Category: Uncategorised

Tom Sather (pictured) reports on the effects on commercial email after the introduction of Promotions Tabs.

Gmail’s 2013 rollout of Tabs, which organises inbound messages by category, was closely watched by marketers who worried that commercial email delivered to subscribers’ Promotions tab would be out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Some pundits predicted a sharp fall-off in email marketing performance to Gmail users as offers disappeared from the inbox.

Shortly after the big switchover, the opposite happened, at least for Gmail users who routinely engaged with marketing email before the introduction of Tabs: they’re reading a slightly higher percentage of their marketing email now, roughly 60%.

Among moderately engaged email marketing recipients, the bulk of the Gmail audience, read rates dipped slightly to around 10%. But this decline was partially offset by a reduction in email delivered directly to their spam folders; these users received slightly more of the marketing messages sent to them.

Gmail users who didn’t routinely engage with marketing email also saw less delivered to spam, but these consumers’ behaviour fulfilled pundits’ predictions: They read far fewer commercial messages.

Why?

For users with histories of high engagement with email marketing, Gmail’s Tabs feature made it easier to do something they like doing: shop. In this new environment they can review offers and marketing messages without sorting through and deciding whether to read, ignore, or delete other types of email, like social media notifications. These active consumers were never likely to see the Promotions tab as a barrier anyway, because marketing email is important to them.

While those with medium levels of engagement with marketing email read a bit less of what they received – and they received slightly more because less of their mail was routed to spam – their behaviour didn’t change significantly. They went into their Promotions tabs and read marketing messages at nearly the same rate they did before the rollout. Just as they made time to review offers that arrived in their inboxes mixed with everything else, they now make time to seek them out in the Promotions tab.

The good news for marketers trying to reach users with historically low engagement is that there aren’t many of them and they never read much of their commercial email before. These appear to be the users that only tolerated marketing messages scattered in with the rest of their inboxes. Now that those messages are shunted off into another Tab, these users ignore them.

The bottom line for marketers is that the Gmail users who matter most to them appear likely to continue reading their email at the same rates they always did, and the most engaged may actually read more. The impact of Tabs and similar inbox organisers may vary widely among brands, though. Those with higher concentrations of less engaged subscribers may indeed see sharp drops in email marketing response, while the ones who succeed at engaging their audiences actually enjoy a lift thanks to Tabs.

Who’s Benefitting?

By industry, most saw little change or even slightly better read rates with Tabs was first introduced, but airlines took off, doubling their read rates to 34%. Credit card marketers, too, saw their highest engagement in four months. Daily deal messages, while up only slightly, also posted their highest read rates in four months. In an environment where this email was segregated from other types of messages, Gmail users read more it.

Although weekly read rates for social networking and dating senders dipped slightly, both types of messages had been trending slightly upward in the latter part of last year. Coincidentally both categories’ read rates climbed suddenly in the first full week after Gmail’s announcement that Tabs were available to all users. Again, users that value these messages may read them more readily when they’re separate from other types of email.

Since the rollout of Tabs as a default for the entire Gmail user population, no group of commercial mailers appears to be particularly disadvantaged. Given the freedom to ignore classes of email, most Gmail users are choosing to seek out and read the marketing messages that interest them. This is promising for marketers who should expect consumers to increasingly customise their email experiences as features like these become widely available.

The Human Factor

Most marketers can stop worrying about Gmail crippling their email response rates, there are two opposing forces that may decide how subscribers ultimately react to these changes: novelty and habit. For many users this was the first time Tabs were part of the Gmail experience, and some may have searched through their messages to see which brands were rerouted. They may not be as curious a week or a month later.

On the other hand, users that want to see at least some of their commercial email on a regular basis must now take an additional step to find it. That’s an habitual activity that develops over time and, as these users start to check the Promotions Tab as part of their regular email review, read rates may climb.

Tom Sather is senior director, Email Research, Return Path. View the Promotions Tabs analysis here.

Hisham El-Marazki (pictured) says smarter strategies can help take some of the stress out of your job.

What would you do with a free half-day every week? Visit the galleries and museums you fly past on your daily commute? Drive to the coast and take a clifftop walk? Or just go to the playground with your children?

Let’s face it, none of us would be stuck for fun things to do with an extra half-day. And yet, for most of us, the idea is little more than an idle fantasy. One day we will have time for culture, exercise, family and so on. Until then, the PR and marketing professionals are stuck on an endless treadmill of client meetings, press release writing, media sell-ins and AVE calculations.

Here are five things every PR and marketing professional can do today to save time. Some involve a new (but free or inexpensive) technology or service; others simply require a shift in mindset. Pick one and start doing it today.

1) Get someone else to do your AVE calculations (cheaply and accurately)

A simple, straightforward online system, like ours at PR Gym is one where users input their coverage, detailing publication, page position, sentiment, use of key messages and so on. The system then calculates AVE and PR Value and compiles it all into a professional-looking report which the user can generate as and when they need it.

