Download Identifying The Right Customer Strategy

Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
Identifying The Right Customer Strategy
With the Engagement Marketing Trajectory, brands know exactly where they
stand with customers — and have a framework for where they want to go.
When perception trumps reality in business, it can
result in a disparity between where a brand thinks it
is positioned in the market, and where data proves it
to be. A brand could also think it knows exactly how
customers perceive it, only to find that data reveals
a different story. When perception and reality don’t
align, advantageous marketing opportunities exist to
bridge the gap.
To measure a brand’s marketing maturity and
level of customer engagement, Ansira has created
a framework called the Engagement Marketing
Trajectory (EMT). This framework helps clients:
•Understand the impact of their current
marketing execution
•Identify where they want to be in terms
of customer centricity
•Outline the technological platforms, tools,
systems, and content needed to reach the
desired level of customer centricity
The manner in which a brand markets to customers
will impact its position within the framework, and
any shift is dependent upon desired customer
relationship goals, budget considerations, and
timeline.
The EMT serves as a visual guide to help all
stakeholders discover a brand’s true market
position — and helps determine the level of
customer centricity it needs to meet marketing and
business goals.
The Engagement Marketing
Trajectory visually guides all
stakeholders to discover a
brand’s true market position.
•Demonstrate how the brand compares relative
to key competitors and industry leaders
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
Ansira’s Framework
The type of relationship a brand wants with its customers
will impact its engagement strategy, which in turn is
dependent on the nature of the product or service. For
example, a toaster company doesn’t necessarily need to
create two-way dialogue with customers because those
customers simply want the toaster they purchase to work.
But if the brand is Disney, the desired outcome is quite
different: Customers want an individualized experience
that focuses on entertainment, amusement, and creating
memories.
A brand’s level of customer centricity is also impacted
by budget, as well as the point of diminishing returns.
For example, grocery stores have the data to offer
individualized communications, but the return on
investment is small and doesn’t justify the cost of the
robust marketing campaign this would require. When it
comes to determining marketing spend, brands must first
determine how much of an investment is relevant and
appropriate for their particular product or service.
Ansira assists clients with their marketing strategy by
analyzing the brand in its current state to determine
where it falls within the EMT framework. The greater the
depth and breadth of marketing capabilities used, the
farther to the right the brand will fall on the trajectory.
Product Focus
BROADCAST
EXPAND
• Brand and
promotional
messaging
• Branded
experience
across channels
• Little to
no data
leveraged
• Not
individualized
• Data is in silos
Product-Focused Brands: These companies market
to customers with promotional messaging (email
communication or direct mail, for example) but use little
to no data to determine messaging, frequency, channel,
or cadence. The brand may take its marketing up a notch
if it leverages a branded experience across channels, but
the messages aren’t individualized and any data used
is analyzed in silos. Examples: Automobile warranty and
residential real estate companies that send untargeted direct
mail campaigns to a mass list.
Communication-Focused Brands: These brands want to
connect with customers, but are focusing on the outcome
of the communication rather than focusing on one-to-one
marketing strategies. Brands in this category may use
analytics to offer more relevant customer experiences,
and some use predictive analytics to communicate in the
customer’s preferred channel. Example: Retailers that send
email discounts/coupons focused on driving immediate
campaign sales results.
Customer-Centric Brands: These brands are focused
on engaging customers and delivering an impactful
experience. Marketing strategies include proactive,
individualized, real-time communications to shape the
customer’s journey. Brands that are the most customercentric see marketing as the key to putting the customer
first, and have the technology infrastructure in place
to support and orchestrate one-to-one relationships.
Examples: Disney and Zappos, which offer immersive,
relevant, individualized customer experiences.
Communication
Focus
CONNECT
Customer Focus
CONVERSE
ENGAGE
• Single view of the
customer across
channels
• Use analytics to
deepen individual
experiences
• Trigger and
segmented
communications
• Predict behavior
and converse in the
relevant channel
• Real-time
and proactive
communications
during journey
EXPERIENCE
• View marketing
as interrelated,
real-time
interactions that
cumulatively
• Move to
make up
always-on
the customer
communications experience
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
The type of relationship a brand
wants with its customers will impact
its engagement strategy.
