How Analytics Is Transforming Customer Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs are crucial.

The goal of loyalty initiatives is to engage, not pander more products to frequent buyers.

But how do you determine if your loyalty program is working well?

Use data to steer your customer loyalty program in the right direction.

McKinsey found that “executive teams that make extensive use of customer data analytics across all business decisions see a 126% profit improvement over companies that don’t.”

“By instituting a loyalty program, you not only improve customer appreciation of your business, but you also increase the chances that existing clients will share this joy with those close to them,” says Steve Olenski, a senior creative content strategist at Oracle Responsys.

Upgrade your loyalty program. Let’s explore how.

Focusing on Retention

One primary mission of loyalty programs is to increase customer retention. You want buyers to remain with your brand after they make a purchase.

For your business, higher retention means a steady flow of revenue. And it cuts down on your costs to constantly acquire new customers.

Therefore, your loyalty programs must be effective. They need to serve a real purpose for the consumer, not just your bottom line.

To provide the best customer experience, fuse data into your retention strategies. It will impact how your team approaches the buyer.

“Influencing customer loyalty in this way doesn’t require magic, it requires data – usually data that you already have but aren’t using to full advantage. Regardless of industry, most organizations today generate mountains of data,” writes Mike Flannagan, vice president and general manager of Cisco.

Uncover the correlation between customer characteristics and purchasing behavior. Assign your team to analyze the current data of your most valuable customers. And learn which characteristics these customers have in common and which traits are dissimilar.

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Consider data an ongoing process of observing, acting, and learning. Improve your loyalty programs by taking action on your insights. Measure success by monitoring your customer lifetime value, loyal customer rate, and redemption rate.

Start with retention. And let the data guide you to customer loyalty.

Targeted Product Recommendations

Research shows that “customers that are actively engaged with brands and their loyalty programs make 90% more frequent purchases, spend 60% more in each transaction and are five times more likely to choose the brand in the future.”

Sending targeted product recommendations is one way to keep customers engaged. Because if they are not receptive to certain products, consumers will feel more inclined to take their business elsewhere.

Integrate real-time purchase data with historical purchase data to make specific recommendations. For example, if a small business bought payroll software from you, their team might be interested in purchasing your series of on-demand accounting webinars.

“Consumer data must be analyzed to create highly targeted product recommendation offers. Analyze consumer data such as demographics, lifestyle, products purchased by category and type, frequency of purchase, and purchase value,” states Larisa Bedgood, director of marketing at DataMentors.

It’s key not to draw wild conclusions from one piece of data. Just because a Florida resident buys a winter coat doesn’t mean he wants to be flooded with similar recommendations. The consumer might have bought it as a gift for a friend living in Michigan.

So, gather multiple data points in order to make intelligent recommendations. You don’t want to frustrate loyal customers.

Your brand also can take a different approach. Use social proof to your advantage. If consumers are hesitant about particular products, remind them that other people are buying the product, too.

Home Depot uses this tactic by displaying a list of bestselling inventory. It persuades the customer to join the crowd.

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Sift through your analysis reports. Uncover the best product recommendations for your customers.

Timely Promotions

For customers, loyalty takes effort. They receive lots of promotional ads everyday to try products from other brands. Appreciating your consumer’s urge to resist the hype is important.

Mobile phone carriers lead the way in baiting consumers to switch their services. AT&T offers cell phone users up to $650 in credit just to say bye to T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon.

To keep their loyalty, customers will hold your team accountable. They expect timely promotions that not only fit their buying habits but also their lifestyles.

At the end of the day, you want to deliver the right offer at the right time. This will increase the likelihood of the promotion redemption.

Monitor the sales data to learn when promotional codes are redeemed. Do your consumers use promotions more often in the morning? Right after a sales announcement? Or during summer months?

“By creating a time-sensitive sales promotion and having a good grasp on your target customer demographic, you’ll be able to incentivize the right actions, get them to respond, and grow your business in the process,” states Humayun Khan, former content marketer at Shopify.

Moreover, analyze your reports to discover the best product promotions. A timely discount matched with the wrong product won’t be useful for the consumer or your company.

Segment your customers to offer relevant discounts for multiple channels—in-store, online, and mobile. Every loyalty member doesn’t have to receive the same offer.

For instance, Starbucks offers its Gold members the opportunity to earn double stars. The coffee company surprises its loyal consumers on a different day each month. This technique increases the excitement and prepares customers to spend more money on a particular day.

Don’t wait for your competitor to offer your customers a good deal. Start creating your own timely promotions.

Personalized Rewards

Everyone likes to be rewarded. It signifies that you’ve done something commendable. And incentives compel you to continue the rewarded behavior.

Recognize the value of your customer’s actions. Because that’s what you’re rewarding.

You can offer perks based on monetary transactions, shopping frequency, or even survey responses. It’s all about showing appreciation for consumers’ actions.

