Free The Children Co-founder Answers 4 Questions for Marketing Innovators

Craig Kielburger, who at the age of 12 co-founded the remarkable charity Free The Children, now a worldwide organization, will address these 4 questions;

1. What is one marketing topic that is most important to you as an innovator?
2. Why is this so important?
3. How will the customer experience be improved by this?
4. How will this improve the effectiveness of marketing?

Please send your feedback and ideas for people you would us to interview to ernan@erdm.com.

Craig Kielburger is a social entrepreneur and NYT-bestselling author. He is the co-founder of the children's charity Free The Children, the youth empowerment event We Day, and the social enterprise Me to We. Free The Children is an international charity and educational partner that believes in a world where all children are free to achieve their fullest potential as agents of change.

1. What is one marketing topic that is most important to you as an innovator?

Cause-related marketing, linking your product to an organization or cause that customers care about, so that buying your product has a tangible, positive social impact.

2. Why is this so important?

Consumers are increasingly seeking a sense of purpose in their purchases. The millennial generation, in particular, is highly aware of social causes and more likely than any previous generation to actively look for companies and products that make a positive social impact.

We also live in an age of parity. The marketplace is filled with similar offerings that start to blur together on retail shelves and online. Consumers are looking for a true differentiator and asking, what's unique about this product? Social impact is an under-tapped way to make your product stand out among the crowd.

At the same time, consumers are growing cynical of donating a dollar at the check-out. They're looking for some accountability on where their donation is going. As we say, they want to track their impact.

We've seen this phenomenon with our Me to We products, which include artisanal items handmade by women in Africa, sweatshop-free clothing, eco-conscious school supplies, and a recycled stationary line. Each item has a unique Track Your Impact code printed on the tag. With that code, we promise a specific impact to a community overseas, such as clean water, a vaccination, or a financial literacy class to empower a person in a developing country. Customers can enter their code online to see precisely where their gift is making an impact. Track Your Impact is cause-related marketing with an unprecedented level of transparency‹, a specific purchase linked to a specific outcome.

3. How will the customer experience be improved by this?

People want to feel and be seen as being socially conscious. They want the emotional attachment and empowerment of knowing that their shopping choices benefit someone else's life. Buying a product they need, and then seeing that purchase deliver a tangible outcome for a better world, fulfills a basic human need we all have to do good.

4. How will this improve the effectiveness of marketing?

It's the future. People want to know the story behind their product to track where it was made and its social impact. Consumers are also parents, grandparents, siblings, real people who care about making a difference. They rarely have a strong emotional resonance with a deodorant, or a can of soup. But if you attach your product to something that people care about enormously, you differentiate your product. If a consumer knows their gift planted a tree, their shirt provided seeds for a family to grow their own food, or their kid's lunchbox gave another child a year of school supplies, then they feel empowered and good about their purchases. Suddenly, they have an emotional attachment to your product ‹that's marketing gold.

Track Your Impact has been so successful that we've been approached by other companies that want to attach impacts to their products, and we'll soon license the system. It's the future of marketing.

What is your favorite activity outside of work?

I love to travel and explore new cultures. Although I've been to dozens of amazing countries, one of my favorite places to visit is Kenya – it truly is my home away from home. I go back at least twice a year to visit our Adopt a Village communities in the country.

Use Human Data to Provide True B2B Personalization

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMS Wire

An enormous shift is occurring in how B2B customers think about engagement and relationships. Customers expect marketers to achieve relevance by providing personalized communications based on their individual preferences, rather than continuing with irrelevant “spray and pray” marketing blasts. It’s this new way of thinking that’s unlocking the true potential of human data.

A Shift in Strategy

Gone are the days when B2B prospects and customers would sort through piles of spray and pray “stuff” to uncover the few relevant messages. They expect marketers to find them and provide relevant offers and communications based on their individual needs and preferences. This means that marketers must develop bold new strategies that achieve the delicate balance of requesting in-depth data in exchange for providing the value of significantly improved customer experiences.

That is why after careful research, The UPS Store repositioned itself as a small business peer to peer company which made it more relevant to its target audience. Its research showed that 90 percent of small-business owners would prefer to do business with other local business owners. The UPS Store targeted this small biz niche and carefully crafted its messaging to directly answer their specific requirements.

