Peter Weedfald, President of Gen One Ventures, discusses how the Chief Metrics Officer needs to understand to provide the best ROI.

Our second report in the What’s Critical in the Vertical series conducted with the CMO Council, we looked  at What’s Critical in the Australian Banking Vertical. As will all our research, there were many interesting findings.  I’d like to point out a few highlights from the report:
From the Consumer:  Satisfied but Searching

When 1000+ banking customers were asked about their relationship with their bank, we learned there is plenty of room from relationship improvement.  In fact, only 44% reported they view their existing bank as a trusted advisor.  To add to this, nine percent considered their bank as “Cold and Faceless” as well as “Dinosaurs and Relics”.

Why all the contention?

The audit revealed that consumers are tired of the high costs, and hidden fees, billing errors, and the additional service charges that tend to accompany both. Additionally, according to the poll, the customer banking experience is severely lacking. A surprising 23% said they regularly receive poor customer service and a disturbing 16% have been on the receiving end of “Rude” behavior from bank employees.

Given this insight, it is not a surprise that the Australian banking customer is defecting at a churn rate of 12% per  year. Customers are in search of lower rates, more online options, transparency, improved services, and reduced fees. The churn rate will continue to grow unless the current marketing strategies begin to focus less on products and more on the customer experience.  However, for the most part, Australian Bank consumers are loyal with nearly on third of customers staying with their bank for 5 – 10 years.

From the Marketer: Branding over Bonding

When asked about their top priorities for the year, Australian Bank Marketers reported: gaining deeper customer understanding of their customers and their expectation, driving relevant communications, and offering more on line services; yet improving the overall customer experience with the bank and brand was a lesser priority.

In this new era of customer power, banks can create relevance and revenues by focusing on their customer.

The audit uncovered that 88% of marketers believe that better access to real-time data and analytics would be the best solution to improve visibility into customer retention, profitability and lifetime value.  But only 27% of marketers reported investment in data analytics to better segment and target key customers. However, we were pleased to find that of those that invested in analytics 100% reported improvement in customer segmentation in order to better execute targeted communications.

The research indicated that when banking competition heightened, 51% increased marketing and advertising spend to drive improved brand awareness.  The Australian banking marketer may consider a lesser focus on branding and more on bonding.  While branding tends to be more of a “shout” at the consumer from a billboard or television to praise their own products, the smart marketer will level the playing field by creating strategies and campaign that enable key customer conversations about future needs, concerns, and goals.  These marketers will then be in a position to then show how their offerings or products satisfy those needs.

While the Australian banking marketer clearly understands the need to improve services, retention, and loyalty.  They have a plethora of customer information and data at their fingertip to begin their journey.   Precision Marketing can help these marketers use their data to create actionable insights, allowing them to predict needs with more accuracy – such as what product to cross or up sell – cutting through the noise and delivering targeted, relevant communications that benefit both the consumer and the bank.

a Conference, a Community, a Coalition – for the benefit of the Utility Industry

GoBeyondTheMeter.com is dedicated to demonstrating how leading industry solutions address challenging business trends and opportunities.

With increases in regulatory requirements,  economic pressures, and strict mandates requiring significant reductions in carbon emissions, utility companies are required to examine their processes. They are asked to address a variety of business issues, such as:

• Rising power prices putting pressure on the consumer’s wallet, leading to slow pays, no pays and increased call volumes

• Increasing interest in energy efficient options as conservation and environmental concerns increase

• Growing customer service expectations

GoBeyondTheMeter.com provides the tools utility executives need to better communicate with and educate their customers.

Similar to The Tribe, GoBeyondTheMeter.com will host a Utility Community where members can gain access to information on emerging trends, they will have the ability to communicate with peers and share ideas and best practices. 

Check out our site.

Refer it to friends.

If you’re a Utility Marketer, remember to take the CMO Council Survey.

As always, thanks for visiting and tell us what you think!

Boutiques.com is a compilation of hundreds of virtual boutiques compiled by designers, celebrities, retailers, bloggers, magazines, television shows, and even regular consumers. These individuals or groups of individuals can set up their own boutique on the site, allowing visitors to follow trends and shop directly from these mini-shops. In addition to viewing the selections of the boutique curator you are browsing, Google’s genius algorithms come into play by generating additional choices, influenced by the boutique’s style. These boutique options are endless in regards to the creation and inspiration generated.