The most obvious benefit of using our service is the time saving. You no longer need to spend days collecting all this information on AVEs, circulation numbers, CPMs and so on. With PR Gym you can do it in a matter of minutes. It is also more accurate. Although technology may be able to gather explicit terms, implicit coverage may be missed as automated machines cannot understand a writer’s wit, style, or a double entendre.

2) Liberate yourself from the inbox

Studies have proven just how addictive e-mail can be. Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after an email interruption. So if you check your email every five minutes that is 8.5 hours a week you spend trying to remember what you were just doing.

It is time to take action. Turn off notifications so email no longer invades your space. You go to look for it. Resolve to only look at your email twice a day, and let people know that is what you are doing – set up an auto-respond message if necessary. And surprise people by responding to their email with a phone call. It cuts down the number of back-and-forth email exchanges, and will encourage some people to call you next time they need to make contact.

3) Work out what steals your time

For anyone who has worked in an agency, to hear timesheets mentioned in the same breath as time saving might seem odd. For agency staff they are the irritation at the end of the week that stops them completing client work or going home.

Yet, www.toggl.com is a tool that allows you to quickly track what you are spending time on and essentially to produce your own timesheet. Try doing it. You may be surprised at what actually takes up your time. Once armed with this information it should be easy to trim an hour off one of the many time-stealing unimportant activities.

4) Accept that not everything needs to be perfect

Everybody wants to do their best at work. No one likes producing work which is just good enough. Yet, this constant striving for perfection can be highly damaging, not only to our work-life balance, but also to our performance.

If we aim for 100% on everything we do there is no scope to prioritise the most important work or the most urgent tasks. We would be far better off refocusing on what truly matters at work.

So, resolve to assign a priority to each task that lands on your desk. Consider whether it is important or urgent. If both then put it near the top of your to-do list. If neither put it towards the bottom. If one but not the other think about when you need to do it.

5) Put the Internet to work for you using

Very few of us use the Internet as time-effectively as we could. We spend hours scanning shopping sites, opening and reopening banking apps, refining our Google search terms and flicking through irrelevant social media updates from people we barely know.

If This Then That – http://ifttt.com – is an ingenious platform that allows you to set up a series of rules so that what is interesting to you on the Internet comes to you rather than you having to go out and find it. For example, you can set a rule so if a photo of you is posted to Instagram you receive a text message. It sounds simple but it can literally save days of online searches.

Which one of those five ideas will you take away and start doing? Each one on their own will save you at least an hour a week. Do all five and you should easily find yourself with an afternoon a week to spare. Then comes the really difficult part of working out how you will spend that afternoon. About PR Gym

Founded in 2012 by the team behind Phoenixpb, PR Gym aims to bring fun into the world of media evaluation. Its system uses one of the most comprehensive media databases in the UK to provide accurate, real-time reports on media coverage that are quick and easy to generate.

It costs £1200 per year for brands with more than 30 articles to upload each month, or £600 per year for those with fewer than 30 per month. For more information please visit

Hisham El-Marazki is CEO, PR Gym.

Katharine Hulls (pictured) urges marketers not to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the personalisation challenge, but instead to jump in and begin to make a real difference to the quality of each customer’s personal experience.

Marketers have unprecedented access to customer information and data. Yet many remain, understandably, frozen, unsure as to how to turn the data deluge into the required one to one customer experience.

Constrained by a lack of skills, the company’s digital marketing maturity, or just budget, for many the route from big data to data-driven personalisation simply appears too complex and too unobtainable. The reality is very different – there is no single, set route to improving the customer digital experience. Companies can opt for traditional data-warehousing and database marketing, or they can jump straight into data discovery and advanced customer analytics or aim straight for real-time personalisation via decisioning engines. The choice is yours – there is no ‘you must do it this way’ dictate, and trying one approach does not preclude embarking upon another. Either way, the brand will gain fabulous customer insight, improve personalisation and transform the digital customer experience – and fast.

Customer engagement

There is a perception that it is becoming ever harder to get real engagement with the consumer due to the noise in the market and the increasing amount of ways consumers choose to interact with brands. But is it really that hard to reach the customer and build meaningful connections? Is that one-to-one marketing nirvana still so far away?

With the wealth of customer data now available, marketing teams have never had it so good – in theory. The reality is that marketing is struggling just as much as the rest of the business to know just how to proceed in the face of this customer data deluge: according to Gartner, through 2015 85% of Fortune 500 organisations will be unable to exploit big data for competitive advantage. One of the problems is that there has, traditionally, been a very clear path to follow to exploit customer insight to drive personalisation: build a data-warehouse and exploit analytics tools to improve segmentation and evolve, slowly, towards a one-to-one model. Yet many companies, especially retailers and mid-sized organisations, lack either the technical or database marketing skills to make this strategy viable.

This ‘one route to personalisation’ rule no longer applies. With the rapid evolution of Big Data enabling technologies, marketers now have a number of ways to exploit this data – from real-time decisioning engines to data discovery.

