Direct Marketing Magazine April 2017

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How digital ushered in a new age of DRTV

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vol. 30 • No. 4 • April 2017

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

How TELUS achieved a unified view of their customers ❱ 8 TELUS Customer Insight team members (from left to right): Parikshit Ralhan, Shannan Davis, Iain Gledhill, Erin Rouchotas and Imanuel Muller.

Make the move to mobile analytics Data. Analytics. Insights. Results.

environicsanalytics.com

Gary Tannyan

Customer personas

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Vol. 30 | No. 4 | April 2017

ABM brings customer centricity to B2B marketing

EDITOR Sarah O’Connor - sarah@dmn.ca

Customer Personas

PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca

How to create marketing videos that inspire action

Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca Tom Evans - tom.evans@dmn.ca

LLOYDMEDIA INC. HEAD OFFICE / SUBSCRIPTIONS / PRODUCTION:

Unlikely allies: How digital ushered in a new age of DRTV

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DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Mike Poyser Kristen Allison Erin Raese Rob Leavitt Jen Ribble Jasmine Miller Elizabeth Scherle Pippa Nutt Tony Tie Catherine Pearson Allison Penning

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In The Mail

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How to drive action by understanding influencer personas

Canada Post’s lists help Quebec charity increase average donation by 30%

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Shopping lessons learned from 2016

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Gary Tannyan

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Out of many, one view of the customer Telus’ unified segmentation system drives culture shift

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How Aeroplan enriches transactional data to better understand customers april 2017

Three steps to prepare for the future of e-commerce Feature

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Seven interview hacks to identify data analytics pros Excellent Execution

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Subscriber engagement: The new key to reaching the inbox DMN.ca ❰

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Customer Centricity

ABM brings customer centricity to B2B marketing F Rob Leavitt, senior vice president at ITSMA, has spent most of the last 20 years providing thought leadership, brand positioning and strategic marketing guidance to help B2B technology and professional service firms develop and extend market leadership. He has a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania and MS in Political Science from MIT.

84% of B2B marketers agree that ABM has the highest ROI of any type of marketing strategy or program.

❱ DMN.ca

or those of us in business-to-business marketing, 2016 was the year of account-based marketing (ABM) and the din has only grown louder in 2017. It’s the hottest trend in B2B marketing today and it’s impossible to avoid the onslaught of ABM experts, events, tools and techniques.

Amid the hype of “six easy steps,” however, one can lose sight of the fundamental importance of customer centricity to ABM success. And for those more familiar with customer-centric marketing in the consumer space, it’s also critical to understand how this works in the B2B environment.

First, let’s clarify our terms. ITSMA, which pioneered ABM back in the early 2000s, defines it as “treating individual accounts as markets in their own right.” Like markets, business customers (especially large ones) are made up of diverse organizations, priorities, partners, (internal) customers and competitors.

Given the complexity of business customers, ABM is designed to address the varying concerns, approaches and incentives across multiple decision makers within each account.

Further, many B2B marketers work with the 80/20 rule: 80% (or more) of the company’s revenue comes from 20% (or less) of the company’s largest accounts.

Especially for those top accounts, it makes sense to bring the longer term and creative approach and skills of marketers together with the near term, “close the deal” approach on the sales side.

Similar to the consumer marketing push toward data-driven personalization, ABM moves B2B marketing from a traditional “spray and pray” with generic, promotional campaigns to a customized focus on specific accounts that should be the best-fit customers for the solutions you provide.

Done right, ABM can generate dramatic results. Recent research from ITSMA showed that 84% of B2B marketers agree that ABM has the highest ROI of any type of marketing strategy or program. Adobe, for example, a six billion dollar business and consumer software firm, achieved a stunning 1,400% revenue increase over three years with accounts in its ABM program.

The growing prominence of ABM in recent years, however, especially with the great success of the early adopters, has led to confusion and often a watering down of the initial concept.

Most important, many ABM programs have given relatively short shrift to the importance of starting with deep customer insight for each account. Instead, they jump into campaigns targeting hundreds of accounts with a thin veneer of personalization (“Dear Rob, here’s my generic pitch”) or segmentation (“Dear Rob, here’s my standard pitch for health care or for chief marketing officers”).

High level personalization and segmentation are useful but barely scratch the surface of what customer-centric ABM can accomplish. The real power of ABM comes when marketers focus on understanding and solving the customer’s key business challenges rather than simply promoting off-the-shelf products and services.

Five specific questions provide the starting point for truly customer-centric ABM: 1. How is the customer’s industry changing? What are the most important business, technology, social and other trends affecting the future of the business?

2. How is the customer responding to those changes?

What are the major business, operational and other initiatives inside the account?

3. Who are the key stakeholders inside the account that own these initiatives and how do they fit in the organization?

4. What are the decision-making criteria for purchasing products, services and solutions that might support these initiatives?

5. Who are the perceived gatekeepers for these initiatives and how can we work with or around them?

Great sales people will have answers to some of these questions but strategic marketers can often take a broader and deeper view and pull together an integrated view that supports new customized offerings, programs and campaigns.

Indeed, when marketers truly dig deep on these questions, they invariably identify a host of new business opportunities that go far beyond the shortterm sales plan. As such, ABM works at least as well in growing existing accounts as it does with landing new ones. Another ITSMA survey found that the most important benefits of ABM for sales people included: ❯❯ Uncovering more new opportunities within existing accounts; ❯❯ Increased account penetration: wallet share, revenue and margin; and ❯❯ Ability to have richer conversations with customers.

Last, and certainly not least, customers themselves benefit from the ABM approach. According to the same ITSMA survey, customer benefits include: ❯❯

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Customers view us more as a trusted partner/advisor than as a vendor; Customers have a broader understanding of our offerings and strategy; Customers are more satisfied with our relationship because of a more tailored approach; and Customers feel better understood due to our in-depth analysis.

April 2017

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Customer Personas

How to drive action by understanding influencer personas

By Elizabeth Scherle

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obody likes to waste money.

In today’s digital age, brands should be able to avoid this by prioritizing solutions that allow them to hyper-target personas. Personas are generalized representations of your target customers. Having a firm grasp of your personas helps with everything from customer acquisition to retention for your brand.

Seventy-one per cent of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals have documented personas, according to a 2016 report by Cintell. ITSMA’s recent survey indicates 91% of companies using personas have been able to create a clearer understanding of who their buyers are. Last but not least, Cintel also found that 65% of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals have updated their personas within the last six months.

The numbers speak for themselves. There are many ways to adopt a persona-first mindset when trying to target users for your next social influencer marketing campaign. Let’s get started.

What constitutes influencer personas There should never be a one-sizefits-all approach for creating influencer personas. Why? Because the influencer with the highest number of followers may not be the best fit for your campaign. For ❱ DMN.ca

example, a vlogger who is known to typically do product hauls on bargain beauty finds may not be the right fit for a dedicated post on a prestige beauty brand. That comes across as disingenuous to the blogger’s followers and doesn’t reflect well on the brand.

You can avoid such a faux pas by considering influencers’ behaviors, psychographics, demographics, habits and routines first, before even thinking about their follower counts.

Here’s a framework to go about it: First, there are cultural factors like the geography, language, culture and environment.

