However, online does not automatically signal lower marketing expenditure and increased revenue and an intelligent combination of online and offline techniques is often the best way to lift sales. The Web has shifted the dynamic of the relationship between brands and customers, and the ability to reach prospects in a more relevant and personal way is one of the unique advantages offered by online. However, marketers need to be realistic about what can be achieved. Consumer campaigns are still best served by incorporating off-line components due to the practicalities of maintaining up to date mailing lists.
While targeted B2B marketing efforts are much better suited to online these will still not meet their full potential if used in isolation and marketers should not be seduced by any Silver Bullet solutions. It’s very easy and tempting to follow the herd after the latest buzz techniques, tools and channels and hang your strategy on them.
The first key to success is a mindset that tests and optimises a mix of online and offline techniques that are right for that business and its customers, and to remember that every one is different. The best analogy for this approach is that of creating a “balanced portfolio” of marketing initiatives. Some are established and bear solid, stable returns. Others you take small stakes in, creating a spread-bet pool of new, higher risk campaigns and techniques with potentially higher returns. It’s a balance of being conservative and steady with your core activity and open minded on the new and smaller stake opportunities that will offer the best returns and crucially to continue to test to find the optimal mix.
Therefore, the key to a successful campaign, especially those using a variety of marketing approaches, is to be able track results and to focus on those elements that generate the best results. Tracking allows the marketer to optimise both online and offline campaigns and thus generate far higher conversions. However, given the controversy surrounding Phorm which raised questions about behavioural targeting and pre-empted EU legislation imposing limits on how data can be used and the use of cookies, it is unsurprising that targeting has not been embraced for lead generation by UK marketers to date. If introduced successfully through a multi-channel strategy, targeting is still a viable and very powerful option.
A call to action based around a Personal URL, a URL address tailored to an individual which is tracked when activated, can be integrated into any combination of DM, email, telephony or SMS. This directs campaign response to your website, this can be personalised within the browser if desired without recourse to multiple micro-sites, which can be expensive and unwieldy for tracking purposes. The user’s interaction (solely) within that site can be tracked, this provides the meta-data and context on the customer lead that allows warm prospects to be identified in real time and scored for follow up with sales teams and/or marketing activities based on the nature and level of their actions.
By targeting only those customers that have clearly demonstrated a clear interest through their interactions it’s a simple process to rationalise sales and marketing spend to drive ROI. In real terms this can offer call centre cost savings of over 70 percent and an additional benefit is the preservation of brand equity since sales need only contact those who actually want to be called.
The freedom to track customer engagement within a website through the customer’s opt-in (via the Personal URL) when coupled with the option to personalise the campaign’s messaging offers all the advantages of targeting without the sinister overtones of all pervasive web tracking.
One of the most dramatic examples using these principles we have seen recently is a campaign for Intimis client Auto Europe, the world's largest car-hire broker. The additional units sold over the first six months of their campaign amounted to an average weekly uplift of 65% with the figure being in excess of 100% some weeks and a maximum weekly uplift achieved of 133%.
Ultimately a successful cross platform campaign can be reduced to 'Three Ts' – Test, Track, Target – by finding the optimal marketing mix and approaching only those prospects likely to convert, it’s possible to save a lot of time and money.
However this approach is wholly dependent on a sufficient number of users inputting the Personal URL in the first place. Therefore the success or failure of the campaign comes down to the initial call to action and although the technology may impact the results, there’s (as yet) no option to upgrade the marketer.
This posting appeared in the DM Weekly News – 03/09/10
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