Another cutting-edge highlight of this site is how it engages their customer. By providing the opportunity for customers to set up the personal boutiques with their “loves” and “hates” of different colors, styles and trends, Google is able to “learn” what the customer’s prefer are and make recommendations based on these preferences. Users can comment on trends, styles, and individual boutiques, as well as share their favorite photos. As the article states, if a shopper is unsure how to style a newly purchased pair of shoes, the site will display street-style photos exhibiting different looks, creating a panel-like experience so the user can see multiple options and examples. Boutiques.com creates an easy-to-use, easy-to-style environment for its browsers.

Boutiques.com creates a personalized shopping experience, which opens a door for marketers to create personalized messages for the shoppers. Customers are indicating their preferences for specific styles and trends, providing perfect opportunities for Precision Marketing. Advertisers can utilize customer information based on identified preferences to deliver relevant messages for viewers. Boutiuques.com helps classic customer shop for classic items; trendy customers stay trendy, all while providing advertisers the opportunity to speak directly to the customer segment they resonate with best.

While this is a shopper’s dream, has it created the marketer’s dream? Are online marketer’s jobs becoming easier as websites are making users experiences more customized? I believe these are perfect venues and opportunities for the Precision Marketer- would you agree?

Welcome to 2011!

Welcome to a day where consumers receive a staggering 3000-5000 marketing messages every day.  With an increasing number of channels consumers can receive messages in, it’s no wonder consumers are tuning out and turning off.

We, as marketers, must find new ways to engage our customers. We must deliver content rich, relevant communications that speak to our customer and prospects wants and needs.  Precision Marketing is the solution that enables marketers to use their information to do just that- reach our customers or customer segments with the right message in the right channel at the right time.

To help you get started as Precision Marketers, here is a 5-step roadmap that will help you begin working to implement your own Precision Marketing initiative.

Step 1. : What’s the problem? The Precision Marketing process must begin by first deciding what problem, or pain point, you are seeking to address. For example, are you trying to reactivate dormant customers or achieve a greater response rate to a particular promotion?

Step 2. Data, Data, Data Next, evaluate and leverage the data and campaigns currently in place. In many cases, your existing household or subscriber files are sufficient to develop targeted segments for use in a test campaign.  This new customer segment can then be divided into a target group and a control group.

Step 3. Synchronize + Strategize Synchronize your campaigns and determine the best message for the channel. In a test case with Best Western International Inc., we examined active reward members to identify 100,000 customers with the highest propensity to engage with the promotion. We targeted half of the group with customized messaging through monthly loyalty statements. We leveraged the statement as a promotional document to tell loyalty program members how much faster they could accumulate points during the promotional period. The other half acted as the control group.

Step 4. Measure. Measure. Measure. Once a test campaign has been launched, the next step is to measure the results based on a wide range of criteria and, most importantly, bottom-line measures. In less than eight weeks, Best Western enjoyed notable target group gains, including a 15% response increases that enabled a 39% increase in number of stays, a 30% increase in revenue over the control group and a 278% ROI.

Step 5. Refine + Repeat After the initial test, it’s time to refine and repeat the above steps to produce the same or different results. Most importantly, you need to understand what drove your results.

Through the use of Precision Marketing, organizations can deliver relevant, targeted and measurable promotional messages. In an environment where few marketers are realizing the full revenue potential of existing customers, we need strategies and solutions that help create deeper relationships.  This loyalty we create through these engagements with our customers will drive increased return on our objectives and investments.

Today’s consumer wants relevant, timely messages. They want engagements that are tailored around their history with the companies they choose to do business with.  Marketers must take that next step toward Precision Marketing and leverage all available insights to deliver meaningful promotions and timely content in order to increase loyalty and revenue as we enter the Year of Precision Marketing!

resolutions and predictions

While you might think these two topics differ, there are a few things they have in common:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Everyone has one (or a set of them)
                  2. They can’t all be trusted!

For these reasons, when our friends over at Junta42 posted their “Best Content Marketing Predictions for 2011,” we jumped to read them.

