In this final "Getting Personal with Your Customers" post come some warnings, and some valuable success stories. With change there is always an element of risk and this should be considered in a switch from mass or segmented marketing to one-to-one marketing automation.
The marketing organization must be culturally accepting of the change and increased use of marketing technology. Most already employ staff who are data-driven and tech-savvy (at least from a user perspective). But engagement and training will be important, since shifting to one-to-one personalization is a big change in cultural habit.
Not all solutions are really cross-channel and not all are able to support outbound/inbound fusion. The number of channels, or contacts points, is exploding. Not only should you consider direct mail, email, mobile, web but you should also ensure the solution you choose enables personalization and consistency across social media and mobile phone applications for example.
Not all solutions have been built 'from the ground-up' to provide a single, real-time application and interface for cross-channel campaigns. Some are multiple, often acquired applications, that have been integrated with varying degrees of stability. Some cannot provide a single, cross-channel offers catalog or ensure coherent cross-channel personalization. Others cannot enable workflow to be managed cross-channel from a single centralized point of control.
Consumers are sensitive to how their private information and personal data is used. If you implement a marketing automation solution, which of necessity builds a personal view of each individual, then you'll need to be certain that customer authorizations are correctly obtained and that strict data privacy can be assured.
The key to success is careful planning. Designing an appropriate one-to-one marketing personalization process and implementing it successfully requires a thorough understanding of objectives, the role of people and processes, as well as technology.
Case study: Bales Worldwide doubles response rates
The 70,000 customers of tour operator Bales Worldwide have a range of preferences when it comes to the location, type and timing of their holidays.
"We redefined our go-to-market strategy, switching our emphasis from travel agencies to direct sales," said Bales' marketing communications manager, Raymond Howe. "A smart customer communications process became mission critical for us."
Bales determined that it needed automated marketing campaign software. Knowing that relevancy is essential to successful campaigns, it also wanted content to be personalized cross-channel to reflect each customer's interests and recent interactions. Bales selected Neolane's enterprise marketing automation software.
"Today, new data is added automatically by Neolane to customers' records in the datamart as they interact with us or request brochures from third party sites - constantly building and refining profiles," said Howe. "Neolane enables us to run many thousands of mini campaigns, tightly targeted to our
customers' holiday preferences, stimulating interest, interaction and bookings."
Results included:
• Opening rates rose on average from approximately 20% for standard emails2 to 46%for personalized content3 to more than 56% when inferred preferences4 were used to determine content.
• Click throughs rose from 8% to 29% to 41%.
• Reactivity climbed from 24% to 38% to 49%.
• Response rates on brochure mailings tripled when content was personalized to accommodate historical and inferred client data.
• Sales improved by 5%.
Case study: Accor Hotels doubles reactivity
Accor is the European leader and one of the world's largest groups in travel, tourism and corporate services. It has over 4000 hotels worldwide. All Seasons, Dorint, Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Suite Hotel, Etap Hotel and Formule 1 are just a few of Accor's brands.
"Online relationship marketing is an important, but complex activity for us," said Accor Hotels' marketing manager. "We have several hotel brands and offer online communications in up to five languages to subscribers across 15 target zones. We also run six different loyalty and subscription cards."
Recognizing that one-to-one personalization was essential to ensure relevancy as well as brand management, loyalty and subscription card memberships and subscriber language preferences, Accor implemented Neolane.
Results included:
• 20 million+ messages are sent to customers annually in multiple languages.
• Reactivity to emails climbed from 15% to 30%.
• Online revenue is up $200 million per year.
• 35 percent of newsletter subscribers were influenced in booking a room by the personalized communications they had received.
• Campaign development times reduced by 50% saving some $215,000 per year.
Case study: Meetic boosts email campaigns
Meetic is the European leader in online dating with more than 840,000 subscribers (2009). Present in 16 countries and offering its service in 13 languages, brands such as Dating Direct, Match.com, Neu and Lexa are all part of the group.
The company sent out 3-5 million triggered emails a day to registered users, in addition to its outbound marketing campaigns. The problem - those messages were coming from two separate, uncoordinated platforms. They used one system for promotional emails and another one for the automated
system alerts triggered by member activity on the site.
"We couldn't see the whole picture of which campaigns a member received," said a spokesperson.
The team realized that coordinating their triggered email and outbound promotional campaigns could provide more relevant, personalized messages, while managing the volume of email each user received.
They wanted to align triggered and promotional emails toward the main goals of attracting
and retaining customers, while improving customer satisfaction with email communications.
Meetic implemented Neolane to manage both promotional emails and alert emails. Coordinating their outbound promotions and triggered email campaigns has made the team's life much simpler - and improved the performance of those campaigns.
"Because we can make more tests and understand the performance of each campaign, we've seen an overall improvement in our marketing programs," said the company.
Results included:
For the automated welcome series:
• Open rates range from 35% to 45%.
• Clickthrough rates range from 2% to 20%.
For the triggered alert emails:
• Open rates average 40%.
• Clickthrough rates average 12%.
Additionally two further metrics have given great encouragement to the
marketing team:
• Email deliverability has improved from approximately 80% to 99%.
• Email conversion rates have improved by 10%.
Time to act
Gone are the days where the status quo was good enough - the demands for change are such that marketers must surely give serious consideration to one-to-one personalization or risk being left behind. What all of these findings point to is the fact that marketing organizations making the move to one-to-one marketing now, have the potential to respond better to customer expectations and stem the fall in their own response rates and ROMI. They also have the opportunity to take a competitive leap forward by reducing churn, retaining customers for longer and increasing customer spend over time.