How We Do It
•Provide the framework for discussions around where
the client would like to be in relation to its competitors
or industry leaders
•If the brand is conversing with customers but its
competition is engaging customers, what does the
brand need to do to increase customer centricity?
•Determine where customers expect the brand should
be in relation to its competitors and industry leaders
The EMT framework allows Ansira to conduct a formal
assessment of a brand’s current state, laying the
groundwork for a comprehensive marketing strategy
designed to boost or enhance customer engagement.
The EMT is a vital part of the business planning process
and eliminates the guesswork that often shapes the
brand’s perception of its market position.
The EMT framework informs strategic conversations, and
provides a roadmap to where the client would like to be in
order to achieve greater customer centricity.
Determining where a brand falls on the EMT starts with
a discovery phase. Ansira conducts interviews with
key stakeholders that help the strategists at Ansira
understand how and where the client is marketing today,
as well as the type of infrastructure in place. Some of the
questions include: How individualized is your content?
What platforms and technologies do you use? What kind
of data do you use to drive communications?
By leveraging the EMT, brands have
a formal, consistent way to assess
marketing positions today and again
in the future.
Once the answers are in, the team uses a scoring system,
and the output pinpoints where the brand falls within the
EMT framework. This assessment helps to:
Customer-Centric Brands Integrate
Strategy and Systems
•Determine where the client is today with its
marketing strategy
• Is the brand informing customers or providing
a truly engaging experience?
•Compare actual assessment results to where the
client perceives it is in order to uncover gaps, or
corroborate accuracy
•Discover where the client would like to be in terms
of customer centricity
• Does the brand need to provide a more
individualized experience to gain market share?
•Determine the level of effort/budget available to
support future marketing programs — and adjust
expectations
•Determine the right programs and support needed to
move the brand along the trajectory toward its
ultimate goal, or if the client is in the right place, keep
them in their current location
• Do customers think the brand’s competition is
providing a more relevant experience? If so, why?
The brand’s position on the trajectory and desired future
goals are dependent upon three critical dimensions:
technology, customer intelligence, and activation
channels.
The farther to the right a company is on the framework,
the more integrated the strategy and systems have to be.
Brands that are positioned to the right will:
•Deliver a consistent, relevant experience to the
customer every time — and their customers will
have grown to expect it
•Leverage an omni-channel orchestration platform
to utilize all available marketing channels, from email
and websites to SMS and loyalty programs
•Create content that is hyperfocused to reflect what
customers are interested in, and deliver it in a manner
consistent with customers’ preferences
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
Extent to Which U.S. CMOs/Marketing Leaders Agree That Their
Company Is Trying To Become More Customer-Centric,* Oct 2015
% of respondents
Strongly Agree
46%
Agree
2%
44%
My organization is
already as customercentric as it should be
7% Disagree
1% Strongly Disagree
*Note: in terms of strategic investments and overall business goals.
Source: Korn Ferry Institute, “Marketing Pulse Survey 2015,” Dec 4, 2015.
www.eMarketer.com
For brands on the right side of the trajectory, content
and channels must be integrated, and systems must
be aligned. Customer-centric marketing requires
campaign management, content management, and
real-time orchestration. Customer centricity requires
that every facet of marketing — from email and mobile
communications to in-store interactions — must give the
customer the most relevant, individualized experience
possible at every turn.
Technology Needs, from Left to Right
Once a brand decides to pursue a more customer-centric
approach, the brand’s position on the trajectory and
its desired future state will inform decisions around
what types of data, tools, and platforms are necessary
to achieve results. Moving across the trajectory from
broadcast (left) to experience (right), the following are
examples of the types of technology used by brands at
each point.
The type of relationship a brand wants with its
customers will impact its engagement strategy.
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
BROADCAST
EXPAND
• Brand and
promotional
messaging
• Branded
experience
across channels
• Little to
no data
leveraged
• Not
individualized
• Data is in silos
CONNECT
CONVERSE
ENGAGE
• Single view of the
customer across
channels
• Use analytics to
deepen individual
experiences
• Trigger and
segmented
communications
• Predict behavior
and converse in the
relevant channel
• Real-time
and proactive
communications
during journey
• Broadcast: Brands are sending batch-and-blast
communications to customers, often with a singular
message and through singular channels. Customer data
may be leveraged, but is typically pulled from source
systems. The technology used is simple and executional
in nature.