Database marketing

The creation of a data-warehouse is a tried, tested and proven approach to exploiting in depth customer data to improve understanding before applying excellent database marketing principles such as segmentation and profiling to deliver relevant, targeted customer offers. Organisations that have done this well, most notably those from a catalogue background, have effectively combined in depth on and offline data sources to build a complete customer view, using micro-segmentation to increase the quality of the offer.

The key to success with this approach is a robust data-warehouse model to create a depth of customer information and expertise in database marketing to exploit segmentation and personalisation – such as the use of one-to-one, dynamically populated emails based on individual customers’ browsing and basket behaviours.

Data discovery

However, for those organisations without a heavyweight data-warehouse in place today, there is no need to wait – web-based customer data can be exploited now using data discovery and big data analytics to reveal extraordinary insight into customer behaviour.

From uncovering the golden path to purchase, to identifying previously unconsidered product affinities, data discovery tools are transforming organisations’ understanding of customer behaviour and attitudes.

For one media company, for example, using data discovery to improve customer insight and boost the value of its mailing list uncovered not only the potentially predictable – people with cats like knitting, but also that dog owners enjoy swimming. While this might seem insignificant, that type of uncovered insight can have a big impact on cross- and up-selling results.

These tools require a degree of data confidence as well as data analytic skills. Indeed, even if such skills are not available within marketing they may be available elsewhere in the business. Telcos, for example, are already confident in analysing vast quantities of operational data, while retailers have data scientists operating within inventory control and merchandising. So look to reassign these skills to customer data. Real-time personalisation

Of course, many organisations simply do not have the skills in house to embark upon effective data-warehouse development, database marketing or complex data discovery exercises. So what are the options? Spend years building up the skills and making the investment in order to finally derive some benefit from the fast expanding customer data deluge? Maybe not. There is a real opportunity now to short-cut the route to real-time personalisation by exploiting real-time decisioning engines to present online content and offers based on an individual customer’s current and previous activity on the website.

This approach is gaining strong traction within the Financial Services market, as companies leverage a very strong background of CRM and sophisticated technology experience to present the most appropriate offer to each individual customer on the website in real-time. This is particularly valuable in Financial Services due to the highly regulated nature of the sector.

Strategic v tactical

Is there a downside to taking a fast track route to real-time personalisation and side-stepping the more traditional, more time consuming aspects of improving customer insight? To be frank, not really. Yes, the quality of the personal experience and relevance of the offer might be perhaps just 80% as good as that achieved in tandem with deeper customer understanding. But, on the plus side, the business has not had to wait for many months, if not years, for the data warehouse to be built and analytics teams developed.

However, looking ahead, relying solely on automated decisioning engines is not going to drive absolutely optimal results. In the short term, these solutions deliver effective real-time personalisation that drives up conversion and improves the customer experience. But this is a somewhat tactical solution. In the longer term, organisations that want to be at the top of their customer experience game will most likely also be centralising and operationalising all of their customer data in a warehouse, and undertaking deep customer analytics in a data discovery tool, in harmony with driving real-time one-to-one personalisation with a decisioning engine. This combination of a complete, multi-channel single customer view with deep customer insight will not only improve the quality and sophistication of personalisation but also drive strategic direction.

Conclusion

So, while marketers may feel somewhat overwhelmed by the volume of customer data and the many, many ways now available to engage and interact with these customers, they should not let this freeze them in fear. The reality is that there is no longer one fixed way to approach the customer experience. Every organisation now has the chance to build a strategy that reflects existing skill sets, data history, market sector and available budget.

Don’t wait: don’t get overwhelmed by the enormity of the personalisation challenge. There is no single path to customer enlightenment, but any number of routes – just jump in and get started.

Katharine Hulls is VP Marketing, Celebrus Technologies.

As Mark Zuckerberg’s creation celebrates its ten-year anniversary this month, Carol Dray (pictured) has advice for retailers on making the most of the social network, now and into the future of e-commerce.

In the last ten years, Facebook has turned from a university social network to a powerful platform for commerce. Now, it is truly driving sales: Rakuten’s Play.com has found that customer visits from Facebook are worth 40 per cent more than an average site visit.

With more than 1.2 billion monthly users, Facebook has shown that it has the potential to connect retailers large and small with customers around the world and to build loyal customer communities.

Looking to the future of Facebook, here are some top tips for retailers on using the social network.

1. Show the value of engagement

Once you’ve got a ‘like’ from a consumer, the next step is to get them engaging with your content and to show them the value of being in your ‘club’. If they engage with you regularly, this keeps your brand prominent in their news feed and extends your reach to friends within their network, too. Use incentives such as competitions, an offer of free delivery or a discount in return for being in your community and interacting with your brand. Incentives also provide a clear call to action so that members of your social community are more likely to go on to make a purchase.

2. Treat your community like your friends

Don’t oversell – treat your community as you would your friends. Rather than making it a sales channel, think of Facebook as a place to showcase your brand’s personality. Share relevant posts and entertaining content to retain fans and foster their loyalty. Make posts visual and exciting; funny photos or videos are much more likely to be shared among their wider network than content which is just a sales plug. Ensure that all your content is worthy of sharing and don’t post it if it’s not.

