5 Goals Marketers Should Make—and Keep—in 2011

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2011 GOALS www.ExactTarget.co.uk

Every year, marketers continue to search for “the next big thing”—the industry-wide “hot topic” that will make or break the success of their interactive marketing programmes for the coming year. As consumers around the globe continue to turn to email, mobile, Facebook, and Twitter more than ever before, it’s imperative that marketers strive to meet customers where they’re at in order to maximise customer engagement and opportunity.

As you look at your 2011 marketing goals and labour over next year’s budget, we’ve compiled five goals in order to help you stay current with consumer demands and maintain a successful interactive marketing programme the whole year through. But this year, we’re not just providing you with goals to make—we’re helping you keep them too. While diets and exercise programmes might taper off just months after the start of the new year, these initiatives are 5 Goals Marketers Should Make—and Keep—in 2011.

In this report, we’ll take a look at what’s coming in 2011 and how to prepare for the interactive marketing trends awaiting us in the coming year. Get tips and insight on the year’s most critical aspects of interactive marketing, including the importance of data in the foundation of your interactive programmes, why 2011 is the “year of mobile,” and how automation not only saves you time, but also helps you better meet customer needs. We’ll even provide you with spaces to jot down your own marketing goals as you read. (After all, research shows that those who make goals are 10 times more likely to achieve them!)

So before you lock down your 2011 budget and set your goals for the new year, find out what goals will give you the “edge” you need to start the year off right. Take our word for it—these goals will make your marketing programme better than it’s ever been. And when you need us, we’ll be here along the way to help you stick with it.

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1.DATA IS THE NEW CREATIVEWith 600 Tweets, 34,000 Google searches, and 700 Facebook posts per second, marketers are no longer in control of their brands. But that doesn’t mean marketers have to accept defeat and succumb to these new challenges. By streamlining data processes and making data the foundation of any marketing programme, marketers can meet their customers where they’re at with relevant content. Find out more by downloading our latest report Real-Time Marketing: Data is the New Creative of the Real-Time Web.

This past year, you’ve probably heard a lot of industry buzz around “data.” You know that data is at the heart of relevancy, and you’ve even heard that Data is the New Creative. But, let’s be clear— the concept of collecting data isn’t new. Using it is.

Marketers inherently known that data should fuel their marketing programmes and overall business decisions. Thus, collecting data from customers has never been a problem. But, achieving visibility—and usability—with that data has not always been possible. Information has been stored in all sorts of ways, including data warehouses and databases across the organisation that require tedious exporting in order to take any action on it whatsoever. At the same time, today’s interactive outlets like email, text messaging, and social media (which are constantly finding new and innovative ways to expand), make managing data at the same pace as the speed of technology even more difficult. In fact, marketers are missing out on opportunities to engage with customers because their information and processes have become outdated before the data is even aggregated and sorted.

Having greater visibility into your subscriber data doesn’t just help you be more organised. Ask yourself: “How much of my work week is devoted to sifting through data?” According to some marketers, 40% of time at work is spent managing data and attempting to make it more usable for campaign purposes. But when data comes together in a single platform, efficient information flow actually frees up marketers’ time and resources, helping them be more strategic in their interactive marketing programmes.

REAL [ways] TO TAKE ACTION

You’ve got data. Now what? Start implementing easy tactics to help you easily utilise subscriber information:

ASSESS YOUR DATA. Making a change to the way you currently use data starts with an assessment. What data do you have access to? Where is it coming from? Understand what tools you have to work with before you take action.

IMPLEMENT A PROGRAMME. Decide how you’re going to use your data. What do you want to accomplish? How often will you revisit the data? Taking action starts with intentionality and specific goals.

MEASURE OFTEN. After you’ve begun using your data, don’t forget to measure your programme’s effectiveness. Measure often, adjust often, and test, test, test. What’s “moving the needle?” What’s impacting your bottom line? If you’ve sent a communication to subscribers that doesn’t seem to be impacting your business, discontinue it and try something new.

INVESTIGATE. Use your data to work backwards. By understanding what information is driving your click-through rates, find out what it is your subscribers are clicking through to. From that point,

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drive conversions using that content. Track how many of your customers are clicking through to content, browsing online, adding to their shopping cart, purchasing, etc. Use data to turns clicks into money.

Marketers have the potential to find more business opportunities. The key lies in taking the leg work out of using data. When your interactive marketing programme is built on data—instead of using it as a simple afterthought—programmes are more effective, more targeted, and more successful.