Next, there are social factors like family, socioeconomic status and social groups. There are also personal factors like age, lifestyle and personality. Lastly and most importantly, there are psychological factors such as motivation, perception, learning, beliefs and attitudes that all add to the full picture of your influencer personas. Most influencers choose to create and share content about your brand in exchange for something—whether it be for early VIP access, exclusivity, personal brand building, financial compensation or free products.

It is extremely important to understand the motivations behind why each influencer shares their views with their followers to help you align on the right message—one that stays true to your brand and reflects the

It is extremely important to understand the motivations behind why each influencer shares their views with their followers to help you align on the right message. influencer’s personal voice—at the right time of your campaign.

How to create influencer personas To understand your customer personas, you have to understand the goal of each marketing campaign intimately. If you’re aiming for the generation of authentic UGC, there are many ways to get there through thoughtful targeting unique to each social channel.

Although obtaining personal information like age, geography and income may be a breeze through onboarding, it’s the other important things like shopping habits (do they browse in-store or online?) and lifestyle preferences (do they own an Amazon Echo or Google Home?) when building a persona that are harder to get.

At Influenster we parse through data on user reviews, ratings,

scans, shares, photo uploads, questions asked and answers given to dig into their personas and understand exactly what they are creating content on. We also get members to connect their social media networks to Influenster.

This helps us not only understand their social influence but, coupled with social listening to monitor their conversations, it allows us to understand which campaigns they are suited for depending on where their strengths and interests lie.

After collecting the aforementioned info and conducting all your research, a sample influencer persona could look something like this: Kathy, 36 years old: lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Toronto with her husband and two kids; freelances as a writer; strives for a well-balanced meal and life for herself and April 2017

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Customer Personas her family; uses BPA-free products and supports socially sustainable brands; has a social impact score of 5220; most active on Instagram, Twitter and her health and wellness blog.

With the amount of metadata that we gather on our users, we’re able to not only help brands target their exact personas, but also go a step further to reach users of competitive brands or even engage with current brand loyalists they may be missing.

How to drive action Now that you are armed with the information, you need to understand how to get the right message to the right person at the right time. In order to drive an action through segmentation and hyper-targeting, there are two main things to keep in mind: one, which life stage your customer is in and two, what your customer is doing and thinking in real-time (e.g. what are they consuming in their everyday lives? How

do they get and digest content?

How do they communicate?).

Once you take these two factors into account, you can deliver the message that is most relevant to them at the right moment, in the right life stage.

When I talk about life stage, it is not just about being a Baby Boomer shopping for a new computer or a Gen Xer browsing for a new pair of sneakers. It has to be more granular than that. I’m talking about sending sample diapers to expectant moms living in the suburbs—grabbing their attention right before they start considering other brands of diapers. I’m talking about young professionals who are “adulting” (taking on their first jobs straight out of college and living in their own apartment for the first time) and sending them a brand of paper towel to try before they start considering other household brands, and then getting them to share their opinion with their other followers of a similar life stage.

Now that’s hyper-targeting of specific personas and meaningful

word of mouth marketing.

Machine learning is also critical to predict future behavior in order to shape your customer’s journey or identify the customers who need engagement the most. An example is to use a vendor app to geo-target your audience while they are in stores to activate them in real-time. Customers can be sent push notifications of discounts and offers of the products and brands that they like on third-party apps based on their proximity to the closest store selling your product or service. In-store contests and sweepstakes are also a way to activate your target customers in the right places.

As much as this geo-targeting helps a brand, it’s also useful for a consumer because it’s relevant.

When we created the Influenster app, we listened to member feedback and incorporated a mobile barcode scanner to allow shoppers on-the-go to scan a product’s UPC, access reviews, post questions and receive offers from brands they’ve expressed interest

in. It is all about reaching your audience at the right time on their path to purchase.

Conclusion Consumers are bombarded by ads 24 hours a day, seven days a week and so they tend to tune out the noise. It’s time for brands and marketers to not spend unnecessary time and money on messages that don’t resonate with their audience. Learn who your personas are and start making an impact today by tailoring and customizing to their needs.

Elizabeth Scherle is the co-founder and president of Influenster, the product discovery and reviews platform that enables socially savvy consumers to find new products and get advice to make informed purchases. With a community of over three million members, these digital influencers have written over 14 million reviews on over two million products, spreading the word all over their social media networks. Originally from Henderson, IA, Elizabeth received her B.A. in Marketing from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

Bronto is the best platform I’ve used so far.

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Mike Girardin Director of Ecommerce

The Bronto Marketing Platform is the ultimate solution for retailers to drive revenue through email and cross-channel marketing. With Bronto, it’s easy for Silver Jeans to analyze, target and reach their audience with highly-tailored, personalized messages that get noticed and generate clicks and orders.

For more info, visit bronto.com

april 2017

DMN.ca ❰

TELUS Customer Insight team members (from left to right): Erin Rouchotas, Imanuel Muller, Shannan Davis, Iain Gledhill and Parikshit Ralhan.

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Gary Tannyan

Customer Personas

April 2017

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Customer Personas

Out of many, one view of the customer TELUS’ unified segmentation system drives culture shift

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s one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, TELUS offers a wide range of products and services, including wireless, data, Internet, voice, entertainment, video, television and health care technology. Over the years, many of its divisions had developed their own segmentation systems to target their products and engage their customers within each area.

But by early 2015, TELUS senior management realized that multiple segmentation systems meant the company lacked a single, shared view of their customers.

The marketing division was more product-focused than customerfocused and some divisions had created their own unique segments related to the specific product or service they were responsible for.

“It was difficult to connect the dots from one segmentation system to another,” recalls Parikshit Ralhan, manager of customer insights and predictive analytics at TELUS. “We wanted to create a common language across the company that everyone could relate to. We wanted an overarching segmentation scheme.”

With a mandate to shift from product-focused to customercentric marketing, a core group from the Customer Insight’s team embarked on a year-long initiative with Environics Analytics (EA) to build a custom unified segmentation model.

Building the new system was only half the battle: the team also had to break down silos within its large organization to ensure the system would be accepted across the company and deliver measurable results in improved customer experience and operating efficiencies.

Led by director Iain Gledhill, april 2017

the five-member team hosted stakeholder workshops throughout the company designed to gather feedback, align objectives and success metrics, and obtain buy-in. “We brought them into the kitchen,” recalls Ralhan. The team would later meet with stakeholders again to help socialize the results when they had developed the recipe for a solution.

Next came the hard analytics work. To create the segmentation system, analysts combined TELUS behavioural data from the company’s multiple lines of business with rich, third-party data provided by EA, using the PRIZM5 segmentation system as the foundation. From more than 100 variables, they identified key drivers based on TELUS’ business objectives and applications, which were then mapped to six themes to create segments that would work across the organization.

“The segments needed to be broad enough for everyone across the company to relate to, but meaty enough for divisions to act on them,” explains Ralhan. The themes included tech adoption (reflected in device ownership), value for money (price consciousness), brand loyalty and demographics and socioeconomic status.

Ralhan notes that the team wanted to avoid demographics as the sole driver. “We didn’t want segments of just Millennials or young families,” he says. “We wanted to tease out nuances from the demographic buckets.”

Analysts ultimately created 12 custom TELUS segments that could be linked to current and prospective customers via postal codes. They named segments and created personas for each one based on in-house and third-party data.

