partners in that part of the world.

As ever, leaving the London smog and arriving in Manchester, I get a real buzz from the sense of community you get when talking to media agencies in the creative hubs of Leeds and Manchester - it offers something you don’t get in the capital. The industry really seems to pull together to present the north as a region of fantastic creativity and world-leading service in digital, while still retaining their competitive spirit. Perhaps it’s not fashionable to segment regions these days as the Internet has few geographical boundaries, but it’s something I’ve definitely observed.

Because of the heritage of direct response advertising, the North has adapted to the science of search marketing very well. Agencies there have taken ideas of best practice and shared goals and are often ahead of the game when it comes to their southern counterparts – a bit like their football team (and that’s coming from a Chelsea supporter). For example, many agencies in the north, such as Brilliant Media, Latitude and Mediavest, have set up teams to monitor user click paths and site usability, an area we see as integral to the success of search.

The challenge for the northern agencies, as I see it, is to take the great reputation they’ve built through search and apply that experience to the fast developing online video and interest based display market, keeping the London agencies on their toes. I’m looking forward to being invited back to the Manchester office this summer for a swift round of golf and to learn of more progress in this vibrant digital region so I can take the learnings back with me to London and spread the word.

Data is the new black

2460092 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:30:00 GMT

This week I was at an industry event chatting with a couple of old mates – one from a traditional media background who now works on the client side, and one from a media agency – about the use of data in our industry. While my agency friend, perhaps unsurprisingly, was up to speed with most of the huge amount of data now available to advertisers and agencies, this was in stark contrast to my other friend who was unaware of the wealth of information at the disposal of professionals in the industry today. I guess my point is that there are still plenty in media who don't yet utilise the huge amount of data-points available to all businesses. It almost feels like a failure on our part when we realise that the message has not yet permeated throughout the whole industry, especially when there are so many easy to use tools and analytics packages out there. The web analytics industry has come a long way in recent years. What used to be a techie subject for tracking server performance and website hits (which clearly went over my head) has evolved into a dream for webmasters, marketers and media planners. Conversions, geography, off and online media and a host of other areas can be measured and cross-referenced. This can be combined with powerful tools like Insights for Search, or Google's keyword tool, to give a snapshot of what people are searching for and interested in. As the digital industry has grown, there seemed to be two extremes in terms of the way marketers have been using data: those focused on direct response and e-commerce players who had data at the heart of their strategy on one side, and more traditional brand marketers who were yet to engage with the hard stats online (either through choice, or lack of understanding) on the other. But the good news is that more recently there's a new breed of media and marketing industry professional coming to the fore, predictably a mixture of the two extremes: the data-driven brand marketer and comms planner, with appreciation of traditional brand values, but with a mind hell-bent on data to prove success (or failure). It is these people who increasingly need to be at the centre of business and media decisions as clients and agencies alike become rightly obsessed with quality, value and ROI in these cash-tight times. It's up to search engines, media owners and the analytics industry to make sure all my mates are data-driven and better versed in the power of numbers in the months to come.