• Expand: Leveraging the technology in play at the
Broadcast level, additional channels are added in order
to reach customers. Messaging is consistent across
channels in a manual management fashion. Data is siloed,
with platforms often serving singular roles, and little
intelligence is gained across executional channels.
• Connect: Data is a large focus. Brands create a singular
view of the customer across marketing campaigns. This
often leads to more intelligent prospecting across efforts
and additional programs, which are more timely and
targeted to customers. Technology is largely dependent
upon data quality and customer data integration, or
master data management efforts at the database level
that link disparate critical data to one file. Executional
platforms may still remain siloed with some crossfunctionality in order to ensure proper tracking and
feedback loops.
EXPERIENCE
• View marketing
as interrelated,
real-time
interactions that
cumulatively
• Move to
make up
always-on
the customer
communications experience
• Converse: Building upon the consolidated customer
view in the Connect level, increased intelligence is built
through data appends and statistical software to build
models. Here, the marketing strategy uses predictive
analytics so that communications can focus on meeting
a customer’s needs. Conversations take place within the
channels where customers are most active. Content is
tied to consumer segments or attributes, with increased
dynamic communication capabilities and platforms.
• Engage: At this point on the trajectory, customers are
starting to engage in two-way dialogue with brands in
a perceived real-time manner. Strong data platforms
with integrated sources and complete response loops
linking anonymous and known consumers are at play,
along with progressive technology that is nimble and
responsive. Always-on communications take precedence
over planned campaigns, or at the very least complement
complex communication channels.
• Experience: Here, consumers experience brands
in a real-time manner with mutual value exchange.
Technology platforms are sophisticated and often
transcend the control of marketing departments, which
can provide an extra challenge in order to realize this
vision.
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
Stack or Scale?
When brands move from left to right along the trajectory,
another technological consideration is whether or not
to utilize a singular solution stack — Oracle or Adobe
Marketing Cloud, for example — or a flexible, best-inclass platform that can be customized and scalable to
include components designed to manage time-critical
events and logical next steps as customers interact with
the brand. Technology is an investment, and clients must
determine the amount of resources they can invest, as
well as the point of diminishing returns.
The brand’s position on the trajectory
and its desired future state will inform
decisions around what types of data,
tools, and platforms are necessary to
achieve results.
Intelligence
The technology in place also helps determine the level
of intelligence available to the client. As a brand moves
across the trajectory, Ansira’s analytics team can leverage
deeper, more comprehensive data driving intelligence to
better understand customer behaviors and sales.
When moving to the right side of the trajectory, data
gathering becomes more involved because there are
more channels, variables, and complexities that need
to be integrated. And, as the brand integrates across
different channels and various programs to understand
customers on an individualized basis, the marketing
tactics also evolve, such as from a simple email blast
to an individualized customer journey across many
mediums.
For example, for brands positioned at the far left of the
trajectory, Ansira can measure sales lift before and after a
commercial airs to gauge its effectiveness. At the far right
of the trajectory, Ansira can analyze the effectiveness of
relevant, real-time offers triggered by in-store beacons in
order to quantify sales.
Intelligence: Product-Focused Brand
Analytics focus on sales or channel performance and
optimization (for example, subject line testing for emails
or sales match back for direct mail). While this information
is very important, it’s backward looking versus forward
looking, and does not take into account any interactions
within the medium spectrum.
Intelligence: Communication-Focused Brand
The addition of individual-level data enables not only a
more longitudinal view of a customer, but also the ability
to implement descriptive and prescriptive analytical
techniques. Profiling and segmentation can ensure the
most relevant communication content is pushed while
propensity models can be developed to determine the
right time to communicate. Additionally, the ability to
tie behavior to a single customer allows multi-touch
attribution gauging the performance of all marketing
tactics with which a person has interacted.
Intelligence: Customer-Focused Brand
When always-on tech enables a two-way exchange
between customer and brand, intelligence is at a true
1:1 level. In addition to evaluating the propensity of a
customer to exhibit a behavior, customers themselves
provide data into the feedback loop by specifying what
is most valuable, resulting in individual algorithms
that continuously feed the intelligence and drive the
experience.