For example, the segment named

Parikshit Ralhan, manager of customer insights and predictive analytics at TELUS.

Simple Traditionalists consisted of older, conservative consumers who look to technology to simplify their lives. They buy phone products based on utilitarian needs and like talking to TELUS agents in person when making purchases. By contrast, the Enabled Elite segment consists of wealthy, cultured consumers who favour premium brands and technology; they often go online to research products before making a purchase.

With the segments defined, the TELUS project working team created detailed profiles for them, highlighting family type, values,

Gary Tannyan

By Catherine Pearson

digital habits and motivations.

One-page briefs—featuring a photo and quote from a typical segment member—helped bring the segments to life and indicate the factors that influence their purchase patterns. Staff members then developed persona imaging reports and PowerPoint presentations customized for each department. On a centralized site, they created a library of resources with icons, heat maps and custom dashboards. As a fun way to introduce the new Continued on Page 22 DMN.ca ❰

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Customer Personas

How Aeroplan enriches transactional data to better understand customers

By Mike Poyser

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uccessful loyalty programs offer value that is relevant to program members.

This value can come in many forms—discounts, free gifts, special offers and others—but the key is to ensure that it is what customers actually want. Here at Aimia, a data-driven marketing and loyalty analytics company, we’re seeing first-hand how consumers are becoming increasingly savvy about the way they engage with loyalty programs. According to the 2016 Aimia Loyalty Lens study, 42% of Canadian customers view their data as highly valuable, while 51% of consumers get annoyed when companies don’t use what they know about them to offer better, personalized products and services.

Customers expect tailored and relevant experiences and companies are turning to data and analytics to develop multidimensional views of customer preferences and behaviour.

Ultimately, the challenge they are trying to solve is how to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time.

Many companies are becoming adept at recording and analyzing consumer data on several levels to inform their customer communications. For example, records of past purchases are a type of transactional data that provides great insight into customer behaviour, given that buying often occurs in patterns.

Companies will typically aggregate such transactional data to create meaningful input variables for predictive models. However, to truly maximize the value of transactional data, one should consider enriching our transactional data prior to any type of aggregation, analysis or predictive modeling. Such enrichment can include simple things like data cleansing and imputing missing ❱ DMN.ca

values or more complex things like inferring new transactionlevel variables based on pattern recognition. Whatever the case may be, there is an enormous amount of untapped informational value that can be leveraged by focusing on data enrichment at the most granular (i.e. transaction) level data prior to jumping to predictive modeling or more advanced analytics.

Aeroplan: A case study in enriched transactional data Aimia owns and operates Aeroplan, Canada’s premium loyalty coalition program of more than five million members, 75 partners and more than 150 brands across multiple industries and sectors, including airlines, banks and retailers, among others.

As such, Aeroplan manages a large expanse of data to ensure Aeroplan Miles are issued to and redeemed by members transacting with Aeroplan partners.

It all starts with enriching your data before jumping to analysis and modelling. Sometimes when we look at our data, we’ll notice certain gaps. For example, postal code and detailed address information is often missing or incomplete.

Without postal code or detailed address information there are many types of analysis that we would not be able to execute against. Some simple examples include: understanding our member’s preferred shopping regions or inferring where our members live, work and travel.

We can estimate the latitude and longitude for a given merchant by first mapping all transactions at that merchant to the home address of each Aeroplan member.

Given that we have accurate home address information for most of the Aeroplan membership base, such an exercise would provide a graphical illustration of where a merchant might be located.

As expected, especially within

certain categories such as gas stations and grocery stores, most transactions at a particular merchant are made by people that live closest to that merchant. Based on this underlying assumption our team is able to engineer a data product that converts each customer’s postal code to corresponding latitude and longitude, and then estimate the merchant location by taking an iterative weighted average of where the most transactions took place.

Executing this simple algorithm against our transactional data provides us with fairly accurate estimates for many brick and mortar retailers (especially gas stations, grocery stores, local shops/restaurants, banks) when validated against a known dataset.

When you look deeper into the data, you can find that there is a correlation between the types of retailers we are able to estimate location for most accurately and the distribution of the customers that have transacted there. For example, a local bakery in the suburbs has a low standard deviation or distribution in transactions compared to a fast-food retailer in downtown Toronto that attracts customers from all over the city.

This is a general trend: certain merchants/partners that are located in downtown or urban settings have large standard deviations (i.e. people from a wide array of distant postal code are all transacting at the same merchant). The same is true for regional small, specialty shops and tourist attractions.

Another area where the algorithm struggles to converge is with online retailers. For example, transactions for “Amazon Kindle” are conducted online and addresses associated with these transactions are from all over the place. This is where we find unexpected value!

Although the algorithm fails to do what it was original designed for (i.e. providing an accurate estimate

for a merchant’s location)—it inadvertently provides us a useful, scalable method to identify online retailers without trying to parse the merchant name for a .COM or .CA. Lastly, we took this a step further and were able to distinguish between one-time online purchases versus repeated purchases that seemed to be preauthorized payments—with either monthly or bimonthly recurrences.

With enriched data, we can determine the general areas in which most purchases take place.

For example, if we can see that an Aeroplan member shops often in downtown Toronto, since purchasing items like food and gas are fairly consistent we can make an educated guess that they work downtown. Items rated as high or very high in standard deviation require a touch more investigation.

In an age where brands are increasingly working hard to differentiate themselves from competitors, enriched transaction data provides more visibility into spending patterns and trends to better identify opportunities to meet customer needs. In this example, being able to identify preferred shopping regions and locations enables us to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. As deletist consumers don’t think twice about shutting out brands that send them irrelevant messages, it’s more important than ever to use enhanced insights to deliver meaningful value to customers.

Michael Poyser, vice president, analytics,

Americas coalition at Aimia, oversees analytics work for Aimia’s Aeroplan coalition and proprietary clients, working across the financial, retail and travel sectors. He transformed Aeroplan’s predictive analytics and data modelling engines, and led the development of the Aimia Loyalty Platform—a SaaS customer analytics platform, used by retailers and CPG companies around the world.

April 2017

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DRTV

Unlikely allies: How digital ushered in the new age of DRTV

By Pippa Nutt

A

t first look, it’s hard to imagine two more diametrically opposed mediums than the young yet sophisticated upstart known as digital advertising and the old school “loud and proud” world of DRTV. But looks can be deceiving.

The truth is, not only do digital marketing and DRTV share a common ethos (measurability/ accountability), but the rise of digital advertising has actually fueled a resurgence in DRTV. The first way that digital advertising has helped ignite the DRTV renaissance is through the application of digital advertising technology to enhance DRTV measurement and attribution.

I know, I know! DRTV has always been measurable. But now that 80% of DRTV response goes to a digital channel rather than to a call centre, the measurability has increased exponentially. Using a vast array of digital tools from Google Analytics to Tableau, we now track, measure, attribute and optimize TV—especially DRTV—almost as precisely as we ❱ DMN.ca

do digital marketing.

We can see the impact DRTV has, not just on clicks but also on conversions, enabling us to apply the same rigorous ROI approach to TV as we do with digital advertising.

Digital technologies, specifically Programmatic, which is an auction-based media buying format, is also changing the TV media landscape. Programmatic media buying actually levels the media playing field while helping to curb the back door deals that for years have favoured big buyers over smaller rivals.

