Cross Media 1:1 Marketing

Cross Channel / Cross Media Marketing Errors – Part II – The Conversation

It is more than coordinating across channels that is important to successful marketing campaigns.  Customers must be effectively engaged and by actively soliciting their input and preferences marketers can maximize the return of every marketing dollar spent.  The errors to avoid continue.

x Controlling the Conversation
Today’s marketer, more than ever, must let the customer control the marketing conversation.  By letting the customer choose the channels and content, relevancy will increase and response rates and ROI will follow.  This choice can be active or passive.  Tracking links on a page is a passive technique while asking a question is an active one.

x Not creating 2-way communications & asking questions
Customers will answer any question you ask.  By simply giving tperhe opportunity to easily provide input the quantity and quality of data collected can be staggering.  Most customers need a good reason to provide an email or phone number, but they will answer preference questions without hesitation.  By using personalization across media we can identify these prospects and assign the feedback to their customer record.

x Not implementing data collection mechanisms
Every contact is an opportunity to learn more about your customer.  Always have link tracking, opt-in, quick surveys, and other feedback mechanisms on every touch you make to increase your market intelligence.  The wen makes this easy to execute.

x Creating data silos
Assure that internet, CRM, trade show, direct mail, email, SMS-text, social media, broadcast, point of sale, and phone contacts ultimately feed into one database.  Even if this process must be done manually, data is data and can be combined.  Virtually every system in use has an export feature and managers at every level must make this collection a top priority.

Driving customers to the web and presenting the opportunity to provide input is the first step in creating sophisticated cross channel campaigns.  There can be no excuse for not beginning to coordinate marketing efforts, even if the first step is as simple as creating a new landing page that each channel in a project uses to collect data.  Even small efforts will rapidly build a powerful house file of warm leads that will provide the best source of revenue.

Cross Channel / Cross Media Marketing Errors – Part One

Depending on what vendor is selling what product, cross media or cross channel marketing is presented differently.  Most combine one, or at best two, media and claim to provide a “solution” to the cross media marketing challenge.  The truth of the matter is that no special software is required to execute truly integrated cross media campaigns.  They can help, certainly, but are not required.  Do not feel obligated to spend thousands of dollars on software or services to begin a vibrant and effective cross media strategy.

Simply adding a Personalized URL (PURL) onto a printed piece does not a cross media marketer or solution make.

By taking a few moments to consider these easy to avoid mistakes when creating campaigns, marketers can greatly improve response rates, conversions, customer satisfaction and ROI.

x Not taking the first steps
It may be daunting to coordinate marketing efforts across channels.  In small firms there just isn’t enough time and in large ones politics and cross departmental coordination makes any task difficult.  The opportunity cost of not making this effort a priority is so high that it makes sense to avoid the following errors, most of which are quick and easy to execute.

x Not considering marketing efforts 
         across channels as related
Most marketers overlook the fact that every campaign can be coordinated with minimal effort and without a major overhaul to existing efforts.  Use unique phone numbers, web addresses and landing pages to track response and collect all the response metrics in one place.  Excel will do if there is no better option or the budget is just not available for a sophisticated solution.  Managers with different areas of responsibility must be forced to coordinate their efforts across all product lines and channels.  Every touch is valuable and too expensive to waste.

x Relying on one channel
In many cases marketers tend to focus on one or two channels.  Even sophisticated organizations which utilize a broad spectrum of media tend to foucs their efforts on a few core medium.  It is well established that customers are more likely to buy in their preferred channel if they have been touched by another.  Direct mail drives internet sales and websites drive brick and mortar purchases.  Coordinating channels, and putting a mechanism in place to allow customers to let you know their preference, will dramatically improve marketing effectiveness.

x Using a weak web address
Some firms will use a special web page on their main site, like www.acme.com/offer to try and track a specific offer but the “/offer” is often truncated by the respondent.  By changing the web address to www.acmeoffers.com, relevant content is served.  This is especially true of broadcast media where the link is not in front of the user.

x Ignoring the power of the landing page
What radio, TV, print, direct mail or email advertisement today does not include a web address?  From NPR, Field & Stream, and the internet, copywriters casually throw in the company website as a response channel.  There is no way to tell if the traffic came from SEO, paid search, or a printed piece.  Additionally, the content seen by visitor is not specific to the advertisement that drove them to the site in the first place.  The benefit of the driver is lost.