Companies like international online-based community t-shirt company, Threadless, use data to drive their interactive marketing programme to new heights. As part of its email revamp, the company launched a “Welcome

Email” programme that introduces users to an optimised online preference center that allows customers to control and personalise the information they receive from Threadless. The preference center allows subscribers to choose from four different languages to receive Threadless email, control the frequency of communications sent to them, and even choose which specific content they want to receive. The company also sends targeted coupons and product recommendations based on previous buying behaviour in order to encourage repeat purchases and collect customer insights through ExactTarget-powered email customer satisfaction surveys. With such attention to subscriber information and detail, it’s no wonder Threadless’ community of over 1.3 million members engage with the company regularly to vote on their favourite design submissions with the best and coolest designs selected for printing and sale by the Threadless online retail store.

The most sophisticated messages in the world won’t resonate with your customers if you don’t understand their preferences and behaviours. The ExactTarget Interactive Marketing Hub™ easily aggregates your data to help you understand how to communicate with your customers across Email, Mobile, Social, and Sites—from a single platform. By merging the conversations that matter into one intuitive dashboard, you’ll turn millions of data points into meaningful customer interactions.

3 Ways I Will Incorporate Data:

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It seems every year we hear “this is the year of mobile.” Yet, as email and social media become more and more sophisticated, mobile marketing is often left overshadowed. So why is 2011 truly the year to make mobile a priority?

As consumers begin to move more rapidly from “regular” phones to smartphones, they increase their expectation that everything (especially information) should be portable. In fact, 17% of Americans now own smartphones, according to a report from Forrester Research1, and 43% of all US adult cell phone users have mobile apps, according to a report from the Pew Research Center2. And the rates will only continue to rise.

Consumers now expect the freedom to interact with their peers and their favourite brands at any time. Additionally, brands are expected to meet their customers where they’re at—interacting with them whether they’re in front of their computer, shopping, or on-the-go.

As consumers become more and more available no matter their location, it’s easy to see that we’ve become a “NOW generation.” And the best way to reach your subscribers NOW (and at any other point) is through their mobile phone. This year, pay special attention to:

• Web usage vs. mobile web usage

• Email vs. mobile email

• Social usage vs. social via apps

What does this mean for marketers? Mobile must be incorporated into your interactive marketing plan. Not only should you resolve to “use mobile to connect with your customers,” but you should also “talk to your consumers through the channels they’re using.” In 2011, it’s no longer a choice.

REAL [easy tips] TO BEGIN USING MOBILE MARKETINGADD TEXT. SMS messaging is the easiest—and most cost-effective—way to begin mobile marketing. As 97% of mobile phones today are equipped with text messaging capabilities, creating text-in voting programmes, Q&A text response campaigns, and mobile coupons for your subscribers is an easy way to engage customers.

BE MOBILE-SPECIFIC. Content is often created with only email or social in mind. But how will it render on mobile phones? Integrate your marketing channels by creating campaigns that deliver the same messaging, but in various forms that work well with each interactive outlet. Remember to “design for the third screen” by creating short, easy-to-digest content that mobile users can engage with.

CREATE YOUR MOBILE “VISION.” What does your mobile marketing plan look like in the long-term? Don’t just stop at easy-to-implement mobile tactics. Consider how mobile will become a vital part of your interactive marketing strategy. This might include increased transactional messaging or even the creation of your company’s very own mobile app.

1 http://mashable.com/2010/10/21/small-business-smartphones/

2 http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/The-Rise-of-Apps-Culture/Overview.aspx

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Take it from Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) who uses ExactTarget Mobile to reach bus passengers through their “Text4Next” programme. Riders can now text a bus stop location and route number using OCTA’s text-in code (posted at every stop) to receive arrival times for the next three buses headed to that stop. As bus riders no longer have to call the Customer Information Center for route information, OCTA has cut customer

support costs from $2 per telephone call to $0.10 per text message. OCTA has also seen tremendous satisfaction from their customers who prefer to be reached through the ease and immediacy of mobile marketing.

In today’s fast-paced world, consumers are more on-the-go than ever before. And you need to fuel your real-time interaction with your busy customers via their mobile phones. With ExactTarget Mobile, you can achieve a dynamic user experience that helps you plan, monitor, and track mobile marketing campaigns using beneficial features such as messaging templates, mobile tickets and coupons, global longcode and shortcode management, and more.

Consumers value customer service—not just from your client support centre, but from every single interaction they have with your brand. After all, they can either say positive things about your brand or negative things about your brand—solely based on how you treat them as a customer. While some companies today continue to tell their customers what products and services to purchase through advertising, the most effective marketers build a relationship with customers that provides value to them beyond selling products or services.