The second way digital is driving growth in DRTV is by producing a new generation of marketers who are fully conversant in the medium of measurable, performance-based advertising and who intuitively “get” DRTV. Why? Because marketers raised in the digital world learn very early something most die-hard brand advertisers never grasp—namely, that not all TV creative performs equally well. They know from firsthand experience that even small changes in creative (such as copy or offers) can, and do,

have a profound impact upon the performance of a given campaign.

As a result, when they do TV, they often prefer DRTV over a pure brand approach because it offers them the same opportunities to test and optimize that they have come to expect from digital advertising.

In these ways, DRTV has benefited enormously from technological innovations created by digital technology and the skill set it has given rise to; however, it is not a one-way street. DRTV, in turn, has proven to be a very useful tool for digital marketers. The reason is a little something called scale.

Growth, growth, growth As we know, digital advertising can be extraordinarily cost effective.

In fact, I personally believe that search is the most cost-effective form of advertising ever created.

And other digital advertising tactics (including banner ads, Facebook and social) are also, under the right circumstances, both effective and cost efficient; however, what digital advertising doesn’t do especially well is build brand awareness. That is a huge

problem because nothing drives digital growth like an uptick in brand awareness.

Companies have learned that when TV is added to their marketing mix the result is mass exposure and increased brand awareness, which, in turn, fuels brand search, organic and improved CTRs. The awareness-generating power of TV has driven even born and bred e-commerce companies (including titans like Amazon, Google, Netflix, Expedia, Ancestry and eBay, among many others) to embrace TV, which is, after all, the most mass of all mass mediums.

Who would have guessed, that digital marketing would fuel the new age of DRTV? But that is exactly what has happened and the future for both mediums looks very bright indeed!

Pippa Nutt, senior vice president, digital/ Canadian media & partner at Northern Lights Direct, is an internationally recognized thought leader in digital direct marketing. She also possesses a vast knowledge of TV media and is remarkably skilled at merging them to create sophisticated, effective and fully integrated direct response campaigns.

April 2017

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DRTV

How to create marketing videos that inspire action

By Kristen Allison

I

n the content world, video is king. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets means consumers can (and do!) watch video anytime, anywhere. The sheer volume of available video content creates some challenges and opportunities for marketers. Audiences are becoming more discerning.

Sometimes they want to be informed, sometimes engaged, sometimes entertained. Regardless, they want to know which of those they’re getting right away.

At Accomplice Content Supply Co., we create video content. As the trends have shifted from traditional 30-second commercials to social videos that live and die in newsfeeds, so have we. We work with advertising agencies and directly with clients to execute on ideas within this new video ecosystem.

Along the way, we’ve learned a few things about what works and what doesn’t when you want your work to inspire people to take action. april 2017

Tip one: Know your audience Who are you talking to? This seems obvious, but it’s surprising how often this is overlooked. Knowing who your audience is is incredibly important. Marketers typically want to create video that will speak to a wide audience, but if your goal is to inspire action, get specific.

Tailor the content to a targeted demographic. You won’t win over everyone, but that’s okay.

Tip two: Be single minded What do you want to say? Pick one thing. Seriously. If you have more than one thing to say, make more than one video. When you throw too many things at people, they can’t catch any of it.

Tip three: Surprise people This is easier said than done. When something does well, we get sent that reference from a handful of people asking if we can create something like that for them.

Sure, we can. But should we? Use music, point of view, humour and perspective to your advantage.

When you throw too many things at people, they can’t catch any of it.

Delightfully surprise people.

They’ll remember.

Tip four: Don’t take yourself too seriously Whether your objectives are to increase sales, generate awareness or inform a consumer, it’s important to step out of your own shoes and take a different perspective. Your audience wants to be entertained (and when they’re entertained, they’ll share!).

It’s important to note this doesn’t mean you should be silly. It’s about getting out of your own head.

Tip five: Be clear about the action you want the viewer to take If you’ve defined who you are talking to and the objectives you’re after, this part should be easy. Write a clear, concise call to action and, quite literally, ask your audience to take the action

you want them to take. The adage, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” definitely applies here.

Walk through the development progress with those tips in mind and you’ll build a strong foundation for your video content.

Work with a creative partner who can create content that looks professional (just because everyone has a camera doesn’t make them a photographer!) and use social targeting tools to get your content in front of the right people.

Video can be a place to experiment if you go about it the right way—have fun with it!

Kristen Allison is a founding partner and

producer at Accomplice Content Supply Co. She works with marketers to create professional, entertaining and engaging video content for screens of all shapes and sizes.

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In the mail This column is sponsored by

To learn more about Canada Post’s integrated direct marketing solutions, please visit canadapost.ca/smartmailmarketing.

Canada Post’s lists help Quebec charity increase average donation by 30% Combining Personalized Mail with sociodemographic data results in a winning campaign for Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission

By Jasmine Miller

T

he Old Brewery Mission in Montreal has been on the front lines of the quest to end homelessness for more than 125 years. To continue its work through this century, the storied organization needed to find new sources of revenue and that required a new approach to its donor lists. For years it targeted new prospects using lists of magazine subscribers purchased from publishers. “It just wasn’t effective,” says Kim Nguyen, director of development, annual gifts & administration. There was no psychographic information other than the fact that the prospect subscribed to a certain magazine. What’s more, there was no way to know if those addresses were up-to-date.

“That’s why we decided to rent a list from Canada Post and to combine it with their Personalized Mail service,” says Nguyen. “And that gave us the best results.”

Targeted appeals increase charitable donations Working with Canada Post, the Mission identified its top donors and the six postal codes where they lived. Historically, the Mission’s largest donors were university educated and owned a detached home near Montreal. For the organization’s 2014 spring

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campaign, Nguyen rented from Canada Post a list of 50,000 people who fit that profile. Results were so impressive, Nguyen rented 125,000 names for the 2015 campaign.

Each person received a personalized solicitation letter similar in format to previous years; the impact, however, was entirely different. When you reach the right people with the right message, your campaign will be more successful—and Canada Post made that possible for the Old Brewery Mission. The charity hit the right market segment, increasing its return on investment considerably.

Nguyen was delighted with the outcome and excited to share results. “Not only was Canada Post’s solution less expensive, but the response rate it generated was five times higher than it had been with publishers’ lists and the average donation was almost 30% higher, from about $54 to $69,” she says.

To learn more about Canada Post’s direct marketing solutions, please visit canadapost.ca/ smartmailmarketing.

Jasmine Miller is a freelance writer based in Toronto.

April 2017

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Sector Report

Lettershops

By Sarah O’Connor

L

ettershops have long been the overworked, under appreciated workhorses of the direct mail industry. Direct marketers love to talk about the data, about the creative and then, hopefully, about the results but, though any good marketer understands that the magic is in the details, that final step before a campaign hits the mail rarely receives the attention that it deserves.

Lettershops are expected to get it exactly right, every time—and cheaper and faster too, thank you very much.

For this month’s sector report we meet with a variety of lettershops in the Greater Toronto Area and it was remarkable how clearly differentiated each company has become. Beyond variations in size and services, each company was keenly aware of their niche within the industry and focused on the evolving needs of their clients.

april 2017

“It’s a great time to be a lettershop!”

