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Archive for Customer Marketing

Expert Guest Blog: “Love Customers, Even When You’re Not Sure They’re Right”

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Friday, January 7th, 2011

Ed Note: Zephyr 47 kicks off the 2011 Expert Guest Blog series with content from Greg Meyer from Gist.  Greg is an expert in managing customer experience strategies and programs and a veteran in the PacNW technology industry. Greg provides insights on how to engage with customers, even when they may not always be right.

I read Shep Hyken’s (@hyken) excellent blog post this week on 10 compelling reasons to deliver an Amazing customer experience, and found myself nodding my head at each one of his examples to treat the customer well, delight them, and to overall knock their socks off.

Hyken points out the benefits that great customer service provide to the ongoing business through improved employee morale, standout public relations, dollars saved, and happy customers.  And yet, what about the benefits of delivering an amazing customer service experience to unhappy customers?

As Customer Experience Manager for a startup, I get all kinds of inbound contacts.  Some people call me (my number is published online), some email, and some even walk in the door when they’re in the neighborhood.  Some customers think we’re doing a great job (thanks!) and others, well, think we always could be doing better.

At Gist, we love all of our customers.  We do this for a few different reasons:

  1. We make mistakes. When the customer is mad enough to tell us something, or feels very passionately that something we do is wrong, even when we think it’s right, we might actually be wrong.
  2. Even when the customer is “wrong” by policy or action, mostly that customer wants acknowledgement.  Owning the situation even when it isn’t yours improves the trust you build with that customer.
  3. The best story is told by a customer who started out mad and came away satisfied, wowed, or otherwise impressed with the kindness, accuracy, and humanity with which he or she is treated.  Leave ‘em wanting more and they will shout about you to the treetops.

So, even when the customer isn’t right, you should pay attention to them anyway. Some of our most passionate advocates have started out their relationships with us on the wrong foot.  It’s a winning organization that can take every customer contact as an opportunity to build a positive relationship, even when it doesn’t benefit you directly to do so.  Remember that the next time you get an angry email or tweet.

About Greg: Greg Meyer is the Customer Experience Manager and listening post for Gist.  (Note: Gist has been acquired by RIM.)  His past experience includes Expedia, where he led the Agent Tools Team in Global Customer Operations supporting a world-wide Customer Service and Sales team.  Prior to Expedia, Greg built and delivered e-learning content and applications for Service and Sales Representatives at T-Mobile USA. He is a start-up veteran of several early stage companies including Netegrity (now part of CA), eRoom (now part of EMC), and Allaire (now part of Adobe).  Find Greg at http://gist.com/greg and on Twitter at @GregAtGist.

Categories : Content Marketing, Customer Loyalty, Customer Marketing, Expert Guest Blog, Greg Meyer, Strategic Marketing
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Expert Guest Blog: Create a Lead Management Feedback Loop by Integrating VOC

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Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Editors Note: Zephyr 47 is honored to have this Expert Guest Blog from Debbie Pierce, the president of NitroMojo. NitroMojo provides marketing technology that focuses on listening to and scoring customer feedback to identify new sales opportunities.  Debbie was recently voted as one of the “50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2010″ by the Sales Lead Management Association.    -BH

Voice of the Customer (VOC) feedback can increase your revenues. It can tell you about the performance of your sales force, the effectiveness of your marketing activities, the quality of your product and the power of your competitors.

It can, but unfortunately for many companies, it doesn’t. Instead of making a real organizational impact, customer data sits in silos having a minimal effect on only the areas of the organization privy to the information. Here are three major pitfalls companies face when implementing a consumer relations feedback process.

1. Surveying only once or twice a year: The days of once-a-year customer satisfaction surveys are history. When the market is flooded with competitors, when product upgrades can be introduced in months (not years), when negative feedback can hit millions in minutes, companies must constantly be in-tune with the thoughts, opinions and insights of the market.

2. Asking only customers: People who have already purchased aren’t the only ones who can give you valuable feedback about your sales and marketing process. Prospects, who are currently in the midst of that process, can shed light on sales follow-up, available product education, a product’s biggest competitors and more.

3. Not getting the right people involved: If feedback data stays in silos, then there are valuable nuggets of constructive feedback about sales, product development, distribution, billing and more that aren’t getting shared with the people who can actually do something about them.

