OverLinked » Marketing

Even starbucks can’t do real-time personalization

LP — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:33:32 +0000

Often I use Starbucks as one of the best examples of a company doing customer loyalty marketing right – as they typically use their marketing database very well, sending out emails and direct mail postcards personalized to myself as an individual. Yet today a chink in the armor surfaced, and it actually points to a deficiency that I think is very common across companies & marketing departments. While it’s very easy today to make an email “personalized” in terms using a person’s name across the content, it’s much harder to take other interactions that a prospect / customer has and overlay it across all your touchpoints to ensure all your messages are relevant.

Case in point – I was sent an email about Starbucks’ new iphone app. (Apparently the old one will break, and you gotta get the new one.) The problem is that I don’t currently use an iphone app. However, I just downloaded a Starbucks Android app a few weeks ago. If Starbucks were truly at the cutting edge of customer relevancy they would have taken the data that I gave them when I downloaded my app and matched the email that I used within the app, which is the same email address as is linked with my rewards account and email opt-in subscription. All of that data should have fed to a database that updated my profile in terms of what channels I’m using to relate to the brand. Android, yes. iPhone, no. It’s a pretty simple distinction, but it’s a data complexity that’s hard for Starbucks, and I think all major consumer brands to get a hold of.

Part of the problem is that usually companies use a stand alone service to send out their marketing emails. That service, while excellent at delivering emails and producing reporting for those emails, fails when it has to integrate data from other systems. It’s not just email, because companies have to deal with data collected from social media efforts, customer website visits, loyalty program interactions, direct mail responses, phone calls and other touches. This is why it’s critical that every company invests in their systems so they communicate with each other. There isn’t yet a holy grail company that will handle this perfectly across channels, but there are quite a few that are coming close and make it a priority to easily integrate with other systems whether it be custom apps for that platform, or more generally, an API that can be used to sync relevant fields.

In the end, it’s really the customer’s experience that matters. When a loyal Starbucks customer like myself gets disappointed by a “miss” experience like this, and I get an advertisement from Pete’s Coffee or a local coffeeshop that impresses me, then I’m one step closer to being an ex-customer. But for now, I’ll forgive Starbucks, because I know how frustrating data silos can be.

The Olympics & VISA (& Morgan Freeman)

LP — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:47:20 +0000

Morgan Freeman’s New Olympics Commercial – watch more funny videos

Too Agressive with your Prospects?

LP — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:20:49 +0000

This is a funny commercial that I thought was going to have the punchline “Are you Over-marketing to your current customers” or “Too Aggressive with your Prospects?” but instead it turned out to be a ad for a bank.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Best Landing Page of 2009

LP — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:53:27 +0000

If you work in marketing, an advertising agency, or just a smaller marketing team, take note at Eloqua’s landing page. I have never seen a B2B company do lead generation with such style. I would watch this piece over and over just for the entertainment value.

http://illuminate.eloqua.com/?jvsrc=proofe200812elqwebsiteb2

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E-Mail Marketing Open and Click-Through Rates – eMarketer

LP — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:54:41 +0000

via emarketer.com

This emarkter article had some great statistics on open and click rates per industry (or audience).

Initially what stood out are the large absolute percentages in the Retail and Travel industries. Retail having around 8% click throughs contrasted with the 2-3% overall, but makes sense that if a customer has opted in to a brand’s email newsletter, they are “die-hard” fans of the brand and want to interact with the brand and/or to take advantage of emailed specials. Similar reasoning with the travel industry, there are likely audience members (like me) who are on travelzoo’s email list to find bargains on vacations and the like. The prospect of traveling is also inherently more exciting than, say, an email message sent by a wholesale-distribution company.

One surprise in the Computer/internet industry was that smaller lists did better overall than larger ones on clicks (7.2% on a

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Why Focus Groups Fail Customers and Companies

LP — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:12:17 +0000

Let’s say a company is in the business of making plastic drinking cups for children. While on the surface this may sound like a trivial matter, it is not, as anyone with children knows. The right drinking cup can play a leading role in getting a child to sleep and making mealtime a relatively peaceful endeavor. Traditional customer focus groups bring a group of customers together and place two cups on the table. They ask the customers, “Which cup do you prefer?” The customer will then pick a cup. But that doesn’t mean either cup is the best cup for them. Maybe the customer needs a cup with a straw. But the company didn’t take the time to think about the customers’ life. In the absence of getting what was right, the customer picked what was available.

via mpdailyfix.com

This is a great article about the use of focus groups to try to determine consumer preference. Sometimes, the way you ask someone a question determines their answer. It’s very hard (but essential) to step outside of the box and rethink the approach. It’s almost like you have to disregard your own product entirely, and focus on the customers “lifestyle” or “business environment” and once you have a firm grasp on that – you can overlay a product/service and find the ways it fits, and more importantly , the ways it does not fit.

This will give direction toward product enhancements and improvements that will be true steps forward in innovation.

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Little Known Marketing Fact

LP — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:49:36 +0000

Some may know this – some may not, but it even surprised me:

Each dollar spent on direct marketing yields, on average, a return on investment of $11.69, versus ROI of $5.24 from non-direct marketing expenditures.

DMA’s Power of Direct Mail Study

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Audi moves. BMW Trumps. At least in Marketing

LP — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:56:50 +0000

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Google Me business card template

LP — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:34:07 +0000

http://www.pleaseenjoy.com/project.php?cat=4&subcat=&pid=112&navpoint=1#

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Can Marketers Use the “Data Minimization” Approach?

LP — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:06:25 +0000

Peter Fader, Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, puts forth a “data minimization” approach for companies arguing that the histograms you can infer from doing more basic one time analyses, is more cost effective approach to marketing. It’s an interesting argument as it hones in on 1-to-1 marketing’s achilles heel, that of the relative ROI of 1-to-1 compared to the organizational investment required to realize this marketer’s dream. While it’s true that 1-to-1 messaging is difficult and expensive for most companies right now, there is a greater long term disadvantage to “throwing away” historical customer purchase data. True, credit card & billing data are a risk for an organization to house and guard, but this information can safely be stripped without having an impact on order level or purchase history. Also, the cost and complexity of safely storing customer data is coming down greatly. Well thought out data security policies can guard marketing & IT teams from mistakes, as long as the policy is carried out regularly (archive data offsite, secured & detached from external networks).

Think about the danger of not having access to your customer data – what if the histograms that you produced in the early part of the year, prove to be fine for a time, but you’d like to compare the effectiveness of this model against one that your team put forth. You’d have to wait 6+ months to aggregate enough data for the second model to show itself worthy, but not if you’d have simply kept access to the data.

For smaller companies, however, this may be a good option – but only if there’s a high hacking risk and lack of technology support internally. It’s better to reduce risk at that point than to save data for a rainy day – if you don’t have a current plan of using your customer data for marketing activities in the next 6 months, then it will not likely be of use anyway.

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