NFL.com Gets High Scores on Engaging Emails

Challenge: Email deliverability is now dependent on a sender’s ability to deliver engaging content to subscribers. Since engagement has become a key ingredient in ISP’s reputation scores, marketers need to up their game to play by the changing rules or risk poor ROI rates on campaigns.

As we reported in a previous blog, 70-75% of Email Subscribers are Inactive, marketers need to capture attention and invite engagement due to Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL now incorporating a new algorithm that includes the original guidelines for identifying SPAM, plus active engagement rates. 

While marketers are using many other forms of communication, email still continues to be a prime vehicle for customer interactions. In the Salesforce.com Exacttarget Marketing Cloud 2014 State of Marketing study that polled over 2,600 mid- to senior-level marketing managers cross all industries; 

» 67 percent of marketers say their number one priority for 2014 is to increase sales directly attributable to digital marketing campaigns,

» 64 percent are focused on increasing email click throughs and open rates.

In our ERDM Voice of Customer (VoC) research findings we learned what customers want relative to email:

»  Consumers expect companies to use their preferences to deliver increasingly personalized offers, communications, and experiences.

»  As a result of preference-based interactions, consumers are more willing to respond to communications and offers.

»  Customers look to personalized follow-up emails as value-added triggers to go online and evaluate relevant products.

»  Customers want more than just buying history-based emails.

»  Create opt-in preference databases to drive true personalization of communications and offers.

The NFL.com Newsletter, winner of the MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2013, took relevancy to a whole new level. Subscribers get real-time content about their designated favorite teams, and even receive countdowns to game time. Fans depend on these emails to stay abreast of timing for the next big kick-off.

These efforts resulted in doubled newsletter open rates and increased click through rates of 26%.

The 5 winning reasons given for choosing the NFL.com as the best in show winner were:

1. They explored new ways to engage and interact with their audience.

2. They had a goal to create email that was relevant and targeted as possible.

3. They tailored each email on a personalized level.

4. They wanted the emails to be useful.

5. They took into consideration the different vehicles that might be used to read an email and made the messages easy to navigate and easy to read.

On the NFL.com site visitors can register via a preference center to supply personalized information such as favorite team and opt-in to the newsletter.

3 Takeaways:

1. Keep in mind the new rules for email deliverability that take into consideration both recipient interaction as well as content engagement. Develop new strategies that encourage interaction through deeply personalized messaging.

2. Customers are willing to provide in-depth information in exchange for receiving value-added information. For consumers, the rationale for providing preference information is to receive increasingly relevant offers, communications, and experiences.

3. Understand how your customers read their emails—is it on a computer, tablet, or mobile device? Design emails that will enable your message to display correctly for maximum interaction opportunities.

IBM: Innovations in 'Outside In' Conversations and Content

Challenge: Many companies are bothering customers with irrelevant content, rather than “conversing” with them through personalized interactions. Conversing with customers should now encompass key points of engagement starting with what you name products and services, as well as how you structure ongoing conversations based on the customer’s point of view. This requires a whole new way of thinking, but generates significant results.

According to the Maritz Report on Customer Preferences, “consumers overwhelmingly expect their voices to be heard by companies via the web. Not only do they expect companies to be listening, but the study also reveals that 85 percent of consumers are very happy when businesses respond to their public comments in online forums and social media venues.”

Listening and conversing with customers is one of the most important aspects of a successful marketing initiative. According to learnings from ERDM VoC research, it’s marketer's responsibility to listen to customers and understand their true needs;

» Consumers have shifted from being passive recipients of ‘push’ marketing, to selecting companies which engage, listen to, and act on, input from customers and prospects.

» Achieve frictionless, high-value, engagement across every medium in the multichannel mix.

» Customers engage with your messages across multiple media. Ensure message and brand consistency across all your media.

IBM has developed a new approach for listening and conversing with companies. It is championed by Denise M. Beckmann, IBM Worldwide, Senior Digital Marketing Lead who had this to share regarding their strategy, “Outside-In is our name for centralizing around the conversations customers are having. It is the starting point for naming products and services to be recognizable and the initial scope for web site information architecture (navigation paths) and content strategy.

»  “We update and modify something every 2 weeks. The front pages and rotation topics change as the customer conversation changes.”

»  “In order to maintain a high search ranking, we avoided use of ‘IBM speak.’”

The company launched a new cloud web experience, and per Beckmann, “Day one of the launch was tied to social media launches in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and "ThoughtsOnCloud" SME blog.

 

The Results:

» The most retweets ever from @IBMCloud

»  Trending on LinkedIn for two days with over 900 shares

»  Over 300 recommendations on Facebook

»  A 400% increase in social referrals to IBM.com/SmartCloud in July

»  Page visits went from less than four thousand to over forty-thousand per month, by intercepting conversations.

"We feel strongly that access to our experts in social forums is critical to engaging in conversations. Delivering cloud content based upon the existing conversations while simultaneously allowing for questions in forums like LinkedIin and Facebook was key. Quality content immediately brought additional social referrals connecting us to the “Right People”, in a way database marketing never could."

Key Takeaways:

1. Develop a content strategy built around customer personalization including: education about your products, how they can be purchased, where they can be purchased, and how it meets customers’ needs.

2. Have a fully integrated multichannel strategy so that each aspect of your marketing is supported and integrated across channels.