But it’s your team’s job to appropriately reward customers. Don’t expect people to buy $1000 worth of services in one month if your highest service retails at $10.

In addition, manage your loyalty members’ expectations. They shouldn’t expect your brand to give away free Beyonce tickets every day.

Personalized rewards ensure you’re giving your customers what they desire. It also shows that you are truly invested in the customer experience.

Send a simple email survey asking consumers what type of incentives excite them. Or conduct social media listening to identify useful prizes that can make your customers’ lives better.

Dick’s Sporting Goods sends emails asking customers for their opinions. The company uses the information to improve its inventory and customer service.

Remember to focus on maintaining positive relationships with your consumers. Because that’s the ultimate goal for loyalty initiatives.

You want people to feel comfortable with your brand. Aim to offer rewards that bridge the gap between the consumer-brand relationship.

“A significant aspect of customer loyalty comes down to your likability. People will almost always remain committed to a brand if they believe they’ve developed a genuine and mutually beneficial relationship,” says Entrepreneur contributor Dave Thompson.

Tailor your rewards to satisfy your customers. Offer them something special.

Analyze Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty can lead to retention. That’s why your team must use data to drive your loyalty programs.

Give consumers targeted product recommendations they can’t resist. Send promotions at the right time. And personalize rewards so the customer feels part of the brand.

Look at the data. Improve customer loyalty programs.

Did you know? With Kissmetrics, you can find your most valuable customer segments. Analyze customer behavior to understand where they’re coming from and how to acquire more of your best customers.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

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Is This the Next Step in Marketing Automation?

Friday Five, a curated collection of five recent articles on one topic. This time it's all about Marketing Automation.

Personalized Videos: the Next Step in Marketing Automation

If you want to stay ahead of the game in the competitive binary options marketplace, then you need to ensure that you harness the power of the most effective marketing tools. When it comes to attracting visitors to your website, encouraging those visitors to become paying customers and then retaining those clients, you need to be sure that you are active in all forms of marketing engagement.

Read the full story on financemagnates.com.

5 Top Ways Marketing Automation Is Making Your Brand Look Bad

I write a lot about marketing automation here and usually I'm just trying to get people to understand that it's an extremely beneficial thing for your business if done right. The only problem with that is, there are also times it just makes us dumber as human beings. When done incorrectly, automation can encourage laziness and generate lower quality work than we would typically produce had we just done it ourselves.

Read the full story on Inc. 

Navigate your marketing automation options with this checklist

Companies using marketing automation see 53 percent higher conversion rates, according to the Aberdeen Group. But there are hundreds of software companies that have been identified as marketing automation platforms. Add in customer relationship management software, email marketing platforms and experience management tools and the market is daunting at best.

Read the full story on Marketing Land.

Use Marketing Automation the Right Way

Several days ago, Mitch Joel, who is the President of Mirum, wrote a compelling piece on the misuse of marketing automation. I could not agree more with his statements made in the article about how so many organizations are using marketing automation (and many other marketing technologies) in the wrong way in an attempt to garner the attention of their buyers. I have written about this topic in the past and was thrilled to see Joel also begin hammering away at marketers who apply bad practices to technology.

Read the full story on Marketing Insider Group.

Marketing Automation 101

There have been countless articles in recent months about the benefits of marketing automation circulating online. In my opinion, most of these posts give very little practical information about how a B2B company can start to effectively put together a solid strategy.

Read the full story on bizjournals.com.

The truth is marketing automation is a lot simpler than it sounds. Don't believe me? Download Marketing Automation Simplified and see for yourself. 

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Your Customers Can Teach You How to Sell to Them. Here’s How (FS182)

One huge risk in modern small business is to spend months or years working on a project only to release it… and find nobody wants it.

Entrepreneurship has risk at the heart of it. We manage risk.

Some of us manage that risk well. Others poorly. Most of us don’t plan for risk very well, but we’ve got enough tenacity to make changes on the fly as we learn.

So, what if you could reduce the risk of your business?

What if you could make your project or business or campaign more likely to succeed?

What if you could do that right now, without creating a business plan or designing prototypes or even naming your business?

Would you do it?

And if I told you it had something to do with talking honestly, curiously and candidly with potential customers — doing more listening than talking, in fact — would that make you nervous? Or would it excite you?

It probably bums you out a little. Talking to customers can be hard, but it will literally make your business more likely to succeed over the long-haul.

Now, when we at Fizzle talk about talking to customers we actually mean a very specific methodology. We teach that method in this course. It involves anchor questions, follow up questions, insights about finding people to talk to, etc.

But for those of you who might be new to this way of talking to customers, we wanted to create a podcast episode where we talk you through what we think are the most important pieces of this process.

This conversation will be especially helpful if your business is online and you, like many of us, spend more time talking AT your customers than you do talking WITH your customers…

… because feedback from these people can change the course of your business success forever.