“The goal is that [clients] never have to ask for anything other than a quote.”

Walking into Marketing Kitchen feels more like visiting a creative agency rather than a classic lettershop. From ornate chalkboard art to fun photos of employees blown up on the walls, its clear Audrey Jamieson, owner and president, is out to do things a little differently.

“The company I purchased had great bone structure,” says Jamieson. “It had nice workflow, it had amazing people and it had a fantastic client base. What they were not doing was that they weren’t really evolving with the times.”

Since purchasing the company in May of 2014, Jamieson has upgraded the software and security protocols, as well as bringing in digital colour print capabilities, including a digital colour envelope printer, and a handwriting machine. “I was able to service the existing client base with the tools that they had and then as I grew that client base I sort of organically added more machinery, technology, people and experience.

Audrey Jamieson, owner and president of Marketing “It’s all about the customer and the customer Kitchen, gets a lift from Janice Dumphie, sales. experience,” Jamieson continues. “It has to be seamless. The goal is that they never have to ask for anything other than a quote—everything else just lands in their lap when they need it. Everything’s taken care of and we really help them do their job.

“We want to be there for our customers to say, ‘we’ve got this. Let us help you on the direct mail side. You don’t have to be a direct mail expert. You come up with the strategy, let us know what you want to do and then we’re going to work with you and ensure that the mail does produce results for you.’”

Jamieson has nothing but praise for the continued evolution of Canada Post: “Canada Post is a true partner to us. They’ve got fantastic incentives out there to introduce people to direct mail. And they are innovating. Postal Code Targeting opens up so many doors for us.

“We need to lend the expertise that we have because it is such a crowded advertising world right now with so many channels to choose from,” says Jamieson. “It’s a great time to be a lettershop! You just have to be a little more creative, a little more innovative.”

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Sector Report

Lettershops Security has emerged as a key consideration “Your database in many cases is your lifeblood.” party auditor come in once a year and spend a few days with us going through everything, right down to how often we change our passwords. We have double authentication to get on to our laptops; our laptops are encrypted at rest so our data is encrypted at rest.

“All these protocols are something that—10 or 15 years ago you would never have heard of [lettershops doing this]. We believe we’re probably the only lettershop, not in the statementing space but in the promotional space, that has that ISO 27000 certification.

For us that’s a pretty big deal.

“It is not sexy to talk about it but we think it’s important that our customers know how seriously we take this. Your database in many cases is your lifeblood and we take it really seriously.”

are collecting on [customers], I think that’s making people more paranoid and we need to be more sensitive in protecting this data.

I think that’s pushing the requirement to be more focused on data security,” Leonard observes. As we know, in the age of increasingly sophisticated data-driven marketing, it is not unusual for companies to be incorporating not only identifying information such as names and addresses but also significant financial information and other data that is extremely valuable to nefarious types in the segmentation and even the creative of direct mail campaigns.

“We hold an 27001 ISO certification,” says Leonard. “It’s a third-party certification where there’s a set of about 500 or 600 protocols that we have to adhere to and then we have a third-

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“One of the things that we’ve been focusing on and that we believe has changed [within the lettershop industry] is the focus on security,” John Leonard is vice president of says John Leonard, sales and marketing at Cover-All. vice president of sales and marketing at Cover-All. “For us, that’s a really big deal and that’s a change that we’ve tried to implement over the last five or six years.

This change is driven by the growing understanding of the value of data on the part of marketers, customers and criminals alike.

“The increase in data that we as marketers

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Sector Report

Lettershops Classic direct marketing channels converge “Those big mailings are gone. No one prospects with those mailings anymore so, if anyone’s waiting for that—it’s just not going to happen.”

“There’s a real evolution happening in marketing, in retail,” says Ron Peacock, president of The CF&R Group Sharon MacPherson is general of Companies. manager of Bradford Direct, part “Volumes are of The CF&R Group of Companies. changing. We are seeing so much change in the consumer packaged goods business.

“I worked for A.C. Nielsen—Art, Jr. himself,” says Peacock. “My claim to fame is, you know the little bar code you see on coupons? I was the guy that developed all that stuff.” The CF&R Group of Companies includes CF&R Services (CF&R stands for contests, fulfillment

and returns), The Marketing Resource Group and Bradford Direct, which was acquired through asset purchase in July of 2015.

Sharon MacPherson, who had been with Bradford Direct Inc. since 1994, joined the Group as general manager of Bradford Direct and notes that the transition has allowed her to significantly expand the services offered to their not-for-profit client base.

“When Denis [Brillon, president of Bradford Direct Inc.] was building his business he would get the great big mailings and things like that,” says Peacock. “Those days are gone. Those big mailings are gone. No one prospects with those mailings anymore so, if anyone’s waiting for that—it’s just not going to happen.

“What’s happening is a lot of mail houses are in trouble if they stayed being just a mail

house. Then there are the other guys, printers, they want to drive printing and so what are they doing? They are getting in the direct mail business but they just can’t do it because they don’t understand the data requirements that are needed by a lot of clients. Some of the things we do are very unique.

“There isn’t anything we won’t do in the marketing services field,” concludes Peacock.

“We’re evolving into a company that can do everything, anything and nothing—because sometimes you don’t have to do anything, the business just comes to you. If we can support the Big Data requirements that our clients are requesting, both in the non-profit and the consumer packaged goods business, our business is going to grow.”

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Sector Report

Lettershops Lettershops must find unique ways to add value

Laura Artibello (left) and Debbie Major of Data Direct Group.

“Integration—that word’s never gone away but there’s just so many more things that people can bring in that value proposition,” says Debbie Major, president of the Data Direct Group. “A lot of people can jump in from a lot of different places and bring value. And not everybody has to look the same, as long as you are bringing value to a certain niche that need it. Even though we’re the same but different

everybody can become a little bit specialized— there is enough for everybody.

“Not everybody can finish a piece of paper really uniquely,” adds Major. “Everybody can slap ink down on paper, but can you make something unique and outside of the box and make it work?”

“Our industry is changing, but I think [digital] is a compliment rather than competition,” says Nam Nguyen, chairman and founder of the Group. Nguyen notes that the barriers to entry in the lettershop business have increased significantly over the past five or six years. “There was a time when all you needed was an inserter to call yourself a lettershop, but now… you have to be able to process mail faster and faster. The smaller lettershops just can’t compete in this area. In the future, all the lettershops will be consolidated.”

While remaining focused on the fundamentals, the Data Direct Group believes

that it will be the companies who can add greater value that will see growth in this industry.

“We’re looking at the collection of data for the purpose of research,” says Laura Artibello, who recently joined the Data Direct Group after owning and operating Mailennium for 17 years.

“Research is the collection of data, gathering facts via various input methods, whether it be on paper or electronic, for a logical output.

“Unless we start asking good questions, we won’t get the answer. And when people are asked good questions they will reply, they will respond. It’s proven in all research. Big companies buy data every day. The banks buy data. They want to know who they can keep and how. It’s the asking of the questions and getting the details. That’s an area where Data Direct is going to be a leader in providing authentic data-filled analysis for a few markets.”

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April 2017

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Sector Report

Lettershops Print brokers are keeping smaller lettershops afloat “I know of two or three other lettershops just like mine that have gone under in the last year,’ says Steve Wilson, owner of Steve Wilson, owners of Adworks Adworks Mailing Mailing Services.