A marketing initiative was created to let UPS directly connect with this audience in order to provide personalized services, products and offers of real value. They launched a Small Business Solutions portal, offering resources for small-business owners and the Small Biz Buzz, an online community of more than 300 small-business owners.

An Exchange of Value  

Just like their B2C counterparts, B2B marketers are realizing that to be truly personalized, marketing must be based on more than transactional, overlay and inferential data. It has to be based on the individual customer’s stated needs and self-profiled preference information.

However, developing a program to gain progressively deeper levels of self-profiled data must start with a foundation of trust. Per findings from Voice of Customer research conducted by ERDM, B2B customers and prospects are willing to provide trusted brands with meaningful information in exchange for more personalized offers, communications and experiences. We call this exchange of value the “Reciprocity of Value.”

This Reciprocity of Value, built on trust, is the critical aspect of both B2B and B2C data-driven marketing. It is trust, and a perceived reciprocity, that will motivate customers to provide the preference-based information needed to drive truly relevant, engaging communication.

Keep in mind:

	Trust is the foundation and basis for obtaining deeper levels of personalized, preference-based data.
	Marketers must earn the right to obtain deeper levels of preference data by delivering on the promise of truly personalized communications.
	Marketers should strive to build sustainable relationships with customers based on trust, commitment and reciprocity, from the initial prospecting phase to every aspect of the customer lifecycle.

Microsoft's Move Beyond the Product

To better connect with B2B consumers and develop a relationship program that transcended product transactions, Microsoft sought to gain a deeper level of customer understanding. Through VoC research with Microsoft’s SMB business consumers, key factors for improvement in personalization were outlined:

	Understand my unique business needs.
	Create user levels based on business size, industry and product focus and then create targeted content based these levels.
	Develop a relationship program based on the user’s unique needs, not Microsoft’s.
	Request user feedback at every touch point. And use that feedback to evolve the customer experience and provide relevant content and communications.

After a comprehensive program of gaining data through a preference-based, easy-to-navigate opt-in process, Microsoft developed ways to deliver on the promise of an enhanced experience. Customers received a welcome email, monthly personalized e-newsletters, and ongoing personalized offers and training.

The results were powerful:

	Opt-in rates up to 95 percent.
	Open rates greater than 50 percent.
	Response rates performing in the double-digits.
	Revenue increase of 2 times.

This is what the Reciprocity of Value looked like:

Customer Benefits		Microsoft Benefits
• Deeper level of personalized experience • Customized communication, training, and services • Improved information relevant to business needs		• Opt-in Profile information to drive personalized content and communications • Ability to analyze web and email interaction behaviors • Improved Cross sell/upsell opportunities

In summary, earning the in-depth “human” preference data that drives personalized marketing is an essential strategy for B2B marketers looking to go from transactions to a long-term, value based relationships with customers.

6 Customer Experience Mistakes You Don't Want to Make

   Loyalty 360 Feature Story.

Per results from recent Voice of Customer (VoC) research, Customer Experience strategies are failing to deliver the quality of experience customers expect. Notwithstanding today's technology, tools and analytics, it is sobering that customers are not experiencing a significantly improved customer experience.

Following are the top 6 Customer Experience mistakes that emerged from our analysis of thousands of hours of VoC research our firm, ERDM, conducted for clients such as MassMutual, Norton AntiVirus, IBM, HMS National, Songza and others;

1. Customers do not feel that marketers are trying to understand the customer journey from the customer's point of view. To many, it feels like "customer journey" is another term for mapping the sales opportunity journey.

2. It is obvious to customers that companies are doing things piecemeal. Examples cited in the research include;

• Improving multichannel marketing but not fixing customer service.

• Installing CRM systems which only automate bad behaviors but don't improve the quality of communications and experiences.

• Building Preference Centers which don't ask the right preference questions. 

Thought Leader Insight:
Scott Frey, President, PossibleNow;
“Install an enterprise wide preference center. Go beyond preference centers for individual channels such as email and create an easy-to-use portal where customers can create individual profiles, select topics of interest, preferred delivery channels and pace of communications. Preference centers provide the ability for customers to maintain their preferences as their interests change over time. Connect the preference center to all customer touch points”. 