3. Extend great customer service beyond your store

The power and reach of the Facebook community means that your customer service offering must be watertight. Monitor complaints from your community at all times and handle any unhappy customers with care quickly and effectively. Reply in a timely manner to posts asking whether you can message the customer privately and work to take discussions out of the public eye as soon as possible.

So what do the next ten years look like?

Brands that will benefit from Facebook the most over the next ten years will have more detailed insight about their community. For Rakuten’s Play.com, shoppers are 40 per cent more valuable to us once they hit the ‘like’ button, but with access to even more information retailers will be able to understand how and why a consumer began interacting with them on Facebook – and therefore what will keep them engaged. Whether they made a purchase, read about your brand online or are just a fan of the products, knowledge of what attracted them to your community will give the retailer power to offer them the correct goods in the correct way every time.

It’s not a numbers game, it’s all about engagement. Imagine being able to engage your Facebook community through specific ‘Facebook rewards’ gained by the interactions they make with your brand. By offering discounts and exclusive deals in return for engagement, Facebook could develop lucrative loyalty schemes for retailers. Not only does it become an incredibly powerful marketing tool but it incentivises brand engagement massively.

Carol Dray is marketing director at Rakuten’s Play.com 

Customer retention is incredibly important for growing a sustainable business, says Daniel Nugent (pictured). But, as consumers, we can often feel that the best deals and incentives are reserved for new customers – and efforts to secure our loyalty and repeat business are secondary.

Things are changing though, in no part due to the high cost of bringing in new customers with studies, such as that by Lee Resources Inc, showing repeatedly that it costs businesses five times as much to acquire new customers as it does to keep those they already have. Today, many more businesses are looking specifically to introduce programmes that focus on engaging with their current customers in order to develop strength in the relationship and ultimately retain them. Get it right and these customers can become key brand ambassadors, helping to bring in new customers from among their friends, family and acquaintances.

Using loyalty or reward schemes is one way to retain customers. Here are some top tips on how to make the most of them in order to establish a long-term relationship.

1. Consistent communication is key

If your customers are entitled to be part of your reward scheme, then work hard to achieve understanding from them so they are clear why they are being given the reward and what value it holds for them. Relate it to their current requirements and remind them frequently that they have the benefit.

2. Relevance is king

The reward on offer must be relevant to your consumers’ requirements, interests and aspirations and it must compliment your brand. Over recent years, given that many consumers have had to tighten their purse strings, those brands that have been successful in engendering loyalty are those offering rewards and discounts that are relevant in terms of product, brand and timing. For example, those that repay consumers for the shopping they would already be doing, such as the weekly supermarket shop, as well as the bigger ticket and perhaps more luxurious expenditures such as the annual holiday. We see engagement levels more than three times higher in reward programmes where the rewards, offers and associated messages and information are fully aligned with the interests and needs of their audience, than in similar programmes that lack this relevance.

3. Keep it simple

Don’t overcomplicate the rewards programme as your customers may not understand it and will not engage with it. We have all been confused and frustrated when we are unable to take up a seemingly good deal because of the restrictive terms and conditions. Presenting consistent offers which offer the greatest level of flexibility and are not limited in number or by when an individual can use them, rather than one-off deals that are available for a fixed period of time, helps to engage customers with the brand and establish a long-term relationship.

4. Stay fresh

Keep the reward programme evolving and interesting by offering new rewards and opportunities to ensure customers don’t become tired of it and to show you have an ongoing interest in their lives. This can increase repeat purchase and build loyalty, as well as giving you a reason to communicate more and therefore collect valuable data. However, customers won’t be happy if a popular offer is suddenly removed and so refreshing a scheme needs to be done gradually to ensure the audience is not alienated by an abrupt change and loss of familiarity. As a general rule, around 10-20 per cent should be changed per month.

5. Stand out from the crowd

To achieve stand out from other reward or loyalty schemes, it is important to reward your customers with something that is not readily available elsewhere. If you can deliver better value than those offers and discounts that are freely available on group discount and other general public websites, then your consumers will take notice.

6. Make sure you listen

Remaining in constant two way communication with your consumers is key. If they feel they have a voice they will be far more engaged. The programmes we operate that have the highest levels of customer engagement are those that proactively seek feedback and input from their customers. Allowing them to feel they are shaping their reward package through feedback and suggestions will tell you exactly what they like and don’t like about the current offering. Even if a scheme cannot offer everything the customer says they want, if they see it evolving based on their comments they are far more likely to feel valued.

Consumers will engage with your loyalty or reward scheme if it is presented in a way that is relevant and offers real value to them, and the right scheme can be instrumental in turning a customer’s first purchase into a long-term relationship.

Daniel Nugent is head of Entice loyalty at Entice. 

Russell Loarridge (pictured) discusses consumer identity and the increasing need for personalisation through the use of social data.  
Social media has been great for brands. The delivery of many-to-many messaging, using the power of crowd to share and achieve some degree of cohort-based segmentation, has changed brand engagement.

But is it also good for the consumer?

