Month: June 2014

It’s a global market now – or so we are always being told. But when it comes to venturing into new territories what really counts are your local connections, says Andrew Woodger (pictured).

When it comes to building international business the world is your oyster. Wherever you stick your pin on the gently spinning globe, you’ll be able to find a little grain of opportunity somewhere waiting to be transformed into a beautiful and valuable pearl. But when it comes to polishing up those pearls – getting them buffed up and attractive for their new markets – there’s nothing to beat a little local knowledge and skill.

Now right away let me say that you could accuse me of a little bias. I represent a company with just those ‘local’ skills – and a fair bit of experience in pearl polishing on behalf of global firms. But as I hope to show of the next few paragraphs, there are just so many positives in partnering with an agency which has local knowledge in the markets you want to enter.

It’s not just about ‘convenience’. There is a good argument to be had that by going straight to a local marketing and communications agency, as opposed to a ‘global network’ based in your own country, you get more direct control over all aspects of the project. From the start you have one single point of contact – right there on the ground just where you need them – and directly accountable to you. Whatever issues arise (and you know they will, however well organised you may think you are) they are your ‘boots on the ground’, ready to mobilise whatever resources are required, taking away all the issues and delivering reliable and ‘market tested’ solutions. They know the local suppliers and can handle all the diverse elements required in a ‘top to bottom’ re-branding of any newly acquired business.

You want to get on with the nitty-gritty. You want issues like the translation and localisation of marketing materials to be taken off your hands – and to be confident that the hands they’ve been passed onto have all the necessary skills, contacts and experience to solve the issues that may arise and deliver you just what you need, just when you need it. You need someone with an existing and robust network of suppliers they can tap into to deliver all the specialist items you need such as signage and promotional goods. You also need an agency which has the necessary experience to be your ‘brand custodian’, making sure that everything produced conforms to a consistently applied set of corporate identity standards across all your markets.

Above all, you need an agency which can cope with whatever issues emerge. Hopefully they won’t be of ‘crisis proportions’, but even if they are, your ‘local partner’ should be able to lift them off your aching shoulders, take them away and leave you with one less problem to deal with. Being there on the ground their reaction times will be that much faster – and they will be able to call in favours and have an adaptability which an agency in a more distant location couldn’t possibly hope to match.

I know I said out the outset that I had a bias in presenting this argument – and the case study at the end of this article takes that one step further. You’re welcome, of course, to disagree with me – and I’m sure the editor of this journal will be happy to give your views equal space with mine – but with so much at stake, I would argue again and again that no business, however global their ambition, can afford to be without experienced local players. You pay your money and take your choice – but dollar for dollar (or whatever the currency in play) you’ll get a better result by choosing a local agency every time.

Andrew Woodger is data and planning director at the Purple Agency. The agency has offices in the UK, Germany, Italy and Turkey.

Kestrel Lemen (pictured) discusses marketing apps and their role in helping retailers and other commerce-focused marketers to reach customers with personal, data-driven messages.

Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other portable devices, most of us are familiar with the concept of apps – small point solutions that work within an existing platform.

App usage has grown enormously over the past few years. When most of us think ‘apps’ we think about the ones for personal use that run on smartphones or tablets, but there has also been a proliferation of business apps that work with many other types of platforms and devices.

Apps have accelerated the pace of innovation across all forms of business. Whether that is for compliance, HR, finance or sales, apps have carved an impressive niche in a short space of time. Most importantly they have provided information at the point of need, removing the requirement to search through other systems or data sources or to figure out a way to take data from one place and use it in another.

It’s perhaps in retail that apps have had the biggest impact. We can all relate to being on the receiving end of untargeted blast email marketing from brands that we immediately delete. Marketing-related apps can help avoid this situation by making it easy for brands to access data they can use to target the right audience and personalise an email, making it much more likely to be read and clicked. For example, an app that makes past-purchase information from an ecommerce platform available would allow a marketer to promote similar products or automated reorders.

With more and more brands going online and communicating directly with consumers via an ecommerce site, having a targeted, data-driven approach is more important than ever.

In addition to making data more easily accessible, apps also help commerce marketers face the daily challenge of managing a range of disparate marketing tools. Apps provide a wide range of capabilities, all accessible from one place, that give commerce marketers a central digital marketing platform.

Bronto has recently launched a commerce marketing AppCenter, which includes a range of ecommerce, personalisation and analytics tools to help brands manage their marketing campaigns and interact with consumers.

Here are three key challenges for today’s commerce marketer:

• Growing need for data-driven marketing – Today’s consumers are becoming more sophisticated, more difficult to track and much harder to engage. It’s more important than ever for marketers to understand consumer behaviour relative to their brand and to use this insight to build more targeted messages and campaigns.
• Limited time and resources – Given the impressive growth of the e-commerce market, expectations for commerce marketers are high, but time and resources are scarce.
• Integrations – Properly functioning integrations can be difficult to build, and they’re often time- and resource-intensive.