So, what is the right way to create a feedback loop for your organization? Three axioms for a successful Voice of the Customer program are:

• Ensure that the feedback happens on a continual basis.

• Ask both your customers and prospects how you’re doing.

• Route feedback to the areas of the organization mentioned in the survey. Better yet, route the feedback to the individuals within the area who have decision making authority and can act on the results.

The best way to go about reaching these goals of successful VOC program is to integrate it with your lead management system.

Think about it: a lead comes in through marketing activities and is fostered through the sales process. The relationship either ends in a sale for your company, ends in a decision to purchase another product or ends with no purchase at all. This lead is a prime target for asking the questions you need to know to make your business better. Because marketing activities are happening continuously, surveying the leads that come through these activities keep the process on-going.

NitroMojo’s patent-pending Customer Reveal™ technology takes this a step further by integrating back-end routing rules into the feedback process. When surveys come in, they are automatically sent to members of leadership for review and action.

When companies have such a program in place, they can glean critical information about their marketing efforts, sales follow-up, customer service and product.

About Debbie Pierce

Debbie Pierce is the president of NitroMojo, a Saas-based marketing and sales optimization engine that includes patent-pending functionality for Voice the Customer feedback, revenue-based ROI and distribution channel management.

Categories : Customer Marketing, Debbie Pierce, Lead Management, NitroMojo, Voice of the Customer
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Newsletter Marketing – 4 Tips to Keep Your Audience Engaged!

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Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Email Newsletter communications gives organizations a powerful way to stay engaged with customers, prospects, members, and patrons.  As a general rule, newsletter marketing is based on your audience opting-in or giving permission (explicitly or implicitly) to receive your newsletter.  Respect this permission and provide high value and informative content.

Here are best practices that any size organization can follow to build a successful newsletter marketing program.

1.  Use an email service provider.

Don’t make the mistake of sending mass email from Microsoft Outlook or a free Web-based mail service like Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, AOL, etc.  There are many advantages of using an email service provider (ESP) or marketing automation tool like Manticore Technology or Eloqua.  The main advantages of employing an ESP are deliver-ability, compliance, and security.  ESP’s have done a very good job establishing relationships and agreements with ISP’s to increase levels of legitimate commercial email deliver-ability without being filtered wrongly as spam.  By enforcing user agreements, reputable ESP’s ensure their customers use their services correctly and not maliciously.  In turn ISPs recognize the email from these sources which helps increase the probability of email delivery.  (However, this is NOT guaranteed.)

Commercial email is regulated in many countries.   In the U.S. the CAN-SPAM Act imposes strict regulations on how an email can be sent, who it is sent from, the content, and the options for recipients to opt-out.  Canada and the EU have their own regulations.  While ESP’s enable their customers to be compliant ultimately it is the responsibility of the sender to follow the rules!

2.  Avoid Fatigue: Establish Tempo & Develop a Communications Schedule

Random, infrequent, or too many email newsletters will put your reputation and relationships at risk.  With newsletters, determine a schedule that best suits your audience.  Schedules may be monthly, quarterly or even weekly in some cases.  Beware of communication that is too frequent!  A key advantage of setting a schedule is planning your content!

Don't fatigue your email subscribers with too frequent or irrelevant content

3. Format & Content – KISS

Another key advantage of using an ESP is formatting content in ways that are visually interesting and appropriate for your message and audience.  Provide content in bite sized pieces that are easy to consume.  Keep It Short and Simple.  Don’t send a novel of content that is too much to read and irrelevant.  A good idea for email newsletters are providing a paragraph intro for an article and a <link> to a web site to read more.  Compelling content will encourage click-throughs to web sites which is an important tactical metric in email marketing. Be careful with getting TOO fancy with your HTML emails.  Your email service should provide intuitive ways to create a clean and professional email.  However, if you add too many graphics, photos, banners, etc. the newsletter can look like a mishmash of Red X placeholders.

IMPORTANT:  Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010 have significant issues with how they format HTML email.  This is because Microsoft Word is the HTML reader and not IE.  Outlook also reformats certain HTML tags which can make an email look like a Picasso painting.

4. Social Media Integration

Provide ways for your recipients to share your newsletter content through social media channels.

Email newsletters and Social Media channels are very complementary to each other and offer ways to extend content reach.  News can be “shared” with simple buttons where content can be Tweeted, published to Facebook, highlighted on deL.icio.us and more.