Consumers are increasingly willing to share personal information in order to receive a better, more relevant experience. But where is that experience? Having Twitter followers and Facebook pages is great – but how many brands are linking Twitter/Facebook shared information to existing customer records or creating a single cross-media profile for their customer to approve and manage?

Customers want a personalised experience and are providing brands with the information required to achieve true one to one marketing on a massive scale. Social is no longer just about the media; it is about the data. The winners in the next generation of social strategy are already proving that using freely available customer data to achieve true personalisation completely transforms customer engagement.

Customer expectation

Organisations need to evolve social media strategies – and fast. What is the objective of your strategy? To be seen? To reinforce a brand? Or to exploit the extraordinary depth and breadth of consumer data now freely available to transform customer understanding and achieve true one-to-one personalisation?

If the latter, then it is time to shape up. Today, there is a growing disconnect between a customer’s expectation of how a brand will use the information provided and the reality. According to the UK Direct Marketing Association, 76% of consumers will share their personal information with a brand they have a relationship with on the basis that the on-going experience and interaction will improve. They understand the value of a tailored experience that reflects likes & dislikes and builds on previous behaviour and social activity to reinforce the quality of brand interaction.

Now it is the brands turn to deliver on their side of the bargain.

Today, far too many online experiences are not just impersonal – they are badly personalised.

At best, brands get the gender correct. Offers rarely reflect previous online activity, the content read or goods browsed; nor are brands geared up to respond in real time to a consumer’s actual behaviour. A complaint via Twitter might generate a response – but will it reflect the fact that the complainant is actually a long term loyal customer? Unlikely.

Single identity

Organisations may have, just, got a handle on delivering some degree of personalisation via traditional desktop web interactions. But they are sadly failing to join up the multiple instances of customer interaction that now prevail, from devices such as PC, tablet, mobile and games machine, to social such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Yet in a world dominated by social media, the opportunities for knitting together these interactions and gaining an unprecedented depth of customer information are significant – especially given the fact that consumers are also committed to improving their online experiences.

Research reveals that consumers are willing to share personal data – but only if they see some tangible value. For example, the UK’s Channel 4 asks customers to share personal data not in order to transform the online experience but to enable the creation of better programming. The public service broadcaster openly says to customers: better audience understanding drives more effective advertising sales, generating more money for programming.

And that works. Consumers buy into that message – they understand the long term value to their own experiences. They also respond very positively when the experience becomes relevant.

For example, recent Monetate research highlighted that 75% of consumers would be happy for retailers to use their personal information to improve the online shopping experience while Pardot Businesses found that organisations who personalise online services see a 19% increase in sales. And, with a consumer base increasingly disenfranchised by poor, impersonal, indeed irrelevant online offers and information, getting it right drives both loyalty and advocacy.

Building identity

This is really just the start. Consumers want more. They want the brand to recognise them as a top customer when they complain via Twitter, even if the Twitter handle bears no resemblance to the name used to place orders; they want a brand to reflect all interactions from mobile to Facebook in any offers; they want true real time personalisation.

To create a personal experience a brand has to be able to stitch these multiple identities together: it is identity that drives engagement. The ability to create a single view of each customer – a true customer profile – transforms a brand’s ability to leverage the technology available to drive personalisation on a mass scale.

The steps are simple: acquire customer information, leverage technology to create the relevant, personal offers and do this in real time via a content management system to present offers and content that are not just personal but time sensitive. Taking this approach radically changes the consumer experience and quality of brand engagement.

For example, many retailers feel threatened by showrooming, with customers increasingly coming in store to view goods and then searching online – while in store – to check out different pricing options. Yet research from New York University reveals customers are as likely to check out that retailer’s website as any other. By recognising this consumer as she browses their .com site, the brand can capture that behaviour and use that information to deliver an offer or voucher that directly reflects the product being researched as well as the customer’s previous behaviour, activity and social profile. The customer is in the store now: make the most of the opportunity.

Conclusion

As more and more brands begin to get this right, consumer expectations continue to rise. And, in a world driven by social media, the speed with which user behaviour changes is phenomenal. A good, personalised experience will not only be valued by one consumer but shared with a broad social sphere.

Get it right, and the response from consumers will be dramatic.

Get it wrong, and brands will fast discover that many consumers have jumped ship to enjoy the experience offered by the competition. And just how will you win them back?

The fact is that any organisation not actively considering how to exploit freely shared customer information to transform the way it engages with customers in store, online and via mobile is at risk of falling behind the competition. Consumers crave personalisation. They are prepared to share data to enable that personalisation. The technology is in place to deliver the mass one to one personal experience. So what’s stopping you?

It is time to get off the fence and deliver the quality of experience customers are being led to expect.

Russell Loarridge is managing director Europe, Janrain.

Gavin Finn (pictured) details three questions to ask when delivering sales materials.

When was the last time your sales team applauded when your marketing team delivered materials or content for them to use?

If this is not happening frequently enough (or at all) then perhaps we should consider the reasons.