Enjoy!

It’s better to listen on the go!    Subscribe on iTunes 

Subscribe (how to)   iTunes   Overcast   Pocket Casts   Stitcher   Soundcloud   RSS  

Let your customers tell you how to sell to them. Here’s how.
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Show Notes

Customer Conversations Course — the 5 step process

Fizzle Members : Customer Conversations Helped Me Find My "Why" – Fizzle Forums

Hey, Could I Ask You a Few Questions? The Art of Surveys (FS094)

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Keep Your Customers Coming Back in Times of Content Overload

Randy Frisch and I had the chance to connect with some of the best professionals in content marketing, and we kept you in mind every step of the way. Joining us is simple. Choose a Content Pros podcast and press play.

Don't miss out on the chance to hear Justin Levy, Mike Stiles, Allen Gannett, David B. Thomas, and Jay Baer share their content marketing expertise.

Getting the Most Out of Free Real Estate

Wikipedia is regularly a top Google result for brands and many customers will check out a company's page before visiting the brand's very own website. In spite of this, rarely is there a team assigned to overseeing and working with the content for this vital first impression.

As Director of Social Marketing at Citrix, Justin Levy has succeeded in not only working with Wikipedia on ensuring an accurate and informational page, but also in balancing the need to push out content without overwhelming the audience (both internal and external). His strategy for crafting, publishing, and overseeing content has led to an online presence that is engaging, informational, and successful.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation with Justin:

• How an open publishing system for internal content leads to a decrease in employee advocacy and engagement
• The dangers and advantages of tagging
• How incorporating Wikipedia management into marketing leads to a deep SEO strategy

Together But Separate

Multiple brands competing for attention in a crowded, noisy, online marketplace can overwhelm and exhaust even the most seasoned professional. For Mike Stiles, Global Content Strategy Manager for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), navigating the waters of multiple brands means taking a step back. Instead of being hands on and controlling each brand’s message, he takes a more consultant-like route, letting the brands carve their own path.

By trusting each brand to know their own audience, Mike empowers his team to create more relevant and impactful content, and that success reflects positively on the company as a whole.

On this podcast, Mike shares great insights about:

• How juggling multiple brands can lead to content chaos
• Why empowering your enterprise means stepping back and acting more as a consultant than a manager
• How your brands can lead your content to success

Less is More

The question on everyone’s mind is why is content marketing booming, yet falling flat and ultimately hurting businesses?

As Allen Gannett, CEO of TrackMaven, sees it, posting content on every channel all day long can be pointless and harmful without a strong strategy. If your customer finds your articles irrelevant, they aren’t likely to click. And even worse, in their mind, the association of being irrelevant will extend to your brand as well.

The strength in content lies in responding to demand, educating the audience, and focusing your efforts on the channels where your customers work and play.

It’s not too late to hear from Allen about:

• Why the explosion in content quantity does not mean a similar increase in engagement
• How relevance leads to content that is powerful and impactful
• Why focusing on essential channels means being ok with a smaller quantity of content that has bigger impact

Data Mining for Content

With 20 years of B2B marketing experience (the past 8 of those years focused on content and social) David B. Thomas, Senior Director of Inbound Marketing at Leadspace, understands how to balance creativity with data. His thorough approach to pairing compelling content with vetted data led a unified content and social media marketing team at Salesforce that generated 15% of all valid leads in North America in 2014, and more than $150MM in pipeline.

Combining Dave’s expertise in content and skill with data ensures that every piece has the best possible audience to make the largest impact on your business.

Here are 3 insights to gain by listening to Dave's episode now:

• Why effective content marketing means taking the information you already have and customizing it for your audience
• How careless and shallow personalization leads to a decrease in content efficiency
• How up-to-date customer data leads to more accurate content

Keep Customers Coming Back For More (Content)

We all know the power of content to acquire new customers. But what about keeping the ones we already have?

As customer service moves to the very public realm of social media, Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert, knows there is a huge opportunity for businesses to both acquire and retain customers by showing you care for them publicly and privately. Embracing public feedback, both good and bad, allows you to create motivating content that caters to both new and existing customers.

Click here for more on Jay’s proven approach:

• Why thinking through to customer retention means creating content that embraces feedback
• How creating content solely for customer acquisition leads to a decrease in revenue
• Why the public forum of social media griping means a huge opportunity for businesses

This monthly round-up of the weekly Content Pros podcast shares some takeaways from recent episodes. If you like what you've read (and heard), please subscribe to show on iTunes or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

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Cross-Channel Orchestration: Customer Journeys Done the Right Way

The digital marketing world is enamored idea of customer journeys -- and why not? The idea behind them is great. They help us plot out a personalized path for customers based on their interests and behaviors to deliver more relevant experiences. The problem is, most customer journeys don’t actually work. In fact, we asked CMOs to assess their traditional customer journey efforts, and 96% of them expressed dissatisfaction with how they work today.