Cross Media Marketing for Events

Last week The Experiential Agency (XA Interactive) hosted a fabulous event for the trade at 1028 Hooker in Chicago. It was more than a great function. The party hostesses used a tablet PC and a VDP Web® landing page to gather emails, cell phone numbers and opt-ins for promotions and messaging from the guests.  The dark pad and trendy page were well received, looked very cool, and drew a crowd each time the hostess stopped to get the survey.  A thank you email automatically fired to the respondent.  Many were received on PDA’s while they were still at the event.

The contact, opt-in, and survey information was delivered directly into the agency’s data base of prospects.  The information could be used to send follow up direct marketing via SMS-text, email, and direct mail based on the opt-ins gathered by the hostesses.

This process would be a terrific data collection and brand building mechanism for any special event such as a trade show, shopping mall promotion, charity activity and more. Data collection rates, including the time spent circulating around the space and chatting with guest was one survey every three minutes for a very efficient means of collecting vital demographic and survey information.

Best of all, the cost of developing the entire system was less than the cost of a few extra guests at the bar.

Social media marketing for lead generation

We would define ourselves as casual social media users.  We have a blog, use twitter moderately and only when we have something of commercial interest to share, and we maintain a profile and network on Linkedin.  Today, we made another contact from our twitter account and have scheduled a webinar.  If there was ever any doubt that these social media work as cross media marketing tools, their shouldn’t be.

I found this summary from the Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael A. Stelzner to be illuminating. Here's the cheat sheet:

Top three questions marketers want answered:

(1) What are the best tactics to use
(2) how to do I measure the effectiveness of social media and,
(3) where do I start?

Marketers are mostly new to social media:
A significant 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their businesses, BUT 72% have only been doing so for a few months or less.

How much time does this take?
A significant 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week and 39% for 10 or more hours weekly.

The top benefit of social media marketing:
The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.

The top social media tools:
Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order. Social media tools marketers most want to learn about: Social bookmarking sites were ranked of highest interest, followed closely by Twitter.

For the complete report, click here.

Not All Personalized URLs are Equal

Is some Johnny come lately, me-too software company the partner you should be relying on for your marketing?  The VDP Complete^® family of products is based on a proven technology. Software is only as good as the company that stands behind and services it. JFM Concepts has a well established reputation as industry thought leaders in all things variable. Most personalized URL companies simply customize open source applications and pass them off as their own or resell inferior technologies from other firms.  JFM Concepts builds software from the ground up using the latest applications. This allows us to ensure the highest level of quality and guarantee every aspect of the application.

Not all Personalized URLs are created equal

There are lots of companies out there with little PURL tools that claim to be cross media marketing experts.  Our products and services are different. The VDP Complete suite of programs are better and here are just a few of the reasons why.

Easy to use, but without limitations

To truly get results, you need more than just a postcard with a first name and personalized URL.  Marketers need a complete suite of tools to engage and interact with customers in order to capture leads and document ROI.  The JFM cross media utility is powerful enough to meet your client’s requirements and yet is simple enough to learn quickly and execute fast. VDP Web online is the most powerful and easiest-to-use online PURL tool because our many years of experience defined the development process from the ground up.

Powerful custom designs in minutes

Most cross media software is built around standardized templates and limited workflows. VDP Web^® is made for custom design that is a powerful as the web itself. Unparalleled flexibility gives our partners that ability to truly be creative and flexible for their clients.  Our proprietary “Content Wizards” make custom design a snap.  Create complete campaigns, from new client creation to data assignment, in less than 20 minutes.