I recently asked a senior director of marketing at a very successful high-tech company how he spends his time and, after a long pause, he told me he spends the majority of his time managing the process of putting materials together for the sales team. Brochures, specifications/data sheets, white papers, presentations, etc. I then asked him what, out of all of his deliverables, was the most effective and the most valued by his marketing and sales teams? His answer was simple: Anything interactive – online AND offline. We both sat in silence pondering the ramifications of these last two (perhaps incongruent) points. A visionary global vice-president of marketing for a leading telecom equipment provider said recently: “None of my sales guys ever thank me for making brochures.”

It is axiomatic that useful and effective sales enablement solutions will be used by sales teams and ineffective tools will sit on the shelf (or in the file folder on their laptops.) Where are you spending the majority of your time? What kinds of content/tools would your sales teams really use?

Here are a few things to consider when creating sales tools:

WHERE IS YOUR CUSTOMER? Your customers participate in the buying cycle in a wide variety of venues, and your tool must function well in any situation to be truly effective. Sales enablement tools need to be able to reach prospects anywhere they seek information, from individual discovery on websites and mobile devices, to face-to-face events, to intimate sales meetings, or briefing centres.

The end goal is to provide engaging informational knowledge exchanges that enhance the sales experience regardless of whether or not a representative is present.

Geographical location and local languages are also important factors to consider when developing sales enablement content. If you have globally dispersed representatives, customers and channel partners, you will want marketing content that is easy to translate. Look for marketing platforms that have modifiable text and don’t require content to be re-created for each revision or translation. This will significantly expand the reach of your investment while keeping content relevant for even the most remote sales representatives.

HOW COMPLEX IS YOUR SOLUTION? Marketers are often challenged to educate sales teams and channel partners on the value, differentiation and positioning of their offerings. When complex physical products are being sold, this task is not trivial. Many companies are turning to virtual representations of products to improve the expertise of their sales, marketing and technical teams. The ability to quickly train internationally dispersed people gives organisations a huge advantage.

For many companies, physical products (especially ones that are newly manufactured) aren’t always readily available for training and demonstrations, due to their size, cost, and limited supply. This results in many employees not being well-versed in the features, benefits and specifications of the company’s latest innovations, which is obviously detrimental in many ways. When virtual 3D products are available, users can access these products in useful and meaningful ways. Sales personnel and customers can view your products from every angle, explore options and features (open drawers, change batteries, add components, etc.), investigate internal workings and even run animations showing processes.

Now, sales will ALWAYS have access to even the most difficult to obtain products (size, fragility, limited supply) and can use these tools during meetings to succinctly deliver the information each customer needs. This allows employees in any corner of the globe to learn about and interact with any product as if it were physically in front of them – on a variety of convenient platforms, including websites, tablets, smartphones, laptops or touch screen appliances.

HOW PERSONAL ARE YOUR SALES EXPERIENCES? Because no two prospects are exactly the same, personalisation of content is what makes sales and marketing messages fully resonate. Therefore, the goal when creating sales enablement tools is to provide all prospects with the ability to view and experience content that is targeted and relevant to them, and accessible at their own pace. By creating non-linear, user-driven content, the prospect can control their own experience, exploring the content and messages in a sequence and level of detail that they feel are most appropriate to their needs.

Cognitive research has shown that when users drive their own experience they retain significantly more information than when they are watching a presentation. Tools such as videos do the talking for you and put the sales encounter on autopilot, creating a forgettable experience and inhibiting a true conversation with your customer. Putting your customer in the driver’s seat better highlights their interests for your sales representative, enabling them to tailor the discussion to best solve the customer’s business challenges. With interactivity proven to increase product knowledge retention by 78%, it’s no wonder that companies are turning to digital engagement marketing strategies that put the customer in control.

Gavin Finn is president and CEO of Kaon Interactive. 

Klaas van der Leest (pictured) dispels some myths about contact centres in the cloud.

Cloud computing is here to stay and cloud providers are quick to quote the benefits of this new phenomenon including minimal upfront expenditure, payment per month, scalability plus application management including software and platform upgrades dealt with remotely. However, many in the contact centre world see mainly the negatives and cite seven common myths as reasons not to migrate to Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) with a cloud-based contact centre solution. So let’s take a look at those myths so you can make a more informed decision about the benefits of CCaaS.

Myth One: Expensive legacy telephony kit has to be thrown away

The most common misconception when it comes to CCaaS is that organisations have to rip out existing telephony kit. This is not the case and modern cloud-based contact centre services simply sit on top of existing infrastructure therefore retaining any original investment in equipment. For those without legacy switches and handsets there is a complete cloud option but the majority of Intelecom customers choose to retain their original handsets and equipment making the change to a CCaaS model as simple as turning the old system off one day and commencing with the new service on the same day using the same legacy hardware.

Myth Two: What about resilience, service levels and call quality?