That’s why the Oracle Marketing Cloud team was proud to announce this week the newest iteration of our Orchestration Canvas. Found inside Oracle Responsys, the Orchestration Canvas provides a centralized place for marketers to build cross-channel experiences for their customers, spanning key marketing channels such mobile, email, web and display advertising.

In this post, I’ll recap key elements of the Orchestration Canvas and the key market problem it helps consumer marketers address.

Remove Marketing Silos with Elegant Canvas to Build Cross-Channel Experiences

According to IDC, consumers that engage across channels hold a 30% customer lifetime value (CLV) than a customer that engages on one channel. But as marketers try to coordinate a more cross-channel experience, silos for people -- and the technology they work from -- can get in the way. The email team might send email from one platform, while the mobile team enables messaging from a different platform. More than 90% of marketing teams have this problem, according to eConsultancy.

Our Orchestration Canvas provides a centralized place for marketers to come together and orchestrate interactions across numerous channels. The exhaustive list includes email, mobile SMS, MMS, push notifications, in-app messages, display advertising, web campaigns, and mobile web campaigns.

With this announcement, we noted that the Orchestration Canvas was recently restyled in Alta, an initiative our product team has been using to make even the most sophisticated user actions simple and elegant to perform.

Build Personalized Experiences Based on User Behavior

Within the Orchestration Canvas, marketers can pivot customer experiences based on a variety of user behaviors. These behavior triggered event such as browse abandonment, site search, and many others allow marketers to keep pace with the rapidly shifting preferences of the modern consumer. Traditionally these complex behavior driven marketing messages were only possible for companies with large IT teams and the patience for custom solution development, however all of these functions can be performed through an easy drag and drop interface with Oracle Responsys.

There are a number of tools in the Orchestration Canvas that help marketers adaptive to customer behaviors including: Event Switches that moves a customer through a different path based on an action or Stage Gates that wait and listen for an action to occur before moving a customer forward.

Build Adaptive Experiences Based on Data

While those tools allow marketers to build adaptive experiences based on rules they define, we’re also starting to incorporate machine-learning and predictive techniques to orchestrate experiences. As Oracle announced last week, Oracle Adaptive Intelligence will allow marketers to deliver recommendations and offers based on a variety of 1st party data that sits in the Oracle Marketing Cloud and third-party audience data from the Oracle Data Cloud to model ideal customer experiences.

Test Your Mobile Experiences; Don’t Guess

Just because marketers can automate a customer journey doesn't always mean they do a good job. That’s why the Oracle Marketing Cloud announced a new editor that helps marketers test the experiences customers have in their mobile applications. While this capability always existed within Oracle Marketing Cloud, this update makes it more accessible to non-technical users.

It also follows a long heritage of making testing a vital part of the customer experience. Marketers who use the Orchestration Canvas can do everything from a simple A/B test right up to more complex multivariate tests that help a marketer make informed decisions about what customer experience makes the most sense.

We hope consumer marketers will continue to redefine how they build customer journeys and stay tuned for more modern marketing innovation from the Oracle Marketing Cloud product team!

Save

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Email Marketing Best Practices: Testing Your Emails Before Hitting Send

Editor’s note: What does it take to put together an email? How do you take all the components we write about week after week, and put them together to create a thoughtful, well-executed campaign? We asked our in-house email marketing specialist, Reid Yoshimoto, for a breakdown on his process creating our bi-weekly newsletter, the VR Buzz, to share his expertise.

Twice a month I put together the VR Buzz newsletter, and each time I treat it as if it were the first email I’ve ever sent. Creating an email campaign seems like a piece of cake, but in reality there are a lot of moving parts that need to come together before clicking “send.” We all have some experience with email not working the way it was supposed to. Have you ever emailed (or Tweeted) a company when their links didn’t work, or received an “Oops” email after a company sent you an email with the wrong information in it?

To avoid the dreaded “Oops,” here are five questions I ask when preparing an email:

What will this email really look like?

Sending a test to yourself, friends, or co-workers is one of easiest ways to view your email before finalizing your campaign. You might say, “Yes, it looks great,” but ask yourself additional questions like: Do I want my customers spending a lot time scrolling and looking for things? Would the use of colors help the text be more eye-catching? Are the images appropriate for the message I’m conveying? Most importantly, is the email responsive in both desktop and mobile versions?

Do the links work?

Test all links, images, and buttons in your email even if it’s a template you’ve used a thousand times. Then test it all again. Taking five minutes to check your links helps ensure your customers save time and go to the page they expect to when they click, such as your checkout page versus your home page. And if you’re placing tracking on your links, make sure those are set and appear correctly too.

Do the images complement the content?