Services. “The threat alone of the letter carrier strike killed everybody. We had no business for six months.”

Wilson believes that the future of the lettershop industry belongs to larger companies who can offer one-stop service to their clients. “Consolidation is an advantage, for sure,” says Wilson. “An all-in-one shop,

that’s what everybody’s looking for and that’s the ideal situation. If it wasn’t for me being in this business for so long, comfortable in what I’m doing, I would be one of those people.

If I was 40 years old, for example, I would probably be seriously thinking about taking a printer in. That seems to be the way to survive in this business, to consolidate.”

Wilson notes that print brokers have emerged as a major influence on the industry.

These companies are able to offer their customers that “one-stop shop” experience without investing in equipment or taking on employees—in some cases they don’t even have an office.

“It’s more and more print brokers now. At

least 50% [of our business], maybe more, is through some kind of print broker,” says Wilson. “There are a lot of brokers out there.

They have no overhead so they are using a trade print shop to print the stuff and then they are using us to do the mail prep, kitting and whatever else they want done. There are a million print brokers and they are dealing with the printer, the lettershop and being the point of contact for the customer.”

Eventually, Wilson expects these relationships to become more formalized and that classic mailing service companies like his will fall by the wayside. “The lettershops of the world, to be honest we’re a dying breed. We’re not going to be around forever.”

Solving direct mail’s attribution problem Valassis, which began as a one-product, one-industry commercial printer, has grown since its founding in 1970 into a direct marketing Stacy Allen, vice president and general behemoth with manager of Valassis Canada. approximately 7,000 employees in nine countries, including Canada. Their services include direct mail, newspaper inserts and coupons as well as digital advertising.

Stacey Allen, vice president and general

manager of Valassis Canada explains that offering a full suite of off- and online marketing services helps Valassis overcome one of the largest challenges facing direct mail service providers—attribution.

“There’s a certain sexiness to digital that we’re aware of and certainly one of the biggest benefits to digital, I think, from an advertiser’s standpoint is that you see results instantaneously, you know immediately,” Allen explains. “There’s a nice dashboard that comes along with this, you can say ‘oh look, 75 people saw the message and they were on my page for 30 seconds…’ So that [digital] component needs to be part of every campaign, if it’s important to the client to see it that way.

“That being said, when [digital is] not coupled with a print push [response to digital advertising] doesn’t happen to the same extent that [advertisers] need it to. Therein lies the problem.”

For service providers who are strictly involved in the print side of things, it can be a difficult to make the case that, while the best leads might be coming through a company’s website, the print components of a campaign likely played a key role in the decision making process leading up to a customer action.

“The internet still does not have the ability to reach out and grab you. I mean, we’re close, but not the way that a print piece does,” concludes Allen.

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Sharing by Serving and Assisting Great Value Complimentary Ideas Only for you and your Business Call us for ideas on how we can serve you better at 905-564-0150 Better yet Stop by for a coffee and have a Chat with Debbie (ext.108) or Laura (ext.360) datadirect.ca Keep an eye open for Data Direct Marketing Minute in your inbox.

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Fulfillment

Shopping lessons learned from 2016

By Erin Raese

I

n 2016, consumer retail shopping unveiled several trends that brands will want to consider as they plan their strategies for the rest of 2017, particularly for the important fourth-quarter holiday shopping season.

It’s important to devise and test some strategies earlier in the year, when there is still time to make any necessary revisions before the holiday shopping starts. Below are five 2016 shopping trends to build on in 2017.

Recognize physical store dominance, e-commerce growth Brick-and-mortar sales still account for most sales and will continue to be important as the shift to e-commerce continues.

Not only did Amazon capture 40% of the increase in holiday sales from 2015 per Slice Intelligence, mall traffic was down 12.3% during November and December, while mall sales dropped 10%.

Large retailers such as Target also saw significant increases in e-commerce sales.

Make sure that customer service training and support is at least as robust for contact centre associates as for in-store associates. The physical locations are shrinking in size and number as retailers focus on making them destinations for browsing, delivery and part of the omnichannel experience.

Focus on m-commerce The fastest growing element of e-commerce is m-commerce. In 2016, the trend toward mobile commerce continued to accelerate, with Black Friday alone generating more than one billion dollars in business, marking the first time that m-commerce had topped that threshold. According to Adobe, m-commerce represented 31% of ❱ DMN.ca

total sales. More than one-third of PayPal sales were through mobile devices.

That said, there was a large disparity between mobile apps. The highest performing ones had 58% of users opt to receive notifications, while the lowest performing ones had only 21% of users opt in (the average was 41%), according to Urban Airship.

We’re also seeing that not all companies are creating apps. Many are opting for mobile optimized sites that make mobile purchasing easier without the need for downloading an additional app.

Starbucks continues to show the way to effectively merge e-commerce and physical locations.

The company understands customer buying habits, has a loyalty program that is tightly integrated with sales, payments and, importantly, mobile ordering and payment. The company’s mobile payments account for seven per cent of total U.S. mobile transactions, according to the company.

Unify channels As the Starbucks example illustrates, to be relevant brickand-mortar stores have to provide reasons for people to go and make the experience as enjoyable and as frictionless as possible. To make the physical stores part of an omnichannel experience, brands need to recognize that omnichannel shopping means more than just one person buying online and another person buying in a brick-and-mortar store.

Though there are customers who interact with a brand exclusively through a single channel, a Harvard Business Review study of 46,000

shoppers found that 73% used multiple channels in making a purchase. Omnichannel shopping is a process, with the same customer often starting the initial research online, examining an item in the store, purchasing the item through the contact centre, then having the item shipped to the home, to the store or, in some instances, even to work locations.

Retailers need to offer customers the ability to interact via a variety of channels in what they expect to be a seamless transaction. So, brands need to be able to collect and respond to each element of the transaction (i.e. discovery, research, delivery and post-sales customer service) in ways that will prompt the customer to move further down the sales funnel to an actual purchase and then toward future purchases.

Start early The holiday campaigns started earlier than ever before in 2016, showing the need to build an early relationship with a prospect to generate the holiday sale. Some brands started sending out push notifications before Halloween.

Some notifications were as innocuous as “Black Friday sneak peek,” building anticipation for offers that were to come.

Whether it’s a holiday sale or not, it’s important to “hook” your customers early and a loyalty program is a great way to do that.

Set tiers so people have a reason to make the extra purchases with you versus your competition.

Message often, but with purpose Retailers sent 56% more holiday notifications in 2016 than the previous year. According to Urban Airship, 84% of notifications that were sent were highly targeted to shopper locations or behaviors.

Those notifications saw an average of a 129% increase in engagement over messages sent to all opt-in consumers.

Critical in all of the above trends is the importance of customer information gathering and a commitment to using this information for truly targeted and personalized communications.

As a key member of Aimia’s Global Loyalty Solutions leadership team, Erin Raese is responsible for managing and developing the business development strategy and sales pipeline for the U.S. region. She also oversees the development of client marketing strategies, with a focus on helping organizations build profitable relationships with their customers, develop long-term brand loyalty and increase customer retention.