The CCaaS model is independent of hardware, software and agent location. Callers never receive an engaged tone because of the huge capacity of the cloud and rogue builders cannot cut through telephone lines. Agents and administrators have the freedom to log-on from any location. All that is required is a phone line (PSTN, SIP or mobile) and an Internet connection. This is great in bad weather or a break in business continuity for any reason and in fact improves resilience and service levels.
Add to that the reality that cloud providers test again and again – in fact Gartner says: “The design and construction of a CCaaS solution is inherently more resilient than most organisations can afford in their own infrastructures.” As for call quality working with an established provider, such as Intelecom, with over 15 years experience guarantees carrier grade telephony for every call as it is not dependent on VoIP.

Myth Three: How about functionality – can flexibility be guaranteed?

One of the major advantages of CCaaS is the ability for contact centres to seamlessly grow, or contract, which means capacity to cost effectively react to demand. Because of the building block approach which means that additional functionality and agents can be added or subtracted as required, cloud-based contact centres make perfect sense for seasonal businesses. Payment per month, only for what is used, can save significant amounts in terms of operational and capital expenditure on hardware and licenses which are not fully utilised all year round. We call it: Business on your terms.

Myth Four: Loss of control and the ability to customise

The inherent flexibility of the cloud means that organisations can have increased control and customisation of their contact centre solutions. Satellite offices can manage and control their own locations, while sharing the same technology platform across the whole organisation and still benefit from centralised management. Pre-defined access rights mean that people see what they need to see while management remains in control. With one time integration in the cloud with other applications, via web services, is easy and secure, making for improved integration and business processes.

Myth Five: Costs can get out of control

The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) argument is an easy one to dispel because customers are only charged for the resources used. There is no up-front capital expenditure or annual maintenance payments associated with on-premise equipment regardless of usage. Remember that in traditional on premise scenarios the user has to license for maximum capacity which therefore attracts higher support and maintenance fees. Under the SaaS (Software as a Service) model actual agent usage can scale up and down with business demands and the monthly costs reflect this. The CCaaS pricing model has further attractions in terms of multi-channel operations as an agent is an agent regardless of channel making it easy and cost efficient to add new channels as they emerge. It has to be worth doing a comparison year-on-year in terms of CCaaS and traditional on-premise solutions.

Myth Six: What about security?

With centralised data storage security is enhanced with CCaaS. For regulated industries such as finance payment and card details can be secured by working with a Level 1 PCI-DSS compliant cloud application specialist provider. Referring back to Gartner’s comment, cloud providers are better placed when it comes to security than many organisations themselves – outsourcing security makes sense.

Myth Seven: Social media is always an add-on

Taking advantage of CCaaS allows organisations to utilise skill-based routing in queues regardless of which channel is used. To the cloud the channel is irrelevant, with queries coming into the same place. Social media capability is not an add-on when working with a CCaaS application specialist, it only becomes an extra if the supplier is not the solution developer. Connect from Intelecom, for example, integrates to many social media channels and has a specially designed interface advising the agent of the source of the enquiry. Social media is built in, rather than bolted on.

Think again when it comes to those seven most popular myths about cloud contact centres, as the benefits far outweigh any perceived negatives.

Klaas van der Leest is UK managing director, Intelecom.

For a CRM system to deliver on its many promises – says Mike Richardson (pictured) – it has to closely reflect the shape and needs of a particular business. This means that, among the myriad options provided by a wealth of independent vendors, it is increasingly difficult to choose the right one.

Mobile technology is the enabler that allows organisations to meet the expectations of their customers and generate new business.

At the same time, it has raised customers’ expectations of how companies should communicate with them, making it essential for businesses to harness online data effectively.

The importance of CRM platforms in this process continues to grow, giving organisations an unheard of power by making it possible to connect marketing and sales endeavours in a closed loop of information, making one indispensable to the other and both more effective than ever before.

The sales team receives an overview of the level of qualification reached before they contact a lead, automatically assigning prospects to the right salesperson while the entire sales cycle can be tracked through the CRM system, enabling marketers – and management – to measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of campaigns in real time.

Compiling reports can also be highly automated, enabling sales, marketing and customer service personnel to devote more time to building relationships with customers.

The functionalities and options when it comes to CRM are plentiful. Follow the tips below before plumping for a platform and be well placed to make an informed decision.

First things first

Cliché it may be, but your priority should be to determine your company’s requirements. Which departments need to use a CRM and how many users are there likely to be? For companies intending to use their CRM primarily as a sales tool, a simple out-of-the-box deployment only accessible by sales, marketing and customer service is likely to be more than adequate. However, if it is probable that you will require extensibility to other business departments, check with potential vendors whether such options are available.

Another area to investigate is the possibility of integration with software already in place. An investment bank is likely to need a complex, tailor-made solution with customised forms and connectivity with various external systems, while a small family-run business can make do without such complexity and the associated costs.

A consideration of how the system will be deployed and used will have a direct impact on the next question: whether to plump for a cloud or an on-premise solution. The latter might be a good option for companies concerned with data security or willing to pay more up front to avoid greater total cost of ownership later. However, a start-up without a big budget might opt for a cloud-based solution, as the initial cost is much lower. On the flip-side, the cloud allows for greater flexibility relating to the number of users. Therefore, if you have a seasonal or wavering number of employees, a cloud solution may be preferable.

