Non-Line Blogging

We've come a long way with on-line analytics in a short period of time.  A couple of years ago we were all relatively happy with the "last click wins" referrer model and merrily shovelled money into Google's bank account.  Today we are more likely to obsess about attributing a fair percentage of a sale to the efforts of a number of digital activities;  as we always knew, somebody may have seen a banner and clicked on an affiliate link BEFORE using a search engine to find your site, so we'd better juggle our advertising spend accordingly.  But how far should we go down this attribution path, and if you give up too soon what effect will this have on how we judge success? 

Let's walk through the process.  Using a simple analytics funnel we can see what source generates a "successful outcome" - could be a sales lead for a BtoB organisation or a booking for a holiday company.  I've not included any time scales in these examples as the period from trigger to successful outcome will vary from one product to the next.

As I've already mentioned, we've probably come to terms with the over-simple view of the "last click wins" attribution model.  We may even be able to link together all our on-line advertising activity and identify dates of key events like "viewing one of our display ads on-line" or "clicking on an advert on a partner site".  We can then get a feel for the on-line customer journey (as we feel we have influenced it)

Most marketers seem to be at this point and we can get really excited about deciding what is a fair way to atribute the relative importance of all this channel activity.  However, let's not forget the importance of social media at this point - does somebody who goes to a LinkedIn discussion forum or plays with a Facebook widget mean we should give them some credit?  If we're not careful we overlook some of the digital experiences people may have, simply because we may not have tracked them in the past.

One that is relatively easy to track is the presence of email in the overall journey, but as this is often not included as part of the "advertising tools" we may under-represent the role email plays.  It does not usually sit with the "acquisition tool" family and is often overlooked when implementing multi-source tracking like DoubleClick's Floodlight or the newer offering from TagMan.   Matching an email file to a list of "successful outcome" email addresses may yield this multi-channel impact, but this is a manual, somewhat "clunky" production process. 

However, the big problem with our lovely "closed" view of our customers' mind is that it is frequently polluted by mucky, grubby off-line advertising.  Maybe it was a print ad that stimulated the click on a banner, or perhaps a direct mail pack thumping onto somebody's door mat that promped a branded search, as we can see below..

So the conclusion is a bit worrying.  No matter how much we obsess about our digital customer journey and no matter how clever we get with our attribution algorithm, we may have got the "demand generator" completely wrong.  As there is no way to isolate all off-line noise from our customers' minds, and whilst it is still rare (but not impossible!) to track off-to-on-line conversions we are happy to pretend that we have got a really accurate fix on how we get our sales.  Maybe we are not making as many strides in the world of attribution analytics as we think, and are happy to stumble on with our tracking tags.

And if you think I'm being a bit harsh, ask yourself this question:  

If one of your prospects is on the cusp of becoming a customer, will sending them a direct mail pack or making an out-bound phone call help to nudge them towards a branded search on Google?  

If your answer is, at worst, a reluctant "probably", maybe we need to re-think how much value single-channel attribution modeling really delivers and worry less about divvying up our on-line budget between a few suppliers.  Perhaps we should even be trying to invest more in reaching people off-line at the right stage of the digital process? So there.

A few years ago the email marketing community was trembling with fear at the arrival of RSS feeds. Outlook 2007 was built to make their subscription, rendering and filing smooth and efficient; RSS readers like Newsgator and GoogleReader circumvented spam filtering of any kind; and distribution was even cheaper than email – completely free!

Today email and RSS live in peace and harmony. Content-driven organisations have developed elegent RSS capabilites to link new articles with interested readers, whilst email continues to be the workhorse of marketing departments – delivering “successful outcomes” across the acquisition, conversion and retention cycle.  There is no suggestion of dropping one for the other - they do slightly different things. 

So with trepidation we hear that once again email is under threat, this time from the shiny, fluffy world of Social Media. Web users are flocking to the tweeting of Stephen Fry and the poking of Facebook groups. But once again, reports of the death of email are grealy exaggerated. 

Its itonic that social media sites are some of the most prolific email marketers – using the channel to inform people of changes to site status and getting people to a page in a simple click. At The Email Academy we are already seeing clients asking us how we can integrate their email retention programmes into their social media activity. Welcome programmes for new subscribers to a Facebok Product Group? Progressive registration via a web form link to learn more about Twitter followers? Aggregating forum discussions from LinkedIn into weekly newsletters? 

For experienced email marketers all these social media interactions give us a new layer of clickstream data to interrogate and respond to with even more relevant, engaging communications. Social Media? Bring it on!

I was recently asked at short notice to stand in for a speaker on Mobile Marketing at the Central and Eastern Europe Digital Marketing Conference in Budapest.  As luck would have it, the speaker's table had a bottle of Pepsi on it and gave me an extra 10 minutes worth of content.  On the bottle label was a QR Code and so I talked enthusiastically about how this technology can drive traffic to web sites for free.