Additionally some channels like Facebook can offer ways for users to opt-in or subscribe to newsletter content.  Constant Contact offers a plug-in like this for businesses with Facebook pages.  Zephyr 47 uses this service and it’s quite nice.  (See below) The Zephyr 47 Facebook page is here.

Newsletter marketing gives businesses of all sizes effective ways to engage a customer base, prospective customers, patrons and more.  With well developed content, a schedule, service provider, and integration with social media channels, newsletters are incredibly efficient and effective.

Categories : Constant Contact, Customer Marketing, Eloqua, Email Marketing, Manticore Technology
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Undeliverable Email – Soft Bounce and Hard Bounce

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Friday, May 28th, 2010

Are your emails bouncing like balls?

Email marketing is still a relatively young practice that many small businesses manage manually.  There are a number of risks and problems that arise if the proper tools and technologies aren’t used to increase email marketing effectiveness.

One of the more common problems is undeliverable email.  Two types of undeliverable email are soft bounces and hard bounces. In the realm of email marketing, these terms are grouped under “Bounce Rates”.

  • A hard bounce is one of the most dreaded occurances in email marketing because it means a contact is likely lost.  A hard bounce occurs when an email address simply doesn’t exist.  This can happen if your contact has left a company or an email account is deleted.
  • A soft bounce occurs when an email is being analyzed are stalled because it may be viewed as potentially harmful with viruses or spam.  The message may still be delivered to the inteded recipient but the process is delayed until trust is verified.

Simply using a desktop email client like Microsoft Office Outlook or email services like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft Hotmail and others greatly increase the problems of email bounce rates.  Risks from poor email management are lost revenue opportunities and a damaged reputation!  Here are some suggestions to help small businesses (and even larger enterprises) manage the valuable email list and reduce bounce rates.

1.  Find the right tools or technologies designed to help with email marketing.  (A service perfect for small businesses is Constant Contact. A fantastic service for larger enterprises is Eloqua. )

2.  Send confirmation emails to contacts who subscribe or opt-in to your emails.  This will help confirm the contact really wants your email and that you have the right address.

3.  Send regular and relevant emails to your contacts.  BUT, don’t OVER-EMAIL!    Sending regularly scheduled email using a recognized service provider like Constant Contact helps prevent soft bounces and keep the list up to date.

4.  Use common sense with subject lines.  We all get spam with terrible grammar, symbols, ALL-CAPS and ridiculous promotions.  Spam filters and junk email folders will commonly block, delay, filter and even delete emails with spam-like subject lines.  Put yourself in your contact’s place.  Would YOU open the email?

5. Provide a method for your contacts to opt out or unsubscribe from your email.  Always remember your contacts have given you permission to email them.  Don’t abuse that honor.  This is a best practice and quite often a legal requirement that follows anti-spam laws and regulations.

6. Provide a “Sent-By” email address that is relevant to your message and business brand.  Again, would you open an email from an unknown person?

Desktop email clients or free services like Yahoo! or AOL make email marketing very laborious for a small business.  Find a reputable, reliable, and economical email tool or service that easily automates the process and increases effectiveness and connections with customers.    Eliminate the BOUNCE!

Additional Resources

White Paper – 10 Keys to Maximize a Marketing Automation Investment

Categories : Constant Contact, Eloqua, Email Marketing, Manticore Technology, Small Business Marketing
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Why Did You Send This Email?

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Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

I have attended several conferences and meetings lately.  Like many of us, we pass out business cards or have our badges scanned, etc.  It amazes me that following an event people and companies are still casting a broad net or using a general scatter gun approach by blasting random emails.  Spray and pray doesn’t work unless you are interested in helping a Nigerian prince reclaim his lottery winnings.

Curiously I am receiving emails from people or organizations like this:

1.  Confirmation for registration to an event that I didn’t register for.

2.  Thanking me for attending an event I didn’t attend.

3.  Sending me automatic generic introduction emails from specific individuals when I have already had conversations with those people.  (Major turn-off!)

I have built my career around developing and implementing marketing strategies to develop and maintain a strong customer base.  At one point this email behavior may have been excusable.  Now it’s not.  (Plus it can be illegal in some cases.)

In the age of marketing automation where a range of solutions are available for businesses of all shapes and sizes, gaffs like these can and MUST be avoided.  The risk is relationship and reputation destruction.  Send the right information to the right people at the right time.