Make sure your image(s) enhance the story you’re telling. If you’re a restaurant trying to bring in brunch business, don’t show a picture of your dinner menu. People are visual, and that photo of eggs Benedict or stuffed French toast may be your selling point to get them to book a reservation.

Is this the best subject line for this email?

Don’t be dull. Email marketing might not be the sexiest topic out there, and sometimes we have to get straight to the point, but when possible, give your subject lines (and copy) a voice. Throw in some humor on occasion. Customers need to see a human side to you, and they will remember an email if there was a creative subject line attached to it.

Is this email right for my subscribers?

Test one version of an email against another. Testing your email doesn’t mean just looking at two emails and saying, “This one is great,” or “I like this one better.” It means sending two versions to see which one resonates better with your customers. It’s not hard to do: Create two versions of your email, and segment your main email list into two random groups. Group A receives version 1; Group B receives version 2. Once you have results from your two versions, you can pick the “winner,” and format future emails knowing what your customers like. Do they prefer short, image-heavy emails over text driven ones? You may be surprised what resonates with your customers. The “better” email isn’t always the one you prefer.

Taking a few minutes to ask yourself these questions before you hit “send” will save you a ton of time in the long run — and save you a lot of “Oops” moments. 

Get Our Newsletter For more marketing tips, guides, and inspiration, sign up for the VerticalResponse bi-weekly newsletter. Subscribe

© 2016, Reid Yoshimoto. All rights reserved.

The post Email Marketing Best Practices: Testing Your Emails Before Hitting Send appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

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Here’s How to Find the Right Mix and Fine-Tune Your Offer

Have you ever wondered if your strange collection of skills and interests could be woven together to build a profitable business?

If you have, you’ll love today’s Hero’s Journey article.

Lauren Pawell is a rare breed: she has a background in development and marketing. That’s a combination you don’t see every day!

Some people might have encouraged Lauren to choose one field or the other. But she persisted and has built a business that artfully combines her many passions.

Lauren’s story is this month’s Hero’s Journey feature. We’re tapping the collective wisdom of our community members to bring you reports from the front lines of the content marketing world. See all the Hero’s Journey posts here.

Read on as Lauren shares what she’s learned over the years and how you can use her hard-earned wisdom in your own business.

Building a one-stop revenue-building shop

Lauren Pawell: What sets Bixa Media apart is my background in both development and marketing. This allows me to sit at the intersection of business, technology and design.

We help entrepreneurs turn their WordPress and Shopify websites into revenue-generating powerhouses. We do that through a mixture of website design and development, content marketing, search engine optimization, paid advertising, and online reputation management.

Not only can we write killer copy, but we can also evaluate your technology options, decide which is best for your needs, and build everything for you, while keeping your business objectives at the forefront of the process.

I find our clients really value having a partner who can help them from A to Z.

Perhaps more importantly, we’re able to tell our clients where not to waste their dollars and effort, and where to focus their resources.

Even if this doesn’t always match what a client had in mind, our honest feedback resonates with business owners.

We offer two types of services:

• 1:1 online marketing services: For medium-sized businesses who are looking to outsource their online marketing, we offer a variety of services designed to amplify their online exposure and generate more customers.
• DIY programs: For small businesses or solopreneurs who don’t yet have the resources to outsource their marketing, we offer educational marketing programs through Websites That Generate.

My business is primarily online, although I do plenty of networking offline — I find they go hand-in-hand. The offline contact tends to tip the scale in our favor, especially when it comes to securing large contracts.

Putting the brakes on spinning wheels

Lauren Pawell: I started my business for two reasons.

First and foremost, after working in marketing overseas for a few years, I saw so many small-to-medium-sized businesses with a wealth of online opportunity at their fingertips. But they just didn’t have the right guidance.

As a result, they were spinning their wheels in so many different directions with little-to-no impact.

I wanted to help them pick that low-hanging digital fruit, so that they could continue to grow their businesses and entrepreneurial dreams.

So, in 2011, I moved back to the United States, booked my first client at a friend’s birthday party (notice that offline touchpoint!), and haven’t looked back since.

The best part of that story? Our first client still works with us today and has gone from a one-man business to a 20+ person company. Now that is why I started Bixa!

I don’t share the second reason with many people, but I feel it will resonate with the Copyblogger audience.

In 2011, I had been through one-too-many bad bosses and was tired of not being in charge of my own destiny, from both a personal and career standpoint. That freedom I craved drove me to start my own company.

My driving motivation is to help other entrepreneurial spirits achieve the same freedom I have.

Conversion experiments that paid off

Lauren Pawell: Converting cold traffic into qualified leads is a finicky beast, especially when it comes to selling online education.

It’s not hard to understand why — cold traffic doesn’t immediately pull out their wallets. It took quite a bit of trial and error to dial in our lead-nurturing process, but we did it.