In short, a QR code can hold a huge amount of information but all most of us need it to do is carry a url.  Then, anybody with a smart phone that has the software installed can take a picture of the code and open up our destination site.  Cost of creation of QR Code?  Nothing.  Cost of printing on label?  Nothing. Value of free traffic to your site? Priceless!

I've been following the development of QR codes for several years and whilst they are big in Japan, they do not really seem to have caught on in Western marketing culture...until this morning.  There I am, munching on my super-food muesli flicking through the daily paper and out pops a full page display ad with...a QR Code!  

To be honest, I'm not wildly excited about what Siemens has to say about "Climate Change and Energy Supply", but they did take me from an off-line display ad to a mobile web site in seconds, for no effort.  I'm also just a little more engaged.  And I think Siemens is a bit cooler than before thanks to my multi-channel customer journey (how sad am I?)

So, what are the opportunities for QR codes?  Well, they should probably augment all ad copy that currently just has a url...why ask people to go to a long site address when you can whisk them there in seconds by mobile? That means we can deliver them to deep url's and not just easy to remember/type urls. 

How about store windows taking people to a "Voucher download" page?  Or they should be on all direct mail collateral. And packaging, and exhibition stands...and posters.  Business cards?  Company Cars?!

Then there is the art and science of building landing pages;  how can we harvest personal data from the visit?  What should be the call to action? How do we measure success?  In truth, the volumes from this activity will not be overwhelming, but for the tech savvy segment of your prospect pool this may be cool enough (and easy enough) to tip them over into becoming customers. 

So, we've a long way to go with QR Codes, but what an exciting journey.   And for those of you wanting to play with me in the land of QR, here is all you need to begin:

• Create your QR Code web url - it's free and easy at this site
• Or if you want a Vcard - Nokia have a jolly clever tool for that (accept their T's and C's before use)
• Scan it using QR Code smart phones - here is Nokia's range
• Or download the software

That's it - just to get you started, here's my QR Business card.  And just for the record, even I'm not geeky or sad enough to have my Facebook url printed on a T-shirt, but if that's your bag, this company will do that for you.  Happy QR Coding!  

Here are a few thoughts about "Non-Line Marketing" that I pulled together with Chris Combemale, my Co-Founder of The Email Academy... 

As these difficult trading conditions continue many organisations are looking at ways to reduce their direct marketing costs without adversely affecting sales. One quick win has been trying to migrate customers from expensive off-line channels to cheaper on-line ones; speaking to people through email, at about half a pence a message, is a more attractive than saying the same thing through direct mail at maybe fifty pence a message. This cost-differential (email is 100 times cheaper than direct mail) means that email is a much more forgiving medium - your conversion rates could be half as good through email but still be 50 times better off in terms of cost per sale!

However, there is a business risk involved in this channel migration. If you ask people to “tune out” of nasty, expensive, un-green direct mail then you put pressure on your email marketing to perform. In my experience over the past decade across Europe there are very few client companies that have optimised their email marketing strategy and execution to make this risky channel migration pay. So I was delighted to read a case study from Marketing Sherpa today that suggests some steps all companies can take to reduce risk AND increase sales.

To summarise, an independent travel agent encouraged people to opt into their email programme to reduce the costs of servicing customers – all good so far! But in order to stimulate sales they decided to run a multi-channel campaign. With some simple data appending on their prospect file (adding life-stage and income variables is easy if you have a post-code), they selected the most affluent prospects for the campaign, as well as targeting all existing customers. They then used a combination of direct mail and email to promote personalised offers, with a range of on and off-line calls to action.

Here is the personalised post-card, with a "reminder" of the previous transaction in the heading.

And here is the email message, with the same "reminder" of previously-enjoyed holidays... 

 
Now here’s the good stuff...

“The team noticed that those who received both the print and email communications were twice as likely to visit their personalized web pages.

- 6% of those who received only email visited their webpage
- 12% of those who received both email and direct mail visited their webpage

That doubling in response also translated to twice the conversion rate and twice the revenue from customers who received both communications, as opposed to customers who only received one communication.”

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31299

The conclusion for me is clear. Our customers live in a multi-channel world and as marketers we need to embrace “non-line marketing”...using channel-neutral planning to harness all direct channels to engage with people. Humble direct mail can be used to re-enforce on-line messages and drive prospects to web sites in much the same way that email can be used to drive footfall to physical stores. And when we use both these channels in well-planned, targeted campaigns we enjoy conversion rates far beyond that which each channel achieves on its own. That’s heartening news for the direct marketing industry!