2010 November |Alterian Blog | Social Media, Email, Web Content & Campaign Management

Archive for November, 2010

The Importance of List Growth

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Guest blog post by David Daniels, CEO, The Relevancy Group LLC

Earlier this year in April, The Relevancy Group fielded a survey and asked 674 email marketers in the US and the UK about their greatest challenges when conducting email marketing. The top response was subscriber/list churn, cited by 32% of the survey respondents. Having done this survey for over a decade, I was not surprised to see at the top of the list again, as subscriber churn remains a perennial challenge for us as marketers. This simple, painful reality underscores the importance of acquisition and list growth.

Recently, Alterian released an eBook on the topic that I wrote entitled “Creating Engaging Email – Driving Subscriber Acquisition.” It is an excellent resource on proven tactics to advance the growth of your email marketing list.

The eBook starts with details on how to leverage your search engine traffic and covert these anonymous visitors to known email subscribers. Then we move into proving 7 prescriptive tactics on how to build a robust preference center. Some of the most important information in this eBook begins on page 12 with the notion of a Connected Company. That is, an organization that is working across departments and silos to ensure that the goal of driving email subscriber growth is a universal concept. In this section, the eBook lays out 6 different strategies on how to drive subscriber acquisition across channels and throughout the organization, including the use of emerging mobile and social tactics. From there, the eBook provides details on how to set up a welcome campaign that has three major new relationship components – Welcome, Nudge and Nourish. The eBook wraps up with strategies on how to leverage web analytics and testing tactics to better improve the email acquisition funnel online.

Clearly it is a paper chock full of resources, and it is yours for free with registration. This is the first in a series of five eBooks. The upcoming eBook topics on Creating Engaging Email include Segmentation and Targeting, Harnessing Social and Mobile Marketing, Measuring Email Performance and finally, Leveraging Web Analytics.

As we continue to build this content, I’d love to hear your feedback on the first one. Please feel free to reach out to me on twitter.

Until then, all the best
David Daniels, CEO
The Relevancy Group

According to Direct Magazine, David Daniels is “one of the most influential experts in email marketing, if not the most influential.” Until January 2010 he served as Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester Research and JupiterResearch. David is co-author of the book “Email Marketing An Hour A Day” and has been a contributor to the Weekend Today Show on NBC. David has held senior level positions at Apple Computer, Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie, Micro/MacWarehouse, ProTeam and CDA Computer Sales.

Tags: eBook, Engaging Email, The Relevancy Group
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »

A new perspective on Web Content Management – the ACM7 release

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

Exciting days at Alterian! For my line of business, Web Content Management, we’re announcing a major new release today: Alterian Content Manager v7. It’s part of a bigger story though: Alterian Alchemy™, which puts it in the context of a framework for Customer Engagement. This framework is about listening to your customers, learning from them, then creating relevant messages for them and delivering that message to them in the right context via the right channel, ultimately building engagement (that is, if you do it well).

What makes the launch of ACM v7 special, in my opinion, is the changing role that Web Content Management systems will play in the future. No longer is it just about managing your websites; content needs to be managed for many more channels these days, but the technology to do so is diverse and fragmented. If you don’t have a proper strategy, you might end up with many content silos based on the channel that you need to communicate to. Not easy to manage or to enforce compliance, I’d say. Hopefully, we all agree we don’t want to go there.

With ACM v7, we deliver an excellent best of breed WCM system with many great enhancements in terms of user interface, Microsoft Office integration, extensibility/customization and much more (kudos to all the teams involved in making that happen!). But moreover, we are making big steps in terms of putting Alterian Content Manager at the hub of your engagement strategy, by allowing you to manage content for web, social media and email, all from within the same environment. This allows you to apply workflow, access rights, content tagging/categorization and much more at the content for all your customer engagements, without the need to duplicate content or store it in disparate systems.

We already see companies seeking for such solutions, like a car manufacturing brand that recently came to us, asking if we could help them manage the content creation and approval process for their 20+ Facebook pages centrally. I’m sure more companies face similar challenges. Luckily, with ACM v7, we can empower these marketers and make their life a lot easier. But as always, with more power comes more responsibility, so keep in mind what you’re trying to achieve: engagement, building trust and a long term relationship. And that is not just about having the right technology, but also about applying it in a sensible way.