Make it mobile

In the times of 24/7 mobile accessibility, the effectiveness of a CRM system is significantly diminished if the data it holds is accessible only from one location.

Mobility is the buzzword of today, but not every business requires the same level of mobile access. A certain degree of mobile accessibility usually has a positive impact on sales, customer service and productivity, as effectively released from their desks, employees can make the most of their time. With so many professionals working on the move, businesses need to ensure staff have all the necessary information to hand wherever they are, particularly if meeting with a client or a prospective customer, where the ability to view all correspondence will help identify sales opportunities.

Assess the level of required mobility further with the following questions: do you encourage home-working? Does the system need to be updated in real-time and would the company benefit if managers could control it anytime, anywhere?

Make it social

If tools such as LinkedIn figure high in your businesses’ operations, integrating them with your CRM will gain you a competitive edge. With more customers staying connected at all times via social media, great volumes of data are being generated at high speed. This data has to be constantly aggregated from various outputs and fed into a system to inform your direct marketing. Additional fields and connectivity through links are a must to make your CRM truly social.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer as to what type of a solution will be best for any given organisation and, even if a company follows these guidelines for a contextualised analysis of its CRM requirements, the work is not yet over.

As your business grows and matures, its CRM system must follow suit and this means constant performance assessments, ongoing adjustments and staff training. Looking for new areas in which the platform can be used is ever important.

Mike Richardson is managing director – EMEA, Maximizer Software.

Daniel Nugent (pictured) offers top tips on customer retention.

Customer retention is incredibly important for growing a sustainable business but as consumers we can often feel that the best deals and incentives are reserved for new customers, and efforts to secure our loyalty and repeat business are secondary.

Things are changing though, due to the high cost of bringing in new customers. Studies, such as that by Lee Resources Inc, show repeatedly that it costs businesses five times as much to acquire new customers as it does to keep those they already have. Today, many more businesses are looking specifically to introduce programmes that focus on engaging with their current customers in order to develop strength in the relationship and ultimately retain them. Get it right, and these customers can become key brand ambassadors, helping to bring in new customers from among their friends, family and acquaintances.

Using loyalty or reward schemes is one way to retain customers. Here are some top tips on how to make the most of them in order to establish a long-term relationship.

1. Consistent communication is key

If your customers are entitled to be part of your reward scheme, work hard to achieve understanding from them so they are clear why they are being given the reward and what value it holds for them. Relate it to their current requirements and remind them frequently that they have the benefit.

2. Relevance is king

The reward on offer must be relevant to your consumers’ requirements, interests and aspirations and it must compliment your brand. Over recent years, given that many consumers have had to tighten their purse strings, those brands that have been successful in engendering loyalty are those offering rewards and discounts that are relevant in terms of product, brand and timing. For example, those that repay consumers for the shopping they would already be doing, such as the weekly supermarket shop, as well as the bigger ticket and perhaps more luxurious expenditures such as the annual holiday. We see engagement levels more than three times higher in reward programmes where the rewards, offers and associated messages and information are fully aligned with the interests and needs of their audience, than in similar programmes that lack this relevance.

3. Keep it simple

Don’t overcomplicate the rewards programme as your customers may not understand it and will not engage with it. We have all been confused and frustrated when we are unable to take up a seemingly good deal because of the restrictive terms and conditions. Presenting consistent offers which offer the greatest level of flexibility and are not limited in number or by when an individual can use them, rather than one-off deals that are available for a fixed period of time, helps to engage customers with the brand and establish a long-term relationship.

4. Stay fresh

Keep the reward programme evolving and interesting by offering new rewards and opportunities to ensure customers don’t become tired of it and to show you have an ongoing interest in their lives. This can increase repeat purchase and build loyalty, as well as giving you a reason to communicate more and therefore collect valuable data. However, customers won’t be happy if a popular offer is suddenly removed – so, refreshing a scheme needs to be done gradually to ensure the audience is not alienated by an abrupt change and loss of familiarity. As a general rule, around 10-20 per cent should be changed per month.

5. Stand out from the crowd

To achieve stand-out from other reward or loyalty schemes, it is important to reward your customers with something that is not readily available elsewhere. If you can deliver better value than those offers and discounts that are freely available on group discount and other general public websites, then your consumers will take notice.

6. Make sure you listen

Remaining in constant two-way communication with your consumers is key. If they feel they have a voice they will be far more engaged. The programmes we operate that have the highest levels of customer engagement are those that proactively seek feedback and input from their customers. Allowing them to feel they are shaping their reward package through feedback and suggestions will tell you exactly what they like and don’t like about the current offering. Even if a scheme cannot offer everything the customer says they want, if they see it evolving based on their comments they are far more likely to feel valued.

Consumers will engage with your loyalty or reward scheme if it is presented in a way that is relevant and offers real value to them, and the right scheme can be instrumental in turning a customer’s first purchase into a long-term relationship.

Daniel Nugent is head of Entice Loyalty.