As a brand moves across the
trajectory, Ansira’s analytics
team can leverage deeper, more
comprehensive data-driving
intelligence to better understand
customer behaviors and sales.
Activating the Strategy
Once the client assessment is complete, next comes the
plan of attack. Ansira takes all of the information from
the discovery phase and works closely with stakeholders
to understand the channels, content, and tools needed
to reach the desired level of customer centricity — and
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
then builds a roadmap to reach the new point on the
trajectory.
Since every client is unique, the tools needed to activate
the strategy will vary. Some of the possibilities include
shifting to a new email service provider for a campaign,
implementing a data management platform for digital
advertising, and using beacons to deliver real-time
mobile content.
Once the activation plan is in motion, Ansira sets key
performance indicators to measure and optimize results.
Ansira sets key performance indicators
to measure and optimize results.
Steps to Success
When an organization makes the decision to implement
change and move its position along the trajectory, there
are four keys for a successful transformation:
1.All In. The executive, management, and marketing
teams need to be on the same page and in favor
of change. Moving to a customer-centric approach
requires investment and organizational change, and
unless the entire team is on board, the effort will be
difficult.
3.Have a Well-Defined Plan. Whether the move
along the trajectory is big or small, change requires
a well-defined and well-communicated plan
that includes strategy, milestones, roles, phases,
preparation for rollout, and reality checks. The plan
should also outline costs so that stakeholders can be
sure that the budget matches the ambition.
4.Understand That Change Has a Price Tag. The
organization needs to examine the cost for potential
technology overhauls, customer intelligence analysis,
and activation, including emerging channels, new
content, and new capabilities. Marketers often tend
to understand desired outcomes and goals, but
underestimate the initial investment. In order to
deliver real outcomes, brands will have to invest in the
technology and innovation necessary to facilitate them.
Moving across the EMT is an
incremental process that can
lead to a brand’s elevation in the
marketplace.
With the EMT, brands know exactly where they stand with
customers — and have a framework for where they want
to go next.
2.Culture Is King. Culture and strategy must be
aligned. Organizations need to examine their culture
and make sure it allows for a customer-centric
strategy. For example, if a health insurance company
wants to pivot from being a policy writer to a
healthy-outcomes advocate, it needs to ensure that
its employees have the tools and the training to
promote health and wellness. This requires a cultural
shift from focusing on minimizing risk (policy writing)
to helping customers live healthier lives (providing
wellness-related content).
Visit Ansira.com for more on customer engagement
services and thought leadership. Follow us on Facebook
and LinkedIn.
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Identifying The Right
Customer Strategy
Ansira: The Data-Driven Results
Marketing Agency
Ansira continually engages customers along the entire
consumer life cycle and purchase funnel, using conversion
optimization to drive higher sales at a lower cost. Our
customer-centric approach applies data and analytics
to every interaction, helping clients maximize customer
profitability and optimize customer experiences. Designed
to adapt with our clients’ ever-changing consumer base,
we take the guesswork out of marketing.
Our repeatable programs integrate all channels and
media to steer consumers along the path to purchase
(pre- and post–), leading to predictive ROI modeling.
While traditional conversion optimization measures only
one phase of the conversion process, we measure each
and every consumer touchpoint to determine the best
way to maximize marketing spend. Every single program
is viewed as an opportunity to test, learn and optimize.
Using multivariate and A/B testing, Ansira continually
scrutinizes a variety of factors, including landing page
effectiveness, messaging and targeting methodologies. We
take full advantage of the latest in technology, message
delivery and measurement.
Terms to Know
Engagement Marketing Trajectory (EMT):
A tool that Ansira uses to help clients
understand how they market to customers
relative to key competitors and industry
leaders.
Customer-Centricity: A marketing strategy
in which all content and communications
are designed and delivered with the
customer experience in mind.
Omni-channel Orchestration: Delivering
relevant content across all available
channels — i.e. websites, print, social,
e-mail, SMS, and loyalty programs — in
a systematic, integrated manner that
prioritizes customer preferences for
messaging, delivery, and cadence.
Contact Ansira at www.ansira.com
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© 2016 Ansira. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.