3. Have conversations with customers regarding what they want to know, not just what you want to sell.

4. Authentically be ready to engage in conversation in a sustainable way. Customers expect you to answer their questions when you step into social environments.

Montreal Transit's Innovative App Drives High Engagement

Direct Marketing News (DMNews.com) Feature Story.

Deep consumer insights and personalized messaging and offerings are now essential requirements for marketers. But many companies are just beginning to understand the unprecedented opportunities that deeply connecting with consumers for engaging experiences can bring.

Today, engaging customers through ongoing, personalized, experience-based interactions is the key to developing loyalty and future sales.

Findings from our VoC (Voice of Customer) research indicate important new requirements for customer engagement:

• Customers expect companies to maintain engagement and value throughout their lifecycles, not just during acquisition and renewal.
• Marketers must improve the customer experience across every point of contact with their organization.
• Customer experiences apply to all elements of the media mix and all departments within an organization.

In a powerful customer engagement experience, customers:

• Discover and share information about your company
• Learn about your products
• Receive personalized offers and communications

To make this happen, companies need to:

• Learn the most effective ways to monetize opportunities
• Respond quickly to match inventory to customer demand
• Be nimble enough to rapidly refine offers based on customer insights
• Prep sales and other departments with critical customer information

Making the commitment to a customer experience strategy

According to  “The Integrated Customer Experience Report 2013” by eConsultancy, a survey of nearly 900 companies and agencies, data systems and processes are still the primary factors that hold companies back from improving their customer experiences. Additionally, the complexity of customer experience marketing leaves many respondents unsure of where and how to begin. Consider:

• Fifty-eight percent of companies are still only developing strategies in this area, compared to just 20% of companies with well-developed strategies.
• While more than half of the respondents see data (63%) and systems and processes (54%) as critical areas for delivering integrated customer experiences. Most companies have inadequate capabilities in both areas.
• Nine out of 10 companies say improved customer retention/brand loyalty is a benefit of integrated customer experiences, but just more than half of companies surveyed (54%) have the means to measure retention and loyalty to quantify their experience marketing effectiveness.

Experience marketing drives engagement

I recently saw a presentation by Layla Sabourian Tarwé, senior product marketing manager, global marketing, at SAP, whose main focus is to help drive consumer engagement initiatives at SAP. During the presentation she explained how Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) leveraged SAP's Precision Marketing software to develop a new interactive mobile app call Merci.

Layla had these important insights to share about best practices regarding the customer engagement experience: “Marketers need to embrace change and understand the value of connecting with consumers in innovative new ways. The first step in engaging consumers more deeply is being able to generate deep insights about their preferences and preferably, in real time.”

Layla added this key point, “But now with all these new channels, we're at the point where we're actually starting to have too much information. The key is being able to analyze massive amounts of data from multiple sources to create a 360-degree view of each consumer and then act on these insights in real time. As consumers have started to use new channels, their expectations for how marketers should engage with them have increased dramatically.”

In fact, through co-innovation with SAP, Société de Transport de Montréal launched its Merci app to help improve its customer experience. Merci presents customers with exclusive, personalized offers based on their profiles and preferences. The program offers participants instant gratification without having to work or wait to collect points.

“STM wanted to avoid being ‘just another loyalty card that collected points.' It wanted to build an ecosystem of partners and offers that would ‘reward users on the spot' for their continued loyalty,” said Pierre Bourbonniére, STM's head of marketing. “In the backend, STM's ability to segment geo-localized promotions ensures that notifications are a match with the commuters' demographics and personal preferences, information they have volunteered in return for relevant offers. Whether they're waiting at a bus stop, or just enjoying the ride to downtown attractions, these customers access our award-winning mobile app—STM Merci—to to benefit from relevant offers—as well as a reward scheme—that respects their privacy and personal tastes. The program, which connects directly with commuters on the move, has the potential in all verticals, not just transport, to seek new ways to use mobile to reward individual consumers for their loyalty.”

STM encouraged riders to download the app and complete preference information about their interests. Half of the riders chose to complete their profiles.

STM designed the app to adhere to strict Canadian privacy compliance regulations. The back-end of the application splits commuter data into two separate databases, with key personal details "de-identified.” 

What marketers can learn from the Merci app 

• The app allows STM to create and shape demand in real time and adjust marketing campaigns for partner organizations to maximize their ROI, instead of waiting to analyze their effectiveness.
• The app enables the company to rapidly match supply to a changing market and optimize inventory levels and product assortment based on the latest consumer demand data.
• It allows for the development of new offerings and business models—using consumer insights to refine existing offerings, uncover new consumer needs, and create new monetization opportunities through an incentive to travel more often or switch to an annual subscription.
• Customers are able to receive geo-located offers based on wherever they happen to be.

And customers value this service. The click-through for the Merci app has been four-times greater than industry averages.  

Key takeaways for developing your customer engagement experience

• Customer engagement experiences need to be highly personalized. Immersive experiences such as social media need to cultivate a sense of connection.
• Consumers engage through a variety of media, so it's essential to give them the option to experience your brand effortlessly across multiple channels. 
• Customers want to receive instant gratification for making transactions, accessing services, and providing feedback any time and on all media of their choice. 
• Companies need to unify and integrate different sources of customer data to deliver consistent experiences at every point of contact.
• Marketers should develop a fully rounded view of each customer that includes history, personalization preferences, usage and future intent information, and prediction of lifetime value.