In 2011, not only should your SUBSCRIBERS RULE! by honouring their unique preferences, but your marketing messages should provide more impact and value—rather than standard consumer “interruption” via irrelevant “one size fits all” ads. This year, effectively marketing to your customers should be more about the level of customer service you provide—not necessarily the creativity of your advertising.

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3 Ways I Will Incorporate Mobile:

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REAL [ideas] FOR PUTTING SERVICE BEFORE SALESPREFERENCE CENTRES. Want to know more about your subscribers? Sometimes it’s as easy as just asking. Subscriber preference centres allow customers to identify their interests, preferred channels, appropriate messaging frequency, and content that is applicable to their lives. Let your subscribers tell you about themselves and create trust by honouring those preferences instead of implementing irrelevant “batch and blast” campaigns.

LISTEN VIA SOCIAL MEDIA. Consumers are in constant conversation about your brand. Listen. Be a part of it. With social tools like Twitter and Facebook, connecting with your customers and responding to their questions and comments is easier than ever. And with CoTweet, managing the conversation on Twitter makes it easy for brands to see the conversation—right as it’s happening.

BRING VALUE TO YOUR SUBSCRIBERS. Many marketers today will send out an email, post a Tweet, or create a Facebook fan page—but they don’t know why. Utilising interactive marketing to its full potential is not about participating in channels just to participate. It’s about serving your customers through a particular channel because that’s where they’re most comfortable communicating with you. In order to bring value to your subscribers, you must first understand your unique value proposition and why it’s important to consumers. If no value exists in the eyes of the consumer, there’s no reason for them to stay engaged or subscribed.

Email marketing success isn’t measured by the number of opens and click-throughs you have, but by the level of engagement subscribers have with your brand. Take it from online retailer, Motorcycle Superstore, who used rich behavioural data from Webtrends to deliver dynamic, one-to-one product offers to customers through

ExactTarget email. By adding a “Your Picks” element to their standard weekly email that featured four dynamic product offers, Motorcycle Superstore has not only seen increased customer engagement, but also a 24% email revenue lift.

Let’s face it. There’s no point in having data unless you can use it. Through the Interactive Marketing Hub, ExactTarget Audience Builder™ helps you segment your data instantly so you can join the conversation about your brand—in real-time. Filter data using specific audience criteria, or make decisions based on your entire data set. Whether you’ve got CRM, web analytics, or survey data, Audience Builder™ helps you segment from any data source, allowing you to increase customer engagement—and boost ROI.

3 Ways I Will Treat Customers as Individuals:

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For many, 2010 marked the year that social media became a reality instead of just a trend for marketers to watch out for. Communications have become more interactive with social icons at the bottom of emails, links to Facebook fan pages, and Twitter handles included in email copy. But that’s still not enough. While including ShareThis icons in your communications is a simple and effective way to ease into social media, integrating it into your interactive marketing campaigns and overall strategy is vital in 2011.

REAL [quick wins] TO GET THE MOST FROM SOCIALSOCIAL “SOUL SEARCHING.” Remember those social media icons you included at the bottom of your email? Don’t forget to go back and gather metrics about what’s resonating among your Subscribers, Fans, & Followers. What content is being retweeted among your twitter followers? When are your Facebook friends clicking “like?” If you’ve discovered that content A is creating more engagement than content B, it’s easy to see that increasing your promotion of content A will do more to make your subscribers happy.

GET LOCAL. With the onset of geolocation devices and mobile apps, it’s easy to meet your customers where they’re at—literally. Apps like Four Square give you the opportunity to find out which subscribers are frequenting your store(s). Use this information to make special offers to frequent visitors based on their individual purchase behaviour. Relevant messaging will help your customers understand that meeting them where they’re at is not about spamming them—it’s about connecting with them better.

The bottom line? Conversations about your brand are happening whether you’re participating in them or not. It’s up to you as a marketer to either contribute to the messaging about your brand or simply let your customers dictate it for you. Customers today now have megaphones to speak about your company through interactive tools like Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets. In the past, customers who had a bad experience with your brand would share it with 5-10 of their friends. Today, a bad customer experience could lead to negative information about your brand sent out to 1,000 Twitter followers or more. It’s up to you to respond to those conversations and prove the value of your brand by how willingly you connect with the disgruntled customer to make things right.

As the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket, Whole Foods Market knows that “managing the conversation” (especially amidst some 1.75 million Twitter followers) is no easy task. But with CoTweet, Whole Foods Market was finally able to streamline work flow and manage social media communications from customers using tools like conversation threading,

messaging archives and multiple accounts/users. With greater visibility into what customers are saying, Whole Foods Market not only manages the conversation globally, but also empowers their local marketers to engage in Twitter conversations in their communities, creating increased engagement and higher in-store traffic.