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In this final "Getting Personal with Your Customers" post come some warnings, and some valuable success stories. With change there is always an element of risk and this should be considered in a switch from mass or segmented marketing to one-to-one marketing automation.
The marketing organization must be culturally accepting of the change and increased use of marketing technology. Most already employ staff who are data-driven and tech-savvy (at least from a user perspective). But engagement and training will be important, since shifting to one-to-one personalization is a big change in cultural habit.
Not all solutions are really cross-channel and not all are able to support outbound/inbound fusion. The number of channels, or contacts points, is exploding. Not only should you consider direct mail, email, mobile, web but you should also ensure the solution you choose enables personalization and consistency across social media and mobile phone applications for example.
Not all solutions have been built 'from the ground-up' to provide a single, real-time application and interface for cross-channel campaigns. Some are multiple, often acquired applications, that have been integrated with varying degrees of stability. Some cannot provide a single, cross-channel offers catalog or ensure coherent cross-channel personalization. Others cannot enable workflow to be managed cross-channel from a single centralized point of control.
Consumers are sensitive to how their private information and personal data is used. If you implement a marketing automation solution, which of necessity builds a personal view of each individual, then you'll need to be certain that customer authorizations are correctly obtained and that strict data privacy can be assured.
The key to success is careful planning. Designing an appropriate one-to-one marketing personalization process and implementing it successfully requires a thorough understanding of objectives, the role of people and processes, as well as technology.
Case study: Bales Worldwide doubles response rates The 70,000 customers of tour operator Bales Worldwide have a range of preferences when it comes to the location, type and timing of their holidays.
"We redefined our go-to-market strategy, switching our emphasis from travel agencies to direct sales," said Bales' marketing communications manager, Raymond Howe. "A smart customer communications process became mission critical for us."
Bales determined that it needed automated marketing campaign software. Knowing that relevancy is essential to successful campaigns, it also wanted content to be personalized cross-channel to reflect each customer's interests and recent interactions. Bales selected Neolane's enterprise marketing automation software.
"Today, new data is added automatically by Neolane to customers' records in the datamart as they interact with us or request brochures from third party sites - constantly building and refining profiles," said Howe. "Neolane enables us to run many thousands of mini campaigns, tightly targeted to our customers' holiday preferences, stimulating interest, interaction and bookings."
Results included: • Opening rates rose on average from approximately 20% for standard emails2 to 46%for personalized content3 to more than 56% when inferred preferences4 were used to determine content. • Click throughs rose from 8% to 29% to 41%. • Reactivity climbed from 24% to 38% to 49%. • Response rates on brochure mailings tripled when content was personalized to accommodate historical and inferred client data. • Sales improved by 5%.
Case study: Accor Hotels doubles reactivity Accor is the European leader and one of the world's largest groups in travel, tourism and corporate services. It has over 4000 hotels worldwide. All Seasons, Dorint, Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Suite Hotel, Etap Hotel and Formule 1 are just a few of Accor's brands.
"Online relationship marketing is an important, but complex activity for us," said Accor Hotels' marketing manager. "We have several hotel brands and offer online communications in up to five languages to subscribers across 15 target zones. We also run six different loyalty and subscription cards."
Recognizing that one-to-one personalization was essential to ensure relevancy as well as brand management, loyalty and subscription card memberships and subscriber language preferences, Accor implemented Neolane.
Results included: • 20 million+ messages are sent to customers annually in multiple languages. • Reactivity to emails climbed from 15% to 30%. • Online revenue is up $200 million per year. • 35 percent of newsletter subscribers were influenced in booking a room by the personalized communications they had received. • Campaign development times reduced by 50% saving some $215,000 per year.
Case study: Meetic boosts email campaigns Meetic is the European leader in online dating with more than 840,000 subscribers (2009). Present in 16 countries and offering its service in 13 languages, brands such as Dating Direct, Match.com, Neu and Lexa are all part of the group.
The company sent out 3-5 million triggered emails a day to registered users, in addition to its outbound marketing campaigns. The problem - those messages were coming from two separate, uncoordinated platforms. They used one system for promotional emails and another one for the automated system alerts triggered by member activity on the site.
"We couldn't see the whole picture of which campaigns a member received," said a spokesperson. The team realized that coordinating their triggered email and outbound promotional campaigns could provide more relevant, personalized messages, while managing the volume of email each user received.
They wanted to align triggered and promotional emails toward the main goals of attracting and retaining customers, while improving customer satisfaction with email communications.
Meetic implemented Neolane to manage both promotional emails and alert emails. Coordinating their outbound promotions and triggered email campaigns has made the team's life much simpler - and improved the performance of those campaigns.
"Because we can make more tests and understand the performance of each campaign, we've seen an overall improvement in our marketing programs," said the company.
Results included: For the automated welcome series: • Open rates range from 35% to 45%. • Clickthrough rates range from 2% to 20%.
For the triggered alert emails: • Open rates average 40%. • Clickthrough rates average 12%.
Additionally two further metrics have given great encouragement to the marketing team: • Email deliverability has improved from approximately 80% to 99%. • Email conversion rates have improved by 10%.
Time to act Gone are the days where the status quo was good enough - the demands for change are such that marketers must surely give serious consideration to one-to-one personalization or risk being left behind. What all of these findings point to is the fact that marketing organizations making the move to one-to-one marketing now, have the potential to respond better to customer expectations and stem the fall in their own response rates and ROMI. They also have the opportunity to take a competitive leap forward by reducing churn, retaining customers for longer and increasing customer spend over time.
For more insights on one-to-one personal marketing automation solutions, please visit Neolane or Neolane's blog, The Cross Channel Conversation.