A few highlights:

We use Facebook ads as our hook

A new email subscriber generated from a Facebook ad was not likely to immediately jump up and buy our program. However, when we started to establish trust and demonstrate our authority through a few different mediums, we were far more successful.

Here’s what we do:

First, we run the new subscriber through a long welcome series over email. We send them 7 emails over 20 days, all of which include a lot of copy. It helps us weed out unqualified leads.

While in many approaches we did not want a lot of unsubscribes, in this case, we welcome them. It allows us to filter out anyone who doesn’t immediately love us.

After this, we direct the subscriber to our private Facebook community

There we share weekly educational content over video and give 1:1 feedback, similar to what they would experience in our course. This also helps establish us as a trusted and authoritative figure.

Then, we deliver free educational webinars on specific topics

This helps the subscriber better understand their problem and the solution they need to transform their situation.

Finally, we open our doors periodically

Last, but not least, we sell our program through email during specific times of the year, and are available on live chat to answer any questions the prospects have. (This, again, is similar to our course experience).

Some may say we give away too much for free, but I find this really helps us find great students. Plus, it allows our Facebook ad spend to generate far more ROI.

When we didn’t follow this solution and jumped straight from Facebook ads to a webinar to a sales email, our conversion rates weren’t great. Now, they are stellar.

So, if you feel like you are wasting dollars on Facebook ad spend, consider the rest of your funnel. Now that we know what works, it’s far easier to justify scaling up our marketing spend.

Venturing into online education (one validated step at a time)

Lauren Pawell: In Q2 of this year, I decided to test the idea of online education programs.

I wanted to be less reliant on 1:1 client work, which can be unpredictable. And I wanted to help all the entrepreneurs we were turning away due to a full calendar on our end, and limited resources on their end.

To validate the idea, we began being incredibly transparent about our marketing tactics.

We educated our audience through a number of mediums, notably: email, online webinars, and a private Facebook community.

I believed that through great educational content, we could:

• Empower solopreneurs, allowing them to achieve quick wins in their businesses
• Determine whether there was a demand for our DIY programs

This effort has been quite successful. We recently presold an educational course (before it was created) that our audience was begging for.

By validating an idea through free content first, we were then able to dedicate the resources to creating paid educational programs. A course takes a lot of front-loaded work, especially content creation. The last thing I wanted to do was create a program no one wanted.

As an added benefit of this education-first approach, when 1:1 prospects come through the door, they are already sold on working with us. Because they already understand the “why” behind our recommendations, the selling is 90 percent done by the time we write a proposal.

The Rainmaker Digital products Lauren uses

Lauren Pawell: We use quite a few Rainmaker Digital products, including:

• Rainmaker Platform to power our online courses and membership programs at Websites That Generate
• Genesis Framework + StudioPress themes to power clients’ websites
• Copyblogger Authority and Digital Commerce Institute to continue learning and engaging with the community

I also happen to be a new Copyblogger Certified Content Marketer. And I’m attending the upcoming Digital Commerce Summit in Denver.

So, needless to say, I’m a Rainmaker Digital diehard!

Refining and scaling up for the future

Lauren Pawell: In the final quarter of 2016, we’ll focus on refining our sales funnels and scaling up our DIY programs.

Our educational courses at Websites That Generate haven’t been marketed on our website, or really even promoted outside of email. That’s because I wanted to run a few groups of people through our programs to ensure we really dialed them in.

Now that we’ve gotten the process down, we’re ready to scale up. The first step in that process requires some adjustments to our sales funnel. Then, we can scale up our lead generation through Facebook ads.

An unsolicited piece of advice

Lauren Pawell: If, like me, you’re considering creating an educational program to complement your 1:1 services, I highly recommend the Rainmaker Platform.

All of the technology was so easy to set up, allowing us to focus most of our effort on the course creation and marketing.

When it comes to selling a course and serving your students, the less you have to worry about the technology, the better.

Find Lauren Pawell online …

• Bixa Media
• Websites That Generate

Thanks to Lauren for appearing in our Hero’s Journey series.

Do you have questions for her? Ask them in the comments.

We’ll be back next month with another story to teach, inspire, and encourage you along your journey.

The post Here’s How to Find the Right Mix and Fine-Tune Your Offer appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Marketing Your Book All the Way to the Bestseller Lists, with Jay Baer

In this podcast episode, Chris Ducker sits down with Jay Baer to learn exactly how to become a New York Times bestselling author! Get your notebooks ready!

Book marketing is a topic that has come up a lot for me lately. As many of you know, I’ve just wrapped a book that has been traditionally published a while back.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Farnoosh Brock about her book on juicing, and her grassroots approach to marketing it — which worked very well for her. This time you will hear a different approach — a mix of old and new techniques, with some long-term brand building as the backbone.