Built for the unique needs of businesses, CoTweet helps marketers manage their day-to-day social media conversations from a centralised, easy-to-use dashboard. And with the latest CoTweet 3.0 Enterprise Edition, users can expand their social reach to Facebook, gain insight into richer social media analytics, receive iPhone app support, and integrate more closely with top technology platforms like Salesforce.com and ExactTarget. Listening to what customers have to say about your brand is no small feat. But with CoTweet Enterprise and Standard Edition, interactive marketing teams can view and respond to Tweets in seconds—making customer interaction that much stronger.

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Meeting customer needs is all about knowing who they are. In order to do that, you must know everything about them—their likes, dislikes, behaviours, purchasing history, browsing history, etc. But with all the information you’ve collected, the information they’ve volunteered, and the information you’ve inferred about them, you’re often left swimming in loads of information that are too vast to manage. In order to access the data, you must perform various imports, exports, segmenting, and searches to transform the information into a usable state. And at the end of the day, let’s face it—there’s simply no way you can manage all of your data with an Excel spreadsheet.

AUTOMATE FOR EFFICIENCYWe promise—there’s light at the end of the tunnel. With automation, tasks like data movement, segmentation, and messaging programmes become easy through “set it and forget it” functionality. Automating birthday email campaigns and recurring newsletters is a simple way to free up time and energy.

But in 2011, automation can’t just stop there. With the onset of the “real-time web” and the “NOW generation” of consumers, it’s critical that subscriber preferences and new customer data become integrated into each and every communication you send. When a subscriber changes their preferences (for instance, due to a change in lifestyle like starting university or getting married), it’s important to pay attention to how the customer responds to your communications. If you’ve set automations that only run once a month or once a week, there’s a possibility that your subscriber’s interest—or disinterest—in a particular communication could be completely overlooked, resulting in frustrated customers who choose to opt out of your messages. Enter “Smart Automation.”

REAL [smart] WAYS TO AUTOMATE SMART AUTOMATION. This year, engage in “smart automation.” Bring in social data, web analytics data, and customer ratings and reviews—richer data that will help you better serve your subscribers with more relevant messaging. Too complex, you say? Automating intelligently just requires that you monitor the conversation about your brand across all channels. Monitor click-through rates on email, Tweets on Twitter, likes on Facebook, text responses via mobile. As you collect data, maintain your databases so that information is always kept current and automations don’t regulate communications that are irrelevant to your subscribers.

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3 Ways I Will Incorporate Social:

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THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTOMATION IN 2011. Marketing budgets aren’t getting any bigger—so marketers must find a way to work smarter, not harder. After all, marketers must find a way to manage the conversation about their brand over more than 60 interactive marketing channels and the individual companies within each of those channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) With so much data, automation is the only way to make it usable.

AAA Ohio uses data brilliantly to help entice members to renew their membership after the first year. A critical piece of their retention programme is AAA’s data-driven welcome campaign, which utilises automation to send links to temporary membership cards, information on the AAA branch nearest the subscribers’ home, discount programmes in their area, and updates on the latest AAA services,

coupons, and offers. Using rich subscriber data, AAA can personalise the email with graphics that indicate the subscriber’s membership coverage level. With automation, AAA’s emails don’t just collect more information—they use it by making email personalisation quicker, easier, and more valuable to the customer.

In today’s digital world, you’re continually being asked to do more—with less. The last thing you have time for is executing the same tedious tasks over and over again. ExactTarget’s automation tools make it easier than ever to automate every aspect of your interactive marketing programme—from welcome emails, test sends, simple sends, and Automated Interaction Management (AIM)—so you can spend time focusing on strategy and optimisation of your programme instead of sweating the small stuff.

3 Ways I Will Incorporate Automation:

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Each new year offers a blank slate and a new outlook to start the year off right. And while you may not stay as organised as you’d like or as in shape as you had hoped by mid-year, making goals to improve your interactive marketing programme can be easy—especially if you have a little help along the way. This year, resolve to stay true to subscribers with goals like:

1. “I will make data the foundation of my marketing.”

2. “I will use mobile to connect with my customers.”

3. “I will market to my customers like the individuals they are.”

4. “I will make social media a real part of my marketing mix.”

5. “I will use automation to save time and to better meet my customers’ needs.”

By pledging to improve your marketing programme with these five initiatives, your subscribers will see the difference—resulting in more satisfied customers, increased engagement, and better ROI. And with those kinds of results, who knows? Your goals might just keep themselves.

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5 Goals Marketers Should Make—and Keep—in 2011