TRIGGERED MARKETING FOR BRANDS
DEPLOYING DATA DRIVEN CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS THROUGH THE LOCAL BUSINESSES THAT SELL YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.
The best support a brand can give their local distribution partners is to help them create highly-relevant communications for their customers. The problem is that in a multi-touchpoint world, frequent and depersonalized communications can cause message fatigue, which has the potential to annoy customers. Smart brands have turned this problem into an opportunity by mining customer data and creating specific communications that set them, and their local partners, apart from competitors. This helps brands deliver Triggered Marketing through their local sales channels to reach customers at precise times and with targeted messaging. The results are conversion rates averaging twice that of batch-and-blast messaging. This paper addresses triggered marketing for brands that sell through partners, both B2B2C and B2B2B. Common names to describe marketing through a channel are distributed marketing, partner marketing, affiliate marketing, or simply channel marketing. The sales channels that are referred to in this paper as “local partners” or “partners,” are those retailers, dealers, resellers, franchisees, field agents, or VARs that sell branded products and services to end users. IN THIS WHITE PAPER YOU WILL LEARN: • • • •
What is Triggered Marketing and Why is it Important for Brands? The Events That Trigger Marketing How to Implement Triggered Marketing Types of Triggered Communications and Measurement
D SEN
WHAT IS
TRIGGERED MARKETING AND
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR BRANDS?
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WHAT IS IT? Triggered marketing, simply put, is messaging that is sent to a customer when a certain action, timeframe, or behavior occurs. In practice, it is putting the right messaging in front of your customers at the correct moment and via the appropriate channels. Most of us have received a birthday greeting from a local merchant or a reminder postcard for the next dentist visit, but often those messages are created by labor intensive processes. While they are certainly personalized, for a brand to engage customers at scale, they must automate triggered marketing on behalf of their local partners. This takes the burden of creating and personalizing marketing communications off of the local partner while increasing the effectiveness of their marketing.
TRIGGERED MARKETING IS AN ESPECIALLY EFFECTIVE TYPE OF MARKETING COMMUNICATION FOR TWO REASONS: 1. It’s timely – messages go out automatically on birthdays, service renewal dates, business anniversaries, etc. that are unique to each customer making that customer feel valued. 2. It’s responsive – messages are sent based on behaviors to reach customers at decision tipping points, like following up with an outbound message to let a buyer of a bracelet know when the matching earrings become available. Often, a pointed incentive can spark a purchase decision.
WHY IS TRIGGERED MARKETING IMPORTANT FOR BRANDS SELLING THROUGH CHANNEL PARTNERS?
1. Brands selling through local dealers and affiliates often don’t have the personal data needed to drive these messages as they reside with the local marketer. 2. Marketing touchpoints based on important dates and behavior allow brands to send more communications through partners without tiring out their customers. 3. Personalized messaging creates an emotional connection with the customer leading to brand loyalty. 4. Network partners gain access to marketing technology they would not have otherwise. 5. Local marketers generally don’t have the time or ability to create and deploy personalized messages to their customers. But when their brand can supply a program that only requires an opt-in, it’s a win-win.
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THE EVENTS THAT TRIGGER MARKETING
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The most critical part of building an effective triggered marketing program is using the available customer data from local partners to create relevant communications.
THERE ARE 4 TYPES OF EVENTS TO CONSIDER WHEN PLANNING TRIGGERED COMMUNICATIONS
1
RECURRING, FIXED, DRIP, AND TRANSACTIONAL EVENTS Predictable, ongoing occurrences often based on static customer information or typical transactional behavior. Examples: • New Product or Service Announcement • Welcome Message • Loyalty Programs
• Post Call Follow Up • Birthday/Anniversary Messages • Appointment Reminders • Warranty Expiration
• Service Cancellation/Retention
2
DIRECT BEHAVIORAL EVENTS Follow-up to an action a consumer takes to engage with a business. Examples: •
Shopping Cart Abandonment – Send a reminder email when a customer navigates away from a shopping cart without checking out
• Remarketing – Follow up with text and display ads delivered to a user that landed on a website, but left before converting into a sale •
Post Transaction Up/Cross Sell – Based on an item purchase, send a followup offer for a complementary product
•
Filling Out a Web Form – Set up an auto-generated response message for when someone fills out an online form
•
Wish List Push – Respond when an item is placed on a wish list
•
Website Activity – Track users’ activity on your website and display particular product messaging based on specific pages they visit
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3
EXTERNAL EVENTS Environmental factors that heighten consumer awareness to particular concerns or opportunities. Examples: • Seasonal – Send a product specific message at the beginning of the rainy/ snowy/summer/flu season
4
•
Economic Change – Send a triggered direct mail piece based on an economic rate increase or decrease, good for financial or real estate verticals
•
Rival Activity or News – Respond to an action of a direct competitor or news regarding your organization
•
Subsidy Opportunities – A company might want to inform local residents of a government rebate or tax exemption
•
In the News – Providers may want to tout their product’s feature’s as it relates to a current event
LIFE EVENTS Shifts in a customer’s status that change behaviors over the short and long term. Examples: •
Big Purchase – A young adult buying their first car will change their relationship with certain brands
•
Life Shift – A mother having a child may change her consumer behavior with respect to a brand and prompt her to buy new or different products and services
• Moving – A move to a different state, country, or climate can affect brandconsumer relations
There are many types of events on which triggered communications can be based, so the systems architecture needed to automate and deliver these messages requires sophistication. Integrating existing component systems, building a proprietary solution, or working with a vendor are all possible steps toward implementing a triggered marketing program.