In this interview, I talk with Jay Baer about his well-planned book marketing campaign, and we delve deep into how to become a New York Times bestselling author.

This is some very useful stuff, so get your notepads ready!

In this 50-minute episode, Jay and I discuss:

• Why using unorthodox book marketing techniques can work in your favor
• How you can build awareness long before your book is released
• The criteria for hitting the NYT bestseller list
• How to utilize your community to make your book go viral
• Why hiring a publicist is still a good idea in the new business economy
• How to use re-targeting to your advantage

Listen to this Episode Now

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How to Add Real-Time Communication to Your Existing Marketing Stack

Let’s think back to the early days of social media for a moment, and how it impacted our marketing.

Not only did it bring the potential of massive free exposure, it radically increased transparency as well. Every good or bad customer experience suddenly became a potentially viral story. And thus the relation between business and consumer was changed, forever.

But social media isn’t at the top of the digital food chain anymore. As of 2015, messaging apps have overtaken social networking apps in monthly active users.

In 2015, messaging apps overtook social media platforms in monthly active users. (Image Source)

This balance tip coincided with a few other developments: Facebook’s launch of Messenger for Business, WhatsApp announcing a move into B2C communication, an increasing reliance by businesses on message-based communication tools like Slack, and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) entering a critical phase. The last point was nicely illustrated by AlphaGo wiping the floor with our human champions in Go.

Chris Messina, the guy who brought us the #hashtag, noticed the interplay between these developments, and concluded in a post on Medium that we’re at the brink of another revolution in B2C relationships.

Where before you would use your messaging apps for simple interactions with friends, the above developments allow them to be used for real-time conversations with businesses as well – whether that’s with a service rep or an intelligent chatbot. He dubbed this new era of B2C relationships ‘conversational commerce’.

So, how can you take advantage of this development? How can you integrate real-time communication into your existing marketing stack?

First, let’s clarify why you’ll want to jump aboard this trend in the first place. Then we’ll share some ideas and company examples that will help you start off today.

The Promise of Real-Time Communication

For years, marketers have known the power of ‘now’. Pay attention to the banners and billboards you’ll run into throughout the rest of the day, and notice how often they’re filled with maxims like ‘instant access’, ‘same day delivery’, and ‘quick checkout’. Immediacy strongly impacts our buying behavior.

Amazon Prime, a prime example of our desire for immediacy. (Image Source)

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli shares an experiment into our weakness for ‘right now’ with two groups of participants.

Group A was asked whether they would rather receive $1,000 in 12 months, or $1,100 in 13 months. Most chose the 13-month option; because where else will you find an investment option with a 10% monthly interest rate?

Group B was offered a slightly different choice. They could choose to receive $1,000 today, or $1,100 in one month. Here, most people choose the $1,000 today option. This is remarkable. The choice is basically the same – except that the $1,000 today targets our weakness for wanting things right now. That’s hyperbolic discounting, our irrational preference for what we can get now over what we can get in the future.

Real-time customer service has a similar effect on our preference for right now. According to a Forrester Research study, 57% of online customers leave a website if they don’t receive a quick answer on their question.

This was confirmed in a case study with Intuit, the company behind the financial products QuickBooks and Mint. By placing live chat for real-time support during its checkout process, Intuit increased its average order value by 43%.

From “Interaction” to “Relation”

A major benefit of communication via messaging apps is that it results in a permanent and low-barrier connection with the customer.

Once a phone call with a customer is over, the connection is broken. That is not the case with email, but email has a high barrier to contact compared to writing a message on Facebook.

A permanent low barrier connection promises a major increase in customer interaction – keeping your business top of mind and always accessible.

Also, when a conversation picks up again, it happens within the context of a messaging thread. This makes it easier for support reps to understand the situation and provide a good answer. While emails and phone calls are mere snapshots, messaging threads represent long-term relationships.

Lower Costs per Interaction

As mentioned above, the existing messaging thread will prevent duplication. Things become more efficient when customers don’t have to repeat their issue with every service handover – not to mention more pleasant.

At the same time, advancements in natural language processing fuel expectations of chatbots soon solving many support questions that humans are tackling at the moment. Not all, of course. But a modest 20% would already represent a huge gain in efficiency.

We’re still some years away from scenes like in the movie Her, in which we’re having natural conversations with smooth sounding chatbots that are indistinguishable from those with humans. What is closer and easier to picture, however, is a sort of ‘chat cyborg’ – a human service rep that uses AI to deliver a superior service.

When a question comes in, AI runs it through the database of customer interactions and offers answer suggestions to its human colleague. The human serves as the last check, and can choose to override the suggestions or adjust them. The AI learns from the answer that is given, as well as the response from the customer (was it the right response?). That way, the chat cyborg is continuously growing in smarts and efficiency.

Now let’s look at how you can start with reaping the fruits of these developments today.