Tags: Customer Engagement, wcm
Posted in Web Content Management | No Comments »

Technology does not drive customer insight, part 2

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

This post is second in a two-part series. Below, Graham discusses steps an organization can take in developing its data-driven marketing strategy.

Raising confidence in the marketing department:

In a recent engagement, it was demonstrated to a client that 50% of the proposed capital investment would deliver 70% of the project’s outcome. Board level approval was forthcoming for the entire project, quite simply because the marketing team was seen to have demonstrated a real risk and reward analysis, and a robust and measurable definition of success was provided. The initial investment delivered a higher return in a greatly reduced time scale. Having provided such clarity, the board felt more inclined to invest in the riskier or more innovative ideas promoted by the marketing department.

Seeing the wood for the trees:

The process of linking data to profitability also provides an insight to those small amounts of data that provide a disproportionally high impact on business. Identifying these high value data sources and improving their rate of collection, interpretation and speed of action results in a vastly improved bottom line performance, providing relevance to those elements of campaign measurement that contribute to campaign analysis and customer insight.

Subsequent automation ensures continued performance and generates the time required to identify the next data mother lode.

Alterian Customer Engagement Solutions are used by more than 2,500 marketing organizations around the world. The technology is supported by one of the most comprehensive range of partners, enabling client organizations to focus on their key competencies whilst meeting the developing needs of customers and supporting technologies.

If you believe that you or your organization is struggling with an excess of data and technology, start by identifying the following:

1. The key elements of data essential for success

2. The processes required to acquire and interpret

3 The skills required to turn the insight into bottom line measurable performance

Is your organization taking the necessary steps to determine the above and develop a data-driven marketing strategy?

Tags: customer intelligence, Data-driven marketing
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics | No Comments »

Are we making the most of all our channel data?

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

I can remember the first time that I ever got involved in creating a single customer view database. It was in the late 1980s. At that time I was working for a financial company who wanted to bring together various product databases, home insurance, car insurances, life products, as well as their loan products. The priority at the time was to understand which customers held multiple products with us and to use this knowledge to try and cross sell more effectively.

Now 20 years on, many companies now have all their product information in a single customer view and use it with great success. However, many others seem to be missing a trick in developing this further. Whilst companies once had product silos, now increasingly we see data held in channel silos.

It is all too common to see separate ‘pots’ of data for direct mail, email, sms, web activity and increasingly for social media, without any regular process for bringing them together. I believe that companies are really missing opportunities by not making this happen.

The logic of having all this customer contact data together in a single customer view, alongside sales data makes sense to most marketers. After all, the companies are able to take this more holistic view of their customers and their multi-channel interactions should be able to communicate with more relevant and timely offers. So why aren’t more companies doing it?

There are probably two main reasons: the historical purchase of individual components from different suppliers and the lack of a marketer-friendly platform to hold the sometimes vast amounts of data generated particularly by the digital channels.

As some of these channels are relatively new, often technology is adopted to deliver each communication. These individual technologies from multiple suppliers then become silos, each holding data for just a single channel. Historically, marketers didn’t really have a choice, but now with certain key companies building out offerings across multiple channels, increasingly there is the opportunity to easily take these services from a single supplier.

Regardless, even with these individual silos, it would be perfectly possible for the smart marketer to bring this data together. However, for many, the lack of a marketing-friendly central database able to be automatically fed by these silos acts as a barrier for marketing to have such a single customer view.

As consumers, we each find it faintly absurd when companies deal with us in a disjointed way and, conversely, can be hugely impressed when companies get it right. Wouldn’t we all like a company to understand that we visited their website, searched through different products and were close to buying? We’d be impressed if that organization sent a follow up email encouraging our purchase. We’d probably respect the company even more if our conversations with the call center and via social media were also acknowledged in this email.

It is clearly not a five minute exercise to create this utopian world of a totally integrated, single customer view. However, with the expansion of companies offering this service and the power of marketing friendly databases able to hold the wealth of channel data now available, it is increasingly possible and definitely desirable.

Tags: customer view, data silos, Multi Channel Marketing
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics, Web Content Management | No Comments »

How many knives and forks do you use to eat a meal?

Friday, November 19th, 2010

We have moved on from the first wave of new and shiny socialised marketing tools and are now looking to apply them against a robust strategy with measurable outcomes. How you monitor your social campaigns – from design through to collating results – absolutely must be underpinned by a consistent framework that knows what it is looking for, what it is trying to change and the measurable outcomes. But how do you get the measure of things?