3. Customers want marketers to move from thinking about individual campaigns to a holistic engagement strategy with proactive value added touches at key points important to the customer, not the marketer. High quality experiences must be maintained throughout the relationship and per a quote from a VoC interview, “Not just when you are selling or renewing”. 

Thought Leader Insight:
Eric Nystrom, Dell, Director, Social Media Services Group;
“We need to think in terms of engaging customers at every stage of the customer lifecycle. This causes a shift from one-way communications to conversations and to think about content differently. Customers expect to engage with subject matter experts and empowered employees, not corporate spokespeople. Content needs to be relevant, interesting and engaging…and always on”.

4. Conflicting metrics for measuring success; Marketers are looking at short term sales and ROI from individual campaigns. Customers are judging companies based on the quality of the overall experience, over time.

5. Frustratingly poor data. Customers want marketers to improve the quality of their data and shift from transaction-based information to opt-in preference-based information which will drive truly personalized communications and offers. 

Thought Leader Insight:
Andrew Bailey, Marketing Principal, FedEx;
“FedEx has always valued the customer experience and continues to make strides in providing an optimal one. FedEx works to allow customers to tell us how often they’d like to receive email, and on which specific topics. This helps spark a dialogue that allows us to better serve our customers by meeting their individual needs with information for the right person, containing the right content, in the right place and at the right time”.

6. Viewing Customer Experience as being about a few campaigns, will ensure you’ll fail. Successful companies view Customer Experience as a transformation of their culture, impacting every business process. Culture change is hard but is the longest lasting. Individual campaigns do not result in sustained change. 

MassMutual is an excellent case study of a company which has committed to transforming the customer experience with the goal of creating customers for life. They began by conducting Voice of Customer research to understand how different customer segments define deeper relationships with MassMutual Retirement Services at key points in their lifecycle. 

Thought Leader Insight:
Kris Gates, VP Customer Experience, MassMutual Retirement Services;
"Based on the learnings from the VoC research, we have redesigned the way we look at relationships with customers. Taking a Learn – Pilot – Scale approach to our marketing efforts, we already have several VoC research-based initiatives underway. These range from redefining how we view the customer-focused value of CRM platforms and our data, to campaign targeting and preference based communications. 

One of the findings from our recent VoC research indicated that our customers wanted communications driven by their preferences and interests. We used the rollout of our new educational video series SmartView,to measure the difference in response between mass emails to an entire list versus preference-driven offers to those who had opted in and told us their preferences and interests. Results from customers who opted in to receive information versus the mass email population: 94 percent higher open rates, 1,062 percent higher video views, 100 percent deliverability and Zero unsubscribes".

8 Key Takeaways to Avoid Customer Experience Mistakes

1. “Digital has changed buyer and marketer behavior. Traditional campaigns are definitive…social is about long-term relationships…think about how to drive content streams to improve search, engagement and conversion”.
Eric Nystrom, Director, Social Media Services Group, Dell

2. “Engage your customers to provide their preferences regarding information they want to receive from you; right person, right content, right time, right place and right medium”.
Andrew Bailey, Marketing Principal, FedEx.

3. Help customers at every point of contact with your company; from information gathering, to purchasing, to ongoing engagement. Make every aspect of doing business with your company easy.

4. Communicate a consistent message and brand across all channels, and customer touch points, including customer service.

5. Constantly improve how you communicate your value proposition; this applies to your products and your company, so customers understand why they should continue to do business with you.

6. Learn the customer journey from the customer’s perspective. Know what customers want from you at each stage of their journey with your company and satisfy their needs.

7. Rethink all communications with customers to be personalized, relevant and helpful based on their individual preferences. Don’t just send transaction-based “spray and pray”.

8. Change your culture to be customer centric in all aspects of your company and unite these efforts across all departments.

Macy’s Rewards Customers for Providing Tracking Permission

Challenge: New technology allows companies to track consumer’s every move. However, caution must be taken to ensure that permission is gained before tracking commences.

In a new IBM study of more than 30,000 consumers it was found that consumers are willing to share their personal information if they feel they receive value in exchange;

» The percentage of consumers willing to share their current location via GPS with retailers nearly doubled year-over-year to 36 percent.

» 38 percent of consumers would provide their mobile number for the purpose of receiving text messages and 32 percent would share their social handles with retailers.