With the apps model, marketing platforms act as hubs with an ecosystem of apps built around them. Apps help address these challenges by putting more functionality in the hands of the marketer faster and enabling them to accomplish more while saving time and sources. Marketing apps might include ones used for analytics, personalisation, recommendations, retargeting and social.

From an analytics perspective, retailers can use apps to track the impact of their social media campaigns and use predictive software to better plan in the future.

Loyalty apps such as Coupon Manager can be integrated into the wide platform, as well as recommendation and retargeting tools, which help segmentation and personalisation.

Post-event and campaign evaluations are an important part of any project, and ongoing development and support of apps is crucial for sustained success.

By controlling all marketing activity through one centralised platform and an ecosystem of well-integrated apps, retailers and brands can ensure they provide a more customised customer experience, which needs to be continually optimised to meet changing customer tastes and needs.

Kestrel Lemen is marketing strategist at Bronto Software Europe.

If 2013 was the ‘year of mobile’, are companies now ready to enter the age of the customer? Steve Denner (pictured) explores how email marketing can lead the way.

Last year was all about mobile, as email marketers really turned their attention to exploiting M-commerce. Around a fifth more companies took a more strategic approach to incorporating mobile optimisation into their email activities, reveals The Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2014 (based on a survey of some 1,100 marketers).

The Census indicates that mobile email has become the new reality, and marketers are integrating it into their workflow. As new technologies become mainstream, the hype dies down, and they are perceived as just another standard channel in the mix. The same happened with social media.

The Year of the Customer

Where 2013 was the ‘year of mobile,’ could this year be dubbed ‘year of the customer?’ If Forrester is correct in predicting that we are entering the ‘age of the customer,’ 2014 may well be the year marketers start to truly focus on the end-user. And what better place to begin developing a culture of customer obsession than email marketing? Email is a mature channel delivering proven results. To successfully use it you need to combine the available technology and human insight, and also take advantage of the email provider’s advice and support. Not convinced? Read on for key insights from companies that are getting it right.

In terms of Return on Investment, research shows that there is no better digital communications channel than email: 68% of companies rated it good or excellent. This marks a 3% increase since last year, surpassing search engine optimisation for the first time since 2009. Furthermore, email is also the best channel on which to focus your budget, as companies attributed 23% of their total sales to this channel. This is despite the fact they only spent 16% of their marketing budget on email.

And there are still significant areas for improvement in this mature channel. Such areas are campaign performance and automation, with over half of email marketers rating their own performance as average or poor. Implementing marketing automation is also considered a struggle as half deemed it unsuccessful.

Achieving results with automation

Companies understand the opportunities of automation, with 83% of companies declaring ‘more relevant communication’ as one of its main benefits. More than 70% of organisations are also aware that it can help ‘increase customer engagement’ and facilitate ‘more timely communication’ with customers. Nearly all companies have access to marketing automation capabilities provided by their email providers. So what’s the problem?

Despite the widespread availability of automation technology, most companies appear to be taking a timid approach towards it. Around half use ‘subscription or sign-up to website’ and ‘automated response to website visit/sign-up’ triggers, yet no more than 27% of companies report using other triggers or behaviours. This may well be affecting the success of automation programmes, as only 4% of companies have described their automated campaigns as very successful.

Finding the time to make it happen

Companies must make sure they are resourcing themselves effectively for email marketing. Planning, optimisation and reporting are all critical to ensure marketers understand buyer behaviour and improve response. Yet it appears marketers are spending too much time on the creative elements of their campaigns. Nearly two-thirds of companies are spending 2-8+ hours on design and content for a typical campaign. In comparison, around half as many are spending at least two hours on strategy and planning, and data quality. Worryingly, nearly one third admit to spending no time at all on optimisation.

Email’s role in the future

Marketers appear optimistic that email marketing will survive the supposed threats to its existence. Not only that, but they believe it will thrive in a fully integrated, personalised, yet not completely automated ecosystem. What’s more, two-thirds believe email will continue to be one of the highest channels for delivering ROI.

The vast majority of companies agree that email will be fully integrated with other marketing channels, and that all email communication will be completely personalised by 2019. However, marketers appear undecided as to what this integration will look like.

In summary

Accepting that we are entering the ‘age of the customer’, email marketing can point the way. Yet there is still a long road to travel to optimise its efficiency, interpret and use all the valuable data available. Equally, the ‘age of the customer’ is difficult to define. Which means companies must do a lot of work to implement strategies for exploiting their new customer obsession.

Steve Denner is a director at Adestra. Read the full results by downloading the census here.