April 2017

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Fulfillment

Three steps to prepare for the future of e-commerce

By Tony Tie

E

-commerce companies today face different challenges from even five years ago. As mobile technology has become entrenched in every aspect of consumers’ lives, companies that rely on e-commerce to generate revenue must learn how to continue to grow in a world where e-commerce now stands for “everywhere commerce.”

As savvy companies have already noticed, many of the e-commerce challenges of the near future are already in full swing. These challenges boil down to three primary areas: interconnectivity, personalization and meaningful experiences.

Interconnectivity: This challenge speaks to the customer expectation of convenience.

Customers don’t want to have to make a list of items to purchase when they go home. They expect to be able to make relevant purchases anywhere, anytime—and receive the same experience they would on a desktop or in a store.

That experience includes order tracking and fulfillment, which many companies take for granted.

Nothing irks customers more than customer service reps who don’t know why a package is late or missing—a situation that costs the company both money and goodwill. Companies must be connected not only to their own software and inventories, but also to the third-party entities that help them fulfill their customer obligations.

Personalization: The next challenge starts with collecting data. Every e-commerce guru likes to talk about the importance of Big Data because everything from marketing analytics to demographics and website behavior tells the company something relevant about what turns a prospect into a buyer. april 2017

Any attempt to build a more personalized experience requires a solid foundation of relevant data.

But transforming that data into personalization requires more than sending push notifications about previously viewed items and abandoned shopping carts. Actual personalized recommendations based on purchases and browsing behaviors earn more customers than regurgitated, once-discarded shopping carts.

Meaningful experiences: Combining personalization with ease of use, customers want to feel like they’re individually meaningful to the company pursuing their business and companies now have an obligation to customers to express that. Apps must provide interesting, engaging content without sacrificing ease of use. Brand experiences must be consistent—from storefronts to websites to mobile devices to experiential campaigns—so customers can follow the story and identify with the brand across multiple channels.

Meeting the challenges As these challenges become more present, e-commerce companies must evolve quickly or risk finding themselves unprepared and left behind in a mobile world that moves on quickly. Prepare for the future by following these steps: 1. Prioritize the mobile commerce experience While really just a subsection of e-commerce, m-commerce (or “mobile commerce”) holds the key to success for e-commerce companies in 2017 and beyond.

Mobile shoppers spent $12 billion more in 2016 than 2014.

Customers are no longer hesitant to do business on one electronic platform over another—from tablets to smartphones to laptops—so companies have to prepare to meet them wherever they are.

Every website should feature a responsive design, especially if the company doesn’t rely on an app to secure business. The longer a site takes to load or the harder it is to navigate, the more likely a customer is to close the page and move on to a competitor’s site. Easy navigation, short loading times and intuitive shopping carts can all help e-commerce businesses take their pieces of the projected $220.4 billion pie in mobile sales this year.

tracking users’ fitness information from the Fitbit products and encouraging them to log other aspects of their lifestyles as well.

Similarly, L’Oréal uses its Makeup Genius app to cultivate a lifestyle among its followers. Users can use their smartphone cameras to superimpose different makeup looks on their faces.

Both companies succeed because they go beyond the traditional relationship of buyer and seller

E-commerce companies must evolve fast or risk finding themselves unprepared and left behind in a mobile world that moves on quickly.

2. Engage socially Most companies already have brand presences on social media but, in many cases, that presence is strictly promotional. Facebook allows users to purchase goods through a direct-buy link on the site, as does Pinterest and Instagram. Social media use should not be limited to marketing—it should be a direct sales channel all its own.

Social media can also extend beyond the traditional companyconsumer relationship to help consumers talk with one another.

Creating forums or opportunities for customers to show each other how they interact with a company or use a product engenders brand loyalty and helps attract business.

3. Tap into a lifestyle Fitbit technically sells only fitness accessories but the company has enjoyed massive success by marketing an active lifestyle surrounding its products. The app makes up the core of this approach,

and speak to the lifestyles of their target audiences. Companies in 2017 and beyond need to expand the ongoing conversations with their customers and the best way to do that is to evolve from a seller to a participant in the lifestyle the customer wants to lead.

Running a successful e-commerce company can be stressful and with the challenges that lie ahead, it’s not about to get any easier. But by following these steps and creating a better m-commerce experience, companies can prepare themselves for the future while building better foundations today.

Tony Tie is a numbers-obsessed marketer, life

hacker and public speaker who has helped various Fortune 500 companies grow their online presence. Located in Toronto, he is currently the senior search marketer at Expedia Canada, the leading travel booking platform for flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises and local activities. Connect with Tony on Twitter @tonytie.

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Gary Tannyan

Customer Personas

TELUS Customer Insight team members (from left to right): Parikshit Ralhan, Shannan Davis, Iain Gledhill, Erin Rouchotas and Imanuel Muller.

Continued From Page 9

segments, the team created a lookup tool so TELUS staff members could discover what segment they belonged to based on their postal code. “That helped people understand and accept the segmentation system,” says Ralhan.

Once the segmentation system was developed, the working team went back on the road to promote the segmentation system, conducting about 20 workshops and meetings across Canada that were attended by nearly 800 TELUS staff members. One teleconference attracted over 100 participants. Feedback from the sessions was overwhelmingly positive and teams were eager to get their hands on the system. But

as Ralhan notes, “the challenge was to go from excitement to execution.”

The new system assigned a TELUS segment to every postal code nationwide, allowing the company to define every one of its customers and prospects by segment type. Although analysts worried that 12 segments might be too unwieldy for an application, that concern never materialized.

In fact, one department wanted more segments. “They wanted to go deeper,” Ralhan observes.

The earliest adopters of the system were TELUS’ new product development teams. The segments helped them refine product categories and position the latest products for target marketing.

Soon product managers started including market segments in their marketing plans to assess

which segments to include in their targeting effort. And marketers began tailoring their messages to the different custom segments.

An email campaign promoting a mobile plan feature to a pricesensitive group declared, “Stop counting minutes and start enjoying them.” For a busy family group, the message focused on their on-the-go, vacation-heavy lifestyle: “Roaming, relaxation, whatever your destination: Easy roam is the stress-free way to connect while traveling.”

By the fall of 2016, the new segmentation system had been socialized throughout TELUS and was being adopted for a variety of applications: regional acquisition strategies, predictive models focusing on retention targets, marketing analytics for campaign measurement and segmentation-

based profiling projects. “Teams embraced the segmentation fairly quickly,” says Ralhan. “They wanted it to be part of their next project.”

Although it’s too early to measure the new segmentation system’s impact on many longterm projects, Ralhan notes several campaigns have seen an increase in response rates and lift. But just as important, the system has reinforced the importance of a unified, customer-centric culture at TELUS. “We now have a single segmentation system across the enterprise,” says Ralhan, adding that the segments now show up in slide presentations and conversations throughout TELUS. “We’ve created a lot of enthusiasm across the company,” he says. The “big data” initiative turned out to be a “big change management” exercise as well.

But just as technology keeps changing, so do customers.

TELUS is planning to conduct more primary research into the motivations of consumers to fill in any gaps about each segment and to understand how mindsets might be evolving. “When we started the roadshows, we found people lined up and waiting for us to roll out the segmentation system,” recalls Ralhan. A year later, the team isn’t resting on its laurels. As Ralhan simply says, “it’s an ongoing journey.”