The features you need, made easy

Our PURL software has all the basics you would expect, but they come in a format that also allows more advanced features like automatically generated surveys and opt-ins, payments, automatic email replies, dynamic photos & graphics, and more.  VDP Web has everything you need without limitations and features that you don't.

The absolute best security and hosting

Our industry leading hosting environment provides multiple redundancies on all critical systems and our backup procedures ensure that your marketing campaigns are always protected.  From simple https security to complex PGP encryption systems, JFM Concepts has the internal expertise to make sure that your clients needs are met.

We invite you to compare JFM Concepts and then contact us.

Making Every Communication a 2-Way Conversation

The true power of cross media marketing is to create opportunities for two way conversation with our potential and current clients.  By driving visitors to the web and personalized landing pages we can create a cost effective and automatic mechanism for collecting data.  PURLs (Personalized URLs) can be used to identify visitors and serve variable content.  For more on PURLs and their use, click here.

 

Active Data Collection:  By asking specific and direct questions of identified web visitors we can gather data and save that information for use later.

 

Passive Data Collection:  By tracking what links a web visitor selects we have a good indicator of their areas of interest and can use that information to tailor future touches.

 

The Bottom Line:  By collecting data on visitors we can make touch points more relevant to the recipient and the more relevant we make the communication the better the results.

Cross Media for Online Companies

When marketers think of cross media, they generally start with a traditional business and consider how to incorporate email, landing pages, and PURLs into the traditional marketing mix.  The need to get into cross media marketing is as important for web businesses as is it is for everyone else.  After making an online purchase several months ago, I recently received a direct mail catalog from eBags.com.  I had not responded to any of their electronic offers and the mail piece must have been triggered by my lack of action.  According to the United States Postal Service, consumers are far more likely to make online purchases if they have received a catalog or online solicitation. Similarly, zappos.com, the darling of the e-tailing world can be seen advertising in print magazines.

The bottom line:  the more exposure your product or service has across more marketing channels, the better off you’ll be.

VDP Web Online Cross Media Press Release

JFM Concepts is proud to announce the availability of VDP Web® Online in a press release from PR Web.

The VDP Web Online platform is specifically designed to lower the cost of cross media marketing and variable data PURL campaigns for commercial printers, agencies, and marketing departments.  This powerful platform can also be used as the hub for telemarketing, paid search, landing page, SMS-text, and CRM marketing efforts.

View the release here.

Mass Media, Landing Pages & Cross Media Made Easy

Savvy web marketers have long used landing pages as the entry point of their paid search marketing efforts to facilitate tracking of particular campaigns.  This process assures that the prospects receive the correct content and do not need to surf through your website to find content.

Why not use this same process for radio, TV, newspaper and magazine advertising to create a truly cross media marketing campaign?  The expense of the advertisement is a sunk cost and most ads include a web address already.  By using a landing page rather than your home page you can serve the most relevant content and improve both the ease and quantity of opt-ins.

A typical landing page is presented as www.yourcompany.com/offer.  The problem with this format is that a large percentage of visitors will truncate the /offer and therefore end up on your home page and not see the content you just paid to present.  A better format is www.offer.yourcompany.com. Also, you need to alter your company web site in order to accommodate the new page – this may be difficult to execute with your IT department or the outside contractor or agency that manages the site.

VDP Web provides all the tools to simply execute a landing page campaign that includes built in opt-in forms, surveys, and automatic email responses to responders.  Visit us at www.vdpweb.com to learn more.

NYC Tea Party uses VDP Web Online

As part of the marketing and operations for the New York City Tea Party on April 15th, organizers used VDP Web Online to generate a useable database of grass roots supporters and volunteers in addition to providing an effortless registration platform.  A custom designed landing page (click here to view) provided information and links via a static URL.  The web address was broadcast for three days prior to the event on one AM radio news station, Apple 970 AM. 

The most powerful part of the program is that the radio spots generated hundreds of opt-ins for both the event and email, phone & SMS-text alerts regarding this event and upcoming efforts.  The data was immediately available to organizers for additional action, including fundraising and community action.