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HOW TO IMPLEMENT TRIGGERED MARKETING CUSTOMER DATA
PARTNERS
RESULTS
EMAIL FUNDS
CRM SYSTEM
RESULTS
DIRECT MAIL
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TO SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENT TRIGGERED MARKETING, YOU’LL NEED TO DECIDE WHETHER TO WORK WITH A VENDOR OR BUILD YOUR OWN CUSTOM SYSTEM. EITHER WAY, YOU’LL NEED TO EVALUATE AND DETERMINE THE FOLLOWING PROGRAM SPECIFICS:
1. Determine Messaging Themes Based on Existing Customer Data – What can your brand say to a customer? Work with your partners to collect and expose relevant data points like service reminders, products purchased, birthdays and contract renewals; all of which help shape your messaging.
2.
Evaluate the Capabilities of Your CRM System – Think about how capable your CRM database is of tracking variable behavior like shopping cart abandonment, diminished ordering, or failure to renew a service contract. Those database records will be used to initiate triggered messaging.
3. Create or Consolidate and Organize Your Marketing Assets – Group all the content and templates for email, direct mail, and display ads according to identified trigger events. Make sure your marketing content is fully compatible with your email marketing software and direct mail system.
4. Create Access to Your Local Partners Customer Data – You must sync your email marketing service and direct mail distribution system with your partner’s customer databases so that query results for event triggers can initiate emails or direct mail pieces with no additional effort.
5. Promotional Allowance Application – Partners apply co-op or market development funds (MDF) to jointly pay for triggered marketing campaigns with brands. Ideally, partners will apply the funds at the same time they opt-into triggered marketing programs and at the same place on the dashboard of the local marketing automation platform.
6. Evaluate – Finally, you must track the results of your triggered email and direct mail with redemption mechanisms.
DEPENDING ON THE SCALE AND COMPLEXITY OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT, YOU SHOULD NOW HAVE AN IDEA IF YOU CAN MANAGE THIS IN-HOUSE, OR IF A THIRD PARTY SOLUTION IS THE BETTER CHOICE.
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TYPES OF TRIGGERED COMMUNICATIONS & MEASUREMENT
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Measuring triggered direct mail is a little tricky as the only way to gauge success is to track redemption rates via promotion codes, dedicated URLs and phone numbers, mail in forms, and coupons.
EMAIL Despite filtered inboxes that presort incoming mail, it remains powerful and cost effective. Measuring triggered email:
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Open Rate – The total number of emails opened divided by the total amount of emails sent.
•
Click-Through Rate – The percentage of users that click on an ad embedded in the email.
•
Conversion Rate – The percentage of users that fully complete the desired action like making a purchase, completing a booking, or downloading a coupon.
“OPEN RATES AND CLICK-THROUGH RATES ARE TWICE AS HIGH FOR TRIGGERED EMAILS WHEN COMPARED TO REGULAR BATCH AND BLAST EMAILS” (SOURCE: EPSILON)
RETARGETED ONLINE DISPLAY ADS Users that visit brand or local partner websites can be remarketed to with text and display ads by tracking them via a cookie. The ads will be triggered when the user leaves the site and can be targeted with a call-to-action (CTA) specific to what the user was previously viewing. Measuring remarketing: • Impressions – How many times each remarketing ad is appearing to your audience. • Clicks – The number of clicks each ad provokes. • CPC – Cost Per Click. • Conversions – The number of users that complete the desired post-click action. Remember that you are only paying if the ad is clicked, thus you can consider the rest of the impressions as free brand building.
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DYNAMIC WEBSITE CONTENT Specific messaging can appear on a website based on a site visitor’s time on the page, page search path, or an IP address. Corporate brand sites can display dynamic content about local partners (such us name, phone number, or special offers) when the behavior of a visitor of the corporate site meets certain criteria.
Important measurements for Dynamic Content are: • Forwards to Partners – Brands that trigger content about a local partner and a link to their site based on the corporate site visitor’s IP address can count how many visitors leave the corporate site on their way to local partner sites. • Dynamic Form Generation – A “have a local dealer contact me” form that appears after a visitor has spent over 1.5 minutes viewing a product page on the corporate site of the brand, yields leads to be counted.
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CONCLUSION
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Now you have a solid foundation to build a triggered marketing plan that will benefit your brand, local marketing partners and customers. The brands that have managed to build and executive robust triggered marketing campaigns are finding unequivocal success. “Marketers that do this right (less than 20% of marketing organizations today) will see their marketing messages receive, at minimum, five times the response rate of non-targeted push messages,” says Adam Sarner, Research VP at Gartner. Don’t take our word for it, take Adam’s, and be one of the few brands today utilizing triggered marketing.
ABOUT SPROUTLOUD: Headquartered in Sunrise, FL, SproutLoud helps the world’s leading brands manage and execute marketing programs through the local businesses that sell their products and services. Their web-based distributed marketing platform provides marketing services and tools that enable local business marketers to access the materials they need in the media of their choice, customize them, and reach their target audience with brand-controlled messaging.
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