Junta42 has collected over 150 predictions on Content Marketing and Social Media from over 100 leaders in the field. With comments ranging from “Facebook will take over the world…” to “Marketers will become less obsessed with the channel…” you’re sure to find insights that speak directly to you and your business.  

You can read a few of Joe’s favorites right on the site or you can download the eBook, Predictions, Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions For 2011.

We’re quite proud to say, Sandra Zoratti’s comments are  included  as well!

This clever book is a must read with predictions from industry leaders from PR firms, B2B and B2C companies, and consultants, providing the full gamut of insights to help best prepare for 2011.  There is one reigning theme across all predictions: Content is King.

Back to reality. Precision marketing is evolving. It is driven by technology but even more so, buy consumers’ expectation for customized,  relevant messages. We are not in the age of overarching biotechnological databases – at least not ones that are used commercially.  But we are in the age of information on a cloud. Consumers can access much of their data from anywhere they want and at any time they desire. Moreover, surrounded by digital devices to go about their day, consumers are used to customized experiences. Marketers have to understand this experience in the digital age and to use it to their advantage.

Customers are loyal to brands that understand them and their needs. To generate loyalty, forge a relationship with your customers. Know their wants, their needs, their preferences, situations, hopes and interrelationships. Serve them contextually relevant messages.

We live in reality – not in a sci-fi movie. Yet in the pace that reality is changing, it’s okay to scratch our heads from time to time and wonder: who could predict this just 10 years ago?

The particular app discussed in the article is “The Adderall Diaries” by Stephen Elliott and while it may look like an e-book, it offers more than just the opportunity to read the text of the book.  It allows and encourages readers to gather as a community to cultivate conversations and ask questions to each other and even the author.  These apps are creating an interactive relationship between the readers, the book and the author, which is its main value add when compared to an e-book.

From a marketing standpoint upon hearing this concept it offers an apparent opportunity to reach a targeted niche market.  With this, marketers are able to speak directly to a specific group of individuals who all have expressed interest in a topic.  This will increases the value of the communication when compared to a mass mailing via other channels.

To me, this sounds like a perfect opportunity to engage customers, build trust and increase loyalty.   We often talk about the goals of  Precision Marketing: to help marketers deliver relevant content to the right person via the right channel.  These actions coupled with engaging your customers by  listening to their requests and remembering their actions, creates a bond (loyalty) that ultimately helps increase your company’s revenue.

By listening to customers, delivering content in multiple channels, Elliott was able to create a community through basic interaction.  He gave his readers (customers) a place to share, connect, and interact.  He has created a venue to speak directly to his readers and has in return created loyal following.   A brilliant move, in my view!

Peter Weedfald, President of of General Displays & Technologies answers the question: What measures and metrics should today’s marketers be tracking to ensure ROI?  Listen to what he has to say.

Why does IT have a marketing problem? Simple. IT’s systems handle the processes that drive every exchange of information in the business. In most organizations, once a new customer comes on board, marketing tends to become less involved, and the customer is more exposed to the operational side of the business.  From point of sale, to call center, website, and statement production, IT touches every one of these key interaction points much more frequently than marketing.

Why does marketing have a data problem? IT is sitting on very rich data sets that can be priceless to your company. Marketing knows this, but most marketers feel like they’ve asked but aren’t getting what they need. Either data sets aren’t correct, or pieces and parts from different systems can’t be correlated, or the entire process is so “one-off” and  kludgy that everybody is miserable. So marketing and IT part ways, and marketing returns to what they can control — focusing on acquisition, when in many cases the much more efficient and profitable approach is focusing on growing loyalty through retention and awakening dormant customers.

This scenario is frustrating to most marketers and IT professionals alike.  However, as an IT professional with an eye on marketing, I am working to bridge the information gap.  I will be creating a series of articles designed for the IT professional to help them better understand the pains of the marketer.   While this chasm in information is not new, it has recently become center-stage as marketers focus more on delivering returns to the business, which are heavily reliant on data.

The CMO Council recently released a report on this very topic:  The CMO-CIO Alignment Imperative: Driving Revenue through Customer Relevance. I would recommend reviewing this highly insightful report.

Have you experienced this gap in the system? Is there something specific IT professionals should know?  Let me know.