Yesterday we attended Silverpop’s Digital Marketing University, where we returned to the college experience for a day and learned everything our Silverpop professors could teach us about marketing in the digital space in an increasingly customer-driven world. Here are four highlights from the syllabus for those of you who couldn’t join us in class.
Marketing Should Own the Customer Experience
Bryan Brown of Silverpop started his talk by asking the audience who they thought owned customer experience at their company. Calls of sales! and support! were the response, but Brown countered with, But who creates the idea of customer experience to begin with? Marketing. It’s a fair point: marketing messaging is what creates customers’ expectations of what their experience will be upon becoming a customer, and it’s usually marketing that sends out customer communications, on housekeeping as well as new products, etc. It’s marketing, Brown declared, that should own customer experience, and ensure that every touch point from sales to troubleshooting is aligned with the messaging they construct in their campaigns.
Think Like the Buyer
And that means getting personal. Why are our smartphones so important to us, Brown asked? Though replaceable, why would losing your phone be such a disaster? Because it’s yours, Brown insisted, not just in terms of ownership but in terms of your personal customization of that device. From your sound settings to your photos to your apps to the ordered arrangement of those apps, your phone is yours, comprised of your daily life. This is how marketing should be, said Brown. Personal and targeted to customers’ individual behaviors and preferences.
When Brown said get personal, he meant diving deeper into your marketing campaigns and thinking of your customers as more than one amalgamated blob. They have different preferences and interests, so for starters, try getting personal with your email marketing. Brown called many email marketing campaigns hope strategies : we send emails to 100% of our lists hoping that 3% will take an action. But what about the other 97%? Hoping for an action from the 3% risks alienating the 97%. Segment your segments: think like your buyer.
Stop Marketing Blind
Big Data is great and all, but more important than Big Data is Right Data. The abovementioned example of marketing being like our customized, personalized smartphone is possible when we have the right data. Marketing automation platforms for online and offline strategies including voice can harvest a lot of the data we need to make better marketing decisions. The sooner you start looking at the right data, the sooner you can stop marketing blind, and the sooner your marketing sees your customers clearly, the better their experience with your business will be.
Stay Away from Siloed Technology
Siloed technology contributes to marketing blindness in many cases. Businesses may have the right data, but when that data is stored in different technology siloes, the lack of integration makes said data much less effective. The right integrations can mean all the difference in the world for your data, working together to provide actionable insight. This almost always means a better experience for your customer: there are fewer missed details and when everyone at your business is on the same page, it makes for seamless customer service.
There is always more to learn when it comes to digital marketing, but yesterday was a great refresher on how we can use the digital space to create an incredible customer experience. With the right technology, the right data, and the right outlook, we can ensure that our customers feel unique because that’s how we’ll market to them.