Here are some basic practices to consider:

1.  Avoid Laziness: If you receive a business card or e-contact info from a 1:1 conversation, don’t lazily add that contact to a random list for general follow up.  Send personal follow up messages to the right people.  Remember, relationships matter.  If you do intend to add to them a general list, remember to…

2. Ask Permission: Did you ask your contact if it was OK to send them a message or add them to a list?

3. Set Expectations: When you have a general lead capture mechanism at an event, set expectations that their names will be added to a marketing list.  You can do this in such a way that doesn’t scare people off.  It is also a self qualifying mechanism to keep out the riff-raff looking for free giveaways.  Most major events now require their exhibitors and partners to openly and clearly state contact information will be added to a database for follow up.

4. Maintain Commitments: If you have a 1:1 conversation and make a follow up commitment that is 1:1 and not intended to be generic – FOLLOW THROUGH.  Don’t add that contact to a general pool of generic email follow up.  Make sure that contact is identified and TREATED in such a way that is more personal in nature.  If you can’t handle that level of touch, you’re in the wrong business.

Dr. Udi Schlessinger wrote a similar post this week classifying 4 types of email spam he receives following events or handing out business cards.  Read the entry here at the Industry Review.  It’s worth a read.

This seems like common sense.  But obviously businesses and organizations are lacking with the amount of random and impersonal and irrelevant follow up I’ve received lately.

Are you managing your personal and general follow up in the right way?

Categories : Contact Governance, Customer Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Marketing Automation
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Personal Interaction and Relationships Still Matter

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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Even with people paying more attention to their tweets and Facebook pages from their iPhones and laptops and less to the person sitting next to them, personal interaction and relationships with customers still matter.  I have recently experienced a huge chasm between how organizations market themselves, or “engage” with customers over social media channels, and how poorly they do so upon direct contact.  It’s a split-personality experience that creates confusion and frustration. (As it did with me)  This is a long standing problem for organizations of different shapes and sizes that came to the forefront during the Dot-Not craze.  Social media by itself is not a magic vaccine that will automatically cure customer engagement problems or make it easier.  It takes hard work, focus, and dedication even if the technologies make it seemingly more efficient.  If a customer or constituent has one bad experience in person, all the hoopla around social media won’t matter!

In the never ending quest to find efficiencies with sales, customer service and support here are some of the problems that still exist:

  • Offshore customer service centers with resources who can’t fluently speak the languages needed
  • Poor hiring decisions for managers and sales staff at retail establishments
  • Inventory items that are out of stock or back ordered for weeks or months
  • Financial operations still need solid accounting practices to support customers and vendors to accrue expenses appropriately

A social media strategy must support the overall focus of the business.  A social media strategy by itself won’t help a business with severe underlying problems in people, process and technology.  And if the human interaction doesn’t support the glossy interface of social media, it won’t matter.  The customer will take their business elsewhere.

Categories : Customer Marketing, Social Media
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Are You Listening to Me?

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Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

When was your last really great experience you had as a customer?  Were your expectations EXCEEDED?  When was the last disappointing experience?  What are the ratio of great experiences to disappointments?  How much of your great experience was based on understanding your needs thanks to great listening or even you yourself listening to a satisfied customer?

In the latest bubble fad with social media, I experience more broadcast messages and not as much listening.  I see lots of “me too” chatter that pushes content for the sake of, well, pushing content.  Companies are eager to “tell their story” over and over and over and over…yet, are they really listening to the customer in return?  Or, are they even letting customers talk to each other to share knowledge and experience?  Most often I see how companies want to publish tons of content in order to help prospects make a buying decision or to get existing customers to buy more.  There is certainly a place for this.  But in many ways this is like the new era of publishing brochureware.  Remember the days when marketing departments measured success on the amount of collateral or PR sent to the wire?  (See my previous post “Smarter, Faster, Stronger with Marketing Automation”)  Companies that don’t have a well planned customer marketing strategy that focuses on the right balance of broadcasting and listening will win.  Those that simply broadcast will die.

Amazon.com Gets It

I am a loyal customer to Amazon.com.  I have purchased a vast array of products from them for 13 years.  One of the most valuable services they provide are customer reviews and ratings.  I have caught myself many times when I was ready to purchase based on some manufacturer’s broadcast hype and then I read multiple customer reviews that provided sobering reality.  Even though Amazon isn’t the manufacturer, they open the kimono and sit in silent neutrality when customers want to share information – good or bad.  Amazon’s fellow customers help me be an Amazon customer.