This same sentiment has been confirmed in our Voice of Customer (VoC) research for Fortune brands regarding willingness to opt-in based on Reciprocity of Value expectations.

Macy’s opt-in based multichannel customer engagement

Today’s customers are multichannel. Therefore marketers have to follow their lead.

Macy’s PromoAlert program allows customers to opt-in to receive push marketing via email or text as well as through an Android or iPhone mobile app. Additionally the company allows customers to opt-in to receive information on specific events, bridal registries, and more.

Macy’s has also begun testing Shopkick, an iBeacon/BLE-based Bluetooth signal at its Herald Square, New York and Union Square, San Francisco stores. The app automatically welcomes shoppers as they enter a store and shows location-specific deals, discounts, recommendations and rewards. The app can also tie in at-home browsing to an in-store benefit—if a shopper “likes” a specific product in the app. The Shopkick technology ties into the retailer’s own app.

The company has established complete transparency in their opt-in mobile tracking technology. Macy’s offers details on their PromoAlert program on their web that allows customers to both sign-up or opt-out.

4 Takeaways:

1. It cannot be emphasized enough that transparency is essential in order to get active opt-in from customers.

2. Retailers need to develop all tracking technologies in a way that preserves trust and delivers personalized benefits in exchange for their willingness to provide increasingly deeper levels of personal information.

3. Improve customer loyalty through personalized brand experiences. Customers who opt in expect that the information they receive will dramatically enhance and improve their overall experience.

4. Integrate digital and physical stores to enable a seamless shopping experience for customers. Every aspect of your marketing needs to reinforce your overall brand and customer experience.

Transforming Intrusive Customer Tracking to Valued Information Exchanges

The Challenge: The bad news is that consumer resistance to unauthorized data tracking is growing. The good news is that many consumers understand that in order to receive more targeted and relevant communications, they need to provide companies with more of their personal information.

Extensive research conducted by our company, ERDM, over the past 12 months has shown that BtoB and BtoC customers are willing to provide in-depth information if they see the value and are assured of improved levels of personalization and customer engagement. This research finding has emerged so consistently that we refer to this as the Reciprocity of Value Equation. This fundamentally reframes data privacy concerns as a beneficial exchange of information that improves the customer experience.

Furthermore, customers have said that they will update and refresh their information as long as they keep receiving value from marketers. Therefore the significant takeaway for marketers is that:

» BtoB and BtoC customers will supply deep levels of information if they trust the brand and see value.
» Consumers will actively opt-in to sharing detailed personal preference information in exchange for the marketer’s promise to deliver relevant information and offers.
» Marketers need to understand how their customers define the Reciprocity of Value Equation with their company.

CVS-Caremark, a 2013 Apex Customer Award Winner understands the power of providing value in exchange for personal information and responsible behavior tracking.

They worked hard to improve consistency, reliability, and accountability in Member Communications – both across the organization and within the communications sent to Members. This heavy emphasis on putting customer needs front and center boosted CVS’ revenues in the pharmacy services by 7.2% to $11.5 billion, and in the retail pharmacy segment by 13.9% to $13.5 million.

This growth is due in part to a benefit-based reciprocal data exchange with customers.

• Within the Pharmacy “Information center” are details of all current and past prescriptions filled by a family at CVS. It allows subscribers to monitor all medications with pictures of each pill, dosage, refills remaining, and which medicines are due to be refilled or need a renewal prescription.

• Customers can order refills online and be altered to pickups by email, text, or both.

• Subscribers have one loyalty card and login to the prescription and retail sections of the stores, allowing them to add reward points for future discounts in both areas of the store.

• CVS sends personalized emails to members based on their current point levels and past buying history.

Takeaways

1. Customers want to be reassured that when they turn over their personal information, it will be used responsibly and for their benefit. Companies that reward customers for data by providing relevant offers and enhanced customer experiences will gain loyalty because customers expect a reciprocal value exchange.

2. Have an action plan for how you will use this precious customer data. If customers do not see obvious and immediate benefits from providing their information, not only will they unsubscribe from the service, they may also stop being a customer.

3. Understand what questions customers feel are appropriate to ask...and at what points in the lifecycle. Increasingly deeper levels of information must be earned.