Author: Michael Senger CEO, StoneMass
Does Social Media marketing bring back personalization to digital media? The ability to deliver customized content across targeted multiple social media platforms should make marketers rethink their communication strategy. Or is Social Media just another latest fad for marketers to consider in their bag of tricks.
I attended the Online Marketing Summit 2009 in San Diego. Social Media was of course the hot topic and invoked much discussion. There was one meeting debate over the effectiveness of Facebook versus Twitter to deliver personalized message. The argument for Twitter was if you manage an account and develop a good relationship with your followers, you have created a viral communication medium. Arguments for Facebook were the numerous marketing communication applications that gently exceed the 140 character limit that defines Twitter, period.
In summary, today’s economy mandates marketers derive greater ROI from investments, increase response rates and advance the customer experience. Successful marketer’s match the target audience with the right message and offer. Sounds pretty straight forward but many companies fail at this. Audience’s needs are constantly changing and timing the right marketing message and offer make this a complex endeavor. Data from CRM or customer support systems lie unused as marketers lack the understanding or motivation to analyze. Worse too, many companies rehash marketing programs every year without documenting the campaigns pros, cons and leanings. Unfortunately, marketers tend to jump to personalization to justify budgets and to over promise leads, conversions or ROI.
My research into the pURLs industry identified two early adopters; MindFire & EasyPurl. Both companies have moved to a 100% reseller model; selling their services to partners who then resell to the end-user. In summary, these two companies dominate this space, followed by a plethora of online and printing boutique shops reselling pURLS and/or VDP (variable data printing) services. As a result of these two companies dominance, their services do not differentiate greatly and their fees are fiercely competitive.
At first glance, we failed on meeting our objective of improving customer retention. However, you should be more interested in understanding what could contribute to a lower website customer satisfaction level – therefore further research into the data is required. We soon learned that a national marketing launch occurred in January. As a result, there was a huge spike in new visitor traffic to the website. Marketing and public relations were successful in driving new visitors to the site but was the cause for the drop in % returning customers.
This ‘Far Side’ comic reminds me of a company I previously worked for. This was the typical response from fellow marketers when asked what kind of metric reporting is being done to measure campaigns. Simply, no one wanted to own the metrics data or be held responsible for reporting it.