Catherine Pearson is senior vice president

and practice leader for the finance, insurance, travel and telecommunications industries at Environics Analytics. She gratefully acknowledges the support of TELUS team members Iain Gledhill, Erin Rouchotas, Parikshit Ralhan, Imanuel Muller and Shannan Davis on the segmentation project.

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Feature

Seven interview hacks to identify data analytics pros B

By Allison Penning

ig data isn’t a new phenomenon and isn’t going anywhere either.

Companies are investing heavily in analytics programs and using data to make big business decisions.

Therefore, more and more employers are looking to hire people with strong data analytics skills, but with all of the unique job titles (e.g. data scientist, analytics manager, digital marketing analyst, data guru), it can be difficult to spot people who excel at the specific skills you’re looking for.

Here are seven interview techniques to help unveil the data analytics gurus:

Case studies

Real Examples

External resources

Interpersonal skills

References

Intuitiveness Homework Case studies The best way to truly tell whether or not someone is good at data analytics is to present them with a case study during the interview.

Provide the candidate with a data set and ask them to share their insights. What analysis can they derive based on the raw data? What trends or areas of concern do they spot and what improvements do they suggest based on the findings?

Have them explain the steps they take and why. It shows their thought process and methodology of looking at data. It is all a great way to prove that the candidate can talk the talk and walk the walk.

Real examples Ask the candidate to bring examples of raw data and dashboards from previous positions and explain how their findings impacted business decisions. Can they articulate how the data effects the business?

What was implemented or changed april 2017

after they presented their findings?

Hindsight being 20/20, is there anything they would have done differently after these changes were made?

External resources There are many different resources available for data analysis. Every day there is a new software available on the market and there are numerous agencies who will analyze data for you.

It’s important for employers to clarify the resources available to the candidate and the extent to which they have used them. If the candidate has been accustomed to unlimited resources, then they might not be very good at “hands-on and scrappy” data analysis.

References If they do use external resources like Marketo, Nielsen or any other external vendor, use their account rep as a reference. Verify how much

analysis the candidate does on their own versus the agency.

Homework If you’d rather not give them a case study on the spot in the interview, assign them a project (similar to the case study) to take home. If they are unemployed, give them one day to complete it but if they are employed up to three days is a good amount of time. Keep guidelines general and see what they produce. It’s interesting to see where some candidates take it verses the others. You will also learn if they are good at meeting deadlines.

Intuitiveness Whether they’re running through the project during the interview or in an email recap if assigned, look to see how intuitive they are. Can they see beyond just the data and understand how the data connects with business? Great data analytics people aren’t black and white

thinkers. They understand that it’s okay to have ambiguity and that there are different ways to read into things.

Interpersonal skills Companies want data analytics professionals who can communicate their findings effectively to non-analytical professionals. Many data analytics professionals understand the data but have difficultly explaining it in layman’s terms. The best way to screen for this skill is to have the candidate share details of recent projects when they had to deliver their findings to non-technical professionals. If they don’t have prior experience in presenting, ask a non-technical colleague to sit in on the interview and have the candidate explain the findings from a recent data project.

Allison Penning is branch manager of LaSalle

Network’s San Francisco office. LaSalle Network is a national staffing and recruiting firm.

DMN.ca ❰

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Subscriber engagement: The new key to reaching the inbox L

By Jen Ribble

Jen Ribble is a marketing professional

with more than 15 years of experience in the tech and financial services sectors. She currently leads PR and content marketing efforts for Return Path.

oyal, engaged customers are the lifeblood of any business—the repeat buyers, the brand enthusiasts, the unpaid spokespeople for your company. But there’s another important benefit to having loyal customers, beyond the steady stream of revenue they provide. They can also help to ensure that your email messages reach the inbox.

Why is that so important? Think about this: if your emails don’t make it to the inbox, your customers never have the opportunity to read and respond to your message in the first place. You lose out on the chance to build stronger relationships with existing customers and create relationships with new customers. Every message that gets diverted to spam is a missed opportunity to drive revenue for your business.

Engagement-based filtering is on the rise It’s harder than ever to reach the inbox because mailbox providers are constantly changing and improving their filtering algorithms in an effort to thwart spammers and improve the inbox experience for their users. More and more, mailbox providers like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and AOL are relying on engagement-based email filtering to catch unwanted email before it’s delivered to the inbox.

Engagement metrics look at how users interact with messages from a given sender—things like how many messages are read, replied to, forwarded and deleted without reading. By understanding how subscribers engage with a sender’s email, mailbox providers are better able to determine which emails are wanted by subscribers—and which should be diverted to the spam folder.

Over time, mailbox providers are able to use this engagement-based data to make more accurate filtering decisions at the individual level. If a subscriber frequently reads your emails, replies or even forwards them to other people, you’re more likely to have your emails delivered to the inbox. Conversely, if a subscriber deletes your messages without reading them—or worse, yet, reports them as spam—your emails may be filtered directly to spam.

There are many things you can do to ensure that your emails reach their intended target, giving you the opportunity to serve your loyal customers, cultivate new ones and drive revenue for your business. Here are four ideas you can implement to help your emails reach the inbox.

1. Know your subscribers. The more you know about your customers, the better you can connect with them. Consider implementing a preference centre to give subscribers an opportunity to tell you what kind of content they want to receive from you and how frequently.

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treated that way. By capturing information about subscribers’ interests, you can more accurately segment your subscriber list, personalize your email content and create unique campaigns that will appeal to each group—rather than sending one mass email that may not resonate with anyone.

2. Understand your sender reputation. Subscriber engagement is becoming increasingly important but sender reputation is still a critical factor in determining whether and where email is delivered. Every sender has a Sender Score, which is number between one and 100 that reflects the reputation of your sending IP address.

Sender Score is based on key reputation metrics like sending volume, filtered messages and spam traps.

The lower the score, the worse your reputation and the more likely mailbox providers will filter your messages to spam.

Mailbox providers evaluate sender reputation in deciding whether email is legitimate or spam.

According to Return Path’s 2016 Sender Score Benchmark Report, 90% of all messages delivered into the inbox came from senders with a Sender Score of 80 or higher and senders with scores of 99 or 100 only had two per cent of messages filtered to spam. By contrast, senders with a score below 70 had less than 10% of their messages delivered to the inbox.

3. Keep your sending list clean. List hygiene is a major component of both sender reputation and subscriber engagement, so it’s absolutely critical that you build your email list through legitimate means and promptly remove any email addresses that produce a hard bounce or complaint. Sending to unknown users or spam traps is a sure way to get your email sent to spam or blocked altogether and could eventually lead to blacklisting. Mailbox providers see this type of behavior as an indicator of poor sending practices and low engagement.

You can quickly and easily check your entire existing list, as well as verifying new addresses in real time, using a list validation service. Email list validation is a proactive and effective way to improve the quality of your database by removing invalid addresses before you send to them, ultimately improving your sender reputation and helping you reach the inbox.

4. Test, test, test! A/B testing is one sure-fire way to figure out what will capture your customers’ attention and what won’t. Almost any aspect of an email campaign can be tested: subject line, offer, copy length, imagery, layout, send time and so much more.

Even the simplest A/B test can provide eye-opening results and small changes can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your email campaigns—and your bottom line.

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