When you plan a trip from geographical location A to B, you plan your route; you take into account metrics of distance, time and speed restrictions. It’s just sound planning. When you plan a campaign you will do it with an end goal and some waypoints in mind to guide you on your merry way. This makes sense, and it allows for adjustments mid-campaign. Sometimes elements of a campaign work better than others, so why wouldn’t you divert more resource to the area where you are making gains? These adjustments, however, must be guided by the measurements you are monitoring and not gut feeling.

If you are looking to increase sales, then the money in the bank will be indicative that something might just have worked. If you are looking to instigate a perception shift in your audience, then you might look at the before and after of keywords, themes, and tone of conversations. At a ‘nothing more, nothing less level’ you might just want to get another couple of hundred Facebook fans or Twitter followers to impress your boss, proving the social angle is working and that you are working the social angle…

The myriad of free tools available on the web can report shallow inferences and metrics, and you can spend all day logging in and out of any number of websites that all report a different stat and all use different algorithms to calculate rank, reach, and whether or not you really are a ‘Super-Wow!’ TwitterCore user (or whatever this week’s spam ranking system of choice might be). What does it mean? How are you helping yourself by spending so much time taking measurements that don’t add up or need an overuse of the ‘Copy and Paste’ command to fill one spreadsheet? How do you know what sources these tools are looking at and to what depth? Can the tool go back thirty tweets, three-hundred tweets or three years of tweets? From school science class we are instructed not to make causal statements from small samples, and yet some companies commit funds to social campaigns because seventeen people ‘Liked’ this or ‘Retweeted’ that.

If you want to try and gain qualitative and quantitative insight into your social marketing activity, SM2 could save you time and help you to report back with value and ease. Does your company maximise the value of social marketing campaigns and cut down on the metaphorical need for more than one knife and fork at meal-times?

Tags: measurement, Social Media Monitoring
Posted in Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

The Meaning of Alterian Alchemy™

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

When one looks at the definition of Alchemy on Wikipedia, it relates “to the attempt to change base metals into gold, investigating the preparation of the ‘elixir of longevity’, and achieving ultimate wisdom, involving the improvement of the alchemist …”. How apropos it is that Alterian’s Customer Engagement Framework be named Alterian Alchemy^TM. Not only is the technology the means to turn customer insights into actionable, engaging marketing, the means of achieving true customer engagement and sustainability of one’s brand, but the empowerment offered to the marketer to control that strategy – A fundamental shift in marketing.

Our latest Customer Engagement Solutions offer new ways for marketers to Listen, Learn, Understand and Speak with their customers. Not only is this an exciting time for us at Alterian – for me having been on the other side, it is rewarding to know that there are solutions which allow marketers to more effectively and efficiently engage their customers – something I’m sure we all wish for as consumers.

Working under the vision of Mike Talbot, our CTO and co-founder, it was great to see new conceptual ideas introduced, debated thoroughly and turned into the product we are releasing today. Given the scale of this undertaking, need I say the pace of development has been remarkable too! The entire design approach was around the users experience to address challenges and complexity issues users encounter with other campaign tools. This was made possible by a talented team working tirelessly across the globe. I am proud to work with such a great group of people. You may see Alterian for its technology; I see it for the people who believe in their work and fulfilling our vision. The launch of Alterian Alchemy^TMrepresents a milestone in our journey to change the face of marketing. I could not be more thrilled! Our work is not done though. This is only a step in the process, although a major one, of turning lead into gold.

Watch Mike Talbot, CTO and co-founder of Alterian talking about Alterian Alchemy^TM. For more information on Alterian Alchemy^TM please click here.

Tags: Alterian Alchemy, Customer Engagement, Engagement Management
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics, Web Content Management | No Comments »

What Facebook Messages Means for Marketers

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Guest blog post by David Daniels, CEO, The Relevancy Group LLC

The introduction of Facebook Messages promises to deliver true inbox message convergence. That is, Facebook users will be able to receive traditional Facebook Messages, IM/Chat, SMS/Text and Email all in one inbox. Conversations with friends become one long thread that includes messages regardless of the channel. But that’s just the beginning.