Before getting into the classic marketing cycle of broadcasting messages and storytelling, remember that half of the conversation is listening.

  • Provide easy avenues for feedback.
  • Let your customers talk to each other.
  • Respond rapidly with inquiries.
  • Confirm that the right information was provided.
  • Admit when mistakes are made.
  • Fix the mistakes.
  • Let your customers sell to your customers.  BINGO!

The organizations that do marketing the best are the ones who understand when to be quiet and listen and let other customers sell for them.

Quiet please.  Time to listen.

Categories : Content Marketing, Customer Marketing
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Extend Your Marketing Campaigns with Social Media

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Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

I work with marketing colleagues every week in businesses of all shapes and sizes who try to distinguish the hype from the reality when using social media with customer marketing campaigns.  Sadly the marketing ethos is loaded with “social media gurus” and “experts” who offer little more than gimmicks for MLM marketing and Google adwords campaigns while professing the need to “tell stories” in order to engage customers.  (Insert gag reflex here)  Typically these self-described experts don’t work to understand the voice of the customer or identify the objectives and goals and the strategy to achieve them. Don’t abandon sound planning by randomly throw spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks! (I recently wrote about Desired Outcomes and the SOSTAC method for effective planning and execution.)

A Model Worth Trying – Using Social Media to Support Marketing Campaigns

I recently implemented a high performing B2B social media and web campaign strategy for a B2B technology company which effectively extended e-mail campaigns and a newly branded web site.  These campaigns were automated and integrated with a CRM system and metrics were captured using a BI tool and Google Analytics.

The objectives were to re-connect with a large and passionate global community of customers and partners.  The supporting goals were to increase overall organic search performance, web site traffic, and lead conversion rates for annual campaigns and nurturing programs.  The expectations were high but achievable.  A critical strategic component of the overall plan was extending the web site site with focused and manageable social media channels which included a Facebook Group, Twitter page, YouTube channel and a blog that provided high value content for a specific customer segment.

Following the strategic campaign calendar, we structured the social media channels to support campaigns in this manner:

1.  Campaign Landing Pages: Campaign Theme and Content Toolkit that provided free downloads for basic content or required forms for higher value content.

2. Website: The homepage had a specific section dedicated to promoted the latest campaign with compelling content and a call to action.

3. Blog: Provided high-value content that described a real world application of the technology solution which may include best practices or a customer case study.  We ALWAYS had a call to action at the end of the blog to encourage commentary or to “learn more, download our podcast/white paper/assessmeent tool, etc.

4. Twitter: Promote the latest blog entry or case study or other high value content using targeted hashtags and bit.ly links.  Bit.ly links provide a high level method for measuring click through rates.

5. Facebook Group: This was used to promote the latest content or events with direct links back to the web site or blog in order to encourage conversions and engagement.

6. YouTube Channel: For each campaign we promoted supporting content on our YouTube channel.  This was designed as high value informative content which included a call to action to visit the web site or campaign landing page.

7. Marketing Automation: The cohesive component that tied each of these channels together was the use of a marketing automation system.  We were able to measure the conversion rates on every channel from the initial email, the landing pages, blogs, web site.

We found these extra channels extended our campaign reach beyond our standard in-house and 3rd party email lists and significantly increased conversion rates.  There were a number of reasons for this:

1. Improved organic search performance. On specific keyword searches, we had more content available from multiple channels which displaced competitors deeper into search results.  More content was made available and was easier to find.
2. Contacts had more options to experience content at their pace. When they were ready to engage more directly, they would complete simple forms to reveal their identities.  Our prospects were better informed and more highly qualified when they engaged with sales.
3. More engagement based on problem solving inquiries and information sharing. Our customers, prospects, and partners engaged in different ways taking advantage of new forums and channels.  Prospects found ways to connect with us instead of only talking with a sales representative.  Our partners provided valuable information and commentary on best practices or product information.

This is basic model that can deliver results with proper planning and implementation and high value content.  I would like to hear how you extend your campaigns with social media channels.

Categories : Customer Marketing, Marketing Campaigns, Marketing Communications, Social Media, Social Media Marketing
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