How to Get Started With Real-Time Communication

Live Chat on your Site

Web chat has been around for some years, but is developing fast together with the abovementioned trends. You implement a live chat window on your website, through which visitors can reach out and receive support.

Live chat offers many of the benefits described above, such as the power of instant support and minimizing duplication. What makes it especially powerful is that the chat is available at a critical moment in the buyer’s journey – on the website.

A customer might be ready to buy, but has some small concerns or questions before doing so. With live chat there’s no need to delay the purchase, since questions can be resolved on the spot.

A great example of how to do chat right is Apple’s live chat service.

Live chat is an important ingredient in Apple’s service setup.

If you’re an Apple user, I recommend you try it out next time you have a service question. You receive full and detailed answers in no-time, which suggest they make use of an intelligent knowledge base in the backend.

Facebook’s Messenger for Business allows live chat providers to connect to their platform, and tools like Telegram and WeChat are open for this as well. We can expect tighter integrations between website chat and messaging support in the future.

Rogers connected its support team with Facebook to help customers via their favorite channel.

Messaging support

Messaging support is very promising, simply because it’s so darn convenient for consumers. They send a question through their favorite messaging app, and receive an answer in their back pockets.

For this to work, you need to hook up your support team to your messaging channels – be it Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, or a combination – and let your customers reach out to you.

One example of a business deploying large scale messaging support is Livecrowd, a Dutch company offering next-level customer service and experience for mass crowd events. Think festivals, football matches, or concerts (see Beyoncé’s concert page below). Such events are major logistical challenges. A quick and easy way to advise visitors about transport or safety is invaluable.

Messaging support is perfect for customers on the go, such as music event visitors.

Another messaging example from the Netherlands is KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines. Since a few weeks, they’ve added Facebook Messenger support to their booking process.

This makes it easy for flyers to check the status on their flights and ask support agents any questions:

Managing your booking with an app you’re already familiar with.

When you’re booking a flight and are logged into your Facebook account, you can select to stay updated about your flight through messenger. When you have a delay, for example, you receive an update on the app. You can also receive your boarding pass through Messenger, or ask questions to the KLM service team directly.

As you can see, part of KLM’s messaging support is automated. Which brings us to the next application.

Chatbots

Chatbots are a hot and exciting area of the tech industry, mainly because they’re fueled by advancements in machine learning.

Slack allows you to connect an existing chatbot to your team or build one with its own logic, while Facebook’s Chatbot API allows you to build a bot for Messenger. There are also plenty of third party apps that allow you to set up a chatbot fairly easily, such as Motion AI.

One example of the extensive use of chatbots is Call of Duty. Players can connect with Lieutenant Reyes chatbot, and solve a not-so-easy-to-solve puzzle. This chatbot sent over six million messages to its gamers in total.

Chatbots will only become more interesting with the continuous advancements in machine learning. The more intelligent the chatbots become, the more customer interactions can be left to them.

How to Get Started

Make a comprehensive communication plan.
To get started with real-time communication, you’ll need to integrate it in a comprehensive communication plan. Ask yourself: What channels make sense for me and my customers?

Set up a dedicated service team.
The fact that conversational commerce is based on text means that compared to phone, more interactions can be done per service agent. But you’ll also have a lower barrier for contact, so you can expect the number of customer interaction to rise. You’ll need a dedicated real-time communication team to support this.

Empower frontline employees.
In real-time communication, speed is king. Zendesk stated that customer satisfaction in live chat dropped after 30 seconds of waiting. Since you’ll be having so many customer inquiries requiring fast responses, it’s essential to empower your frontline employees to resolve issues themselves. The number of cases that require involvement from higher up should be minimized.

Set up communication guidelines.
That doesn’t mean your real-time communication should be a free-for-all. On the contrary, it takes directed effort to maintain a consistent voice across all channels. Like The Economist maintains a style guide for its articles, you should require a style guide for your real-time communication as well. On what level of familiarity will you communicate? If you’ll speak in English, will it be British or American?

Play together with your other channels.
In the world of conversational commerce, one-on-one conversations will cover a much wider area of topics than before. That’s why your frontend employees need to be well aware of all external communications. Whether it’s social media, content, email, or performance marketing – your real-time communication channel needs to be in sync.

Track key metrics.
One key benefit of written communication is that it can easily be tracked. Most live chat solutions, for example, have standard integrations with analytics solutions like Google Analytics and Kissmetrics. With them, it’s easy to measure key indicators of quality communication: first response time, handovers per issue, service ratings, etc.

Conclusion

We really do seem to be at the brink of another revolution in the relationship between businesses and customers.

You can start reaping the benefits of real-time communication today, by taking the first steps with website chat, messaging support, and chatbots. Happy chatting!

About the Author: Pascal van Opzeeland is CMO of Userlike, software for website and messaging support. He and his team share tips about customer communication on the Userlike Blog.

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