Facebook Messages allows the consumer to use their social graph (their friend relationships) as a means to define relevance and determine what gets into their inbox. There will be three folders:

· Inbox – These are the most relevant messages directly from friends, prioritized based on your interaction with them. This works much like what users currently see in the status feed section.

· Other – This is a catch-all folder for messages from friends of friends. The user will be able to drag messages or “conversations” from one folder to another. Marketing messages and invites from fanned brands will likely end-up in this folder.

· Spam – This would be unwanted messages folder.

The Facebook user will be able to leverage the same message privacy settings that Facebook Messages currently uses. The will decide which messages they want to receive, all but eliminating spam.

· You >>> Your friends on Facebook (regardless of channel all in one string and prioritized cause they are a priority for you)

· You >>> Friends of Friends on Facebook (same but you have the ability to remove them from the thread or even keep them in the thread, but move them to your ‘other folder’ because they might just be that annoying or not all that close to you)

· You >>> Everyone – Unless the user wants to hear from everyone – meaning marketers/brands that you have NOT liked/fanned then these messages will automatically bounce

The email address will be based up the users Facebook vanity URL with an at facebook.com address. The use of this email address is optional. The Relevancy Group has a survey in the field, measuring switching behaviors and attitudes. I expect we’ll see about 10% of the online population switch their email address immediately.

There are many acquisition tactics that still apply, and the latest eBook from Alterian and The Relevancy Group is a great resource on driving subscriber growth. Additionally, read my new Clickz article on Five Connected Marketing Tactics for FaceBook Messages.

Lastly The Relevancy Group launched AllFBMessages.com a resource center containing news, tips and research related to Facebook Messages.

Follow David on Twitter @emaildaniels.

Tags: Facebook Messages, Social Inbox
Posted in Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing | 1 Comment »

Technology does not drive customer insight, part 1

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

This post is first in a two-part series.

Most companies, when developing a data driven marketing strategy, start with technology. The adopted technologies drive the acquisition of data, and it is from this acquired data that the organization derives insight. This same technology-led focus is also responsible for the proliferation of irreconcilable data and data sources. Finally, and usually only after many years of investment, do companies address the matter of skills, process and profitability. By this I mean:

1. Do we have the skills available to gather, interpret and take action upon the resulting data?

2. Are the processes in place to gather and distribute the data in the most efficient manner?

3. For money spent, what will we gain in either customer acquisition, retention or margin?

The typical result of the technology-led process is the poor reputation many marketing departments have at board and share-holder level in demonstrating return on marketing investment, projects that fail to deliver as forecast, and marketing departments reliant on specialist technology skills to operate on a daily basis. The right product at the right time in the right place… you wish.

A further function is seen in the time and effort wasted pursuing subsequently abandoned projects and the plethora of poorly articulated RFI and RFP documents seen by supplying organizations such as ourselves.

As new technologies evolve, marketers continue to clamor for more expenditure for increased technology without any demonstration of ROI. Currently, this can be seen with the near obsessive levels of interest shown in social media.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The simple fact is that technology doesn’t drive customer insight; people do.

By inverting the above described process, the vast majority of marketers can very quickly and very simply identify where capital or operational expenditure can be applied for the most effective return on investment, ensuring that return is in line with the company’s strategic objectives. The result is often a lower rate of capital expenditure with a greater ROI.

How does your company develop its data-driven marketing strategy?

Tags: Data Acquisition, Technology Marketing
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics | 1 Comment »

Unlocking the power of Marketing Data for Cisco

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

In this video Anita Baker, Senior Manager of Global Database Marketing for Cisco Systems, explains how as Cisco expands, they really need to understand who they are marketing to. Alterian’s Engine database technology helps them to do that on the scale required by Cisco.

Anita explains that in the past they were sales led, selling to companies but as marketers, they now need to understand how to market to individuals, which requires them to analyse masses of disparate data. She explains how the capability of the Alterian helps them to understand data both at the company level and contact level across the entire company, to aggregate that data, and how analysis that used to take weeks before can now be done in hours, even minutes. This allows the database marketing team to give insights to their executives in a form they can understand to enable them to make better and quicker decisions.

In a week where Alterian has announced the latest version of its Engine database, Engine 4.3, and AMS 3.0, I can’t think of a better endorsement of this technology from one of the World’s most forward thinking technology companies. Thank you Anita.

Tags: Alterian, Customer Engagement, data aggregation, database marketing, Marketing
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics | No Comments »