Richard van Hooijdonk

Affect behavior by event driven marketing

By nature, I'm a bit of a lazy guy. I'll gladly invest time, money and effort into a project, but if there are no solid returns to look forward to I won't bother. My laziness also means I'll automate everything I can, leaving me time for smarter, more fun things to do. Marketing communication is one of the areas where automating can be used to great extent, especially when it comes to lead-, cross- and upsell processes. Our automating process starts with the marketing database. Here we find the triggers for actions we'd like to see automatised. There are clients who purchased, clients who didn't, clients who bought a lot of groups of relations we've not heard from for a while. We see birthdays, surfing behavior, newsletter requests or participation in online games. We see certain target groups reaching certain customer values, we see complaints or unpaid bills. All of these things are triggers, and we've got dozens or perhaps even hundreds of them. It makes sense that event driven marketing brings the strongest results. Afterall, it's the client's own actions (an order, complaint, download...) that invite interaction. We can't imagine a better time to act, so long as the interaction is relevent and brought at the right time using the right tools. Based on set triggers, we can design event driven campaigns, startedautomatically when a certain action occurs.

Some examples. A customer could automatically receive an invitation to a seminar after having purchased a certain product. A customer who hires a car could automatically receive directions through a text message. A health insurance agency could automatically offer additional insurances, such as dental care for the kids, when a client buys a basic insurance package. How did you know the client had kids? Why, it was in your marketing database of course, which in turn you've coupled to your event driven marketing
systems!
Theater visitors can be connected to their favorite artists: before the show, during the show, and after the show. Amusement park visitors often buy tickets online. So two weeks before they visit your park, you send them an exciting overview of your amusement park, invite them for an online game, you let them share their results with friends and they can receive a small prize at the amusement park.

Event driven marketing offers endless ways of automatised interaction with target groups, sending every client his own personal campaign, with the right content at the right time. Text, direct mail, personal mini sites, e-mail or personal contact can all be used to interact with the client. Coincidentally, this builds on a company's promise to open a dialogue with the client. If done well, this dialogue is bound to raise loyalty and boost buzz among clients and prospects. I believe that with event driven marketing, 60 to 80% of your
cross- and upsell can be fully automatised, while most of your lead management can be automatised through 'thank you's, comfirmations and phonecalls.

When considering effective marketing and cost reducing measures, event driven marketing comes to mind. Another challenge where event driven marketing works very well, is structurally improving customer value, an otherwise difficult task during recessions. Customer value is where a company gets its profits, and this way we execute our marketing at the most effective moment, automatically!

Event driven marketing ensures we stimulate the company / customer dialogue and ensures we don't miss any sales moments, because all phases of our customer relationship are detected by the automatic triggers. Our IT is ready for it: several campaign management systems support event driven marketing. It's up to us marketers to develop the campaigns and identify the triggers.

Always choose for a crossmedial communication chain aimed at your target audience

Your client uses multiple media simultaneously. This is no longer limited to offline media such as print, radio and television. Consumers have become fully crossmedial, exposing themselves to all crossmedial stimuli before choosing to convert. Today's consumer combines radio and internet, television and print, a phone conversation and the direct mail they receive. The ultimate combination of crossmedial instruments is the combination that gives the best returns, and it may not always be the most obvious combination. It takes creativity, a lot of testing and analyzing to figure out your perfect crossmedia combination, and it won't be the same for different target groups.
A communication chain for a young target group will contain a lot more online media, while an older target group will prefer more offline media. An interesting fact however, is that online sales in Q3 and Q4 are largely determined by the latter category: older people do find their way online. When setting up your crossmedial communication chain, make sure to put your channels in the right order. Study the customer insights and find out which instruments are used. Study the combinations used and the results. Once you've figured out which instruments to use, you can determine their functions, content and connection. For instance, you could launch a teaser through text messages: the content will have to be interesting and connected to the follow-up direct mail or e-mail. A similar procedure can be used for television and radio commercials, a mini website, specific online campaigns or telesales. For each target group and for each action, you engage the right instruments. Having done so, it's time to take a look at the campaign management system and keep track of the results in a crossmedial campaign dashboard. Often, executing a campaign using your own 'systems' is impossible: new techniques or possibilities are limited when a marketer's own IT department is not up-to-date. When it comes to crossmedial campaigns, outsourcing is often a viable if not the only solution. The costs are worth it: in return you gain speed and flexibility. Smart crossmedial campaigns can lead to very significant and very large results. Keep in mind though, as said in a previous article, when it comes to innovations and launching new processes: start small, finish big!

Ensure unique core values and prove them!

Brands have to be unique, generate trust, and enjoy preference and appreciation from customers. Those are four core values we've all seen in marketing literature. These brands now have to comply to several new demands, put forth by the marketing economy. Brands now have to also be honest and transparent. They have to be co-operative and accessible. The problem is, many companies already believe they're unique and offer the best product and serivce. We're all trustworthy, we're all 'your partner in...'. The core values form the basics for our companies, but they also form the input to our creative processes before leading to product or brand communication. Brands can be dynamic, exciting, passionate, sensible, inspiring or naughty. After establishing the core values, we have to prove them. What is it that makes us dynamic, exciting or sensible? What proof do we have of being passionate or inspiring?

When brands prove their core values time and again, this will have a strong effect on a customer's brand appreciation. Highly appreciated brands can ask more from consumers, because these brands 'manage' the perceptions a client has when making his purchasing decision. The higher margins can then be used to invest in even more brand stability. In times of economic recession, clients look for solid ground and often
end up with the brands they know will do what they promise. In following articles, I'll show you that building a brand doesn't have to be expensive.

'Socialize' your brand, 'connect'!

I predict an end to mass media. For years, I've had the honor of spending millions on television, advertising, door-to-door newspapers, radio and online campaigns. Since 2000 however, many mass media results have begun to display cracks in their armor. We're reading fewer newspapers and magazines, we're watching less television. We spend more time watching and reading what others are doing and writing, we're deciding what
we do and don't want to see, and we've come to trust what other people tell us about brands, products and services. In fact, their opinions have become so important to us, we often base our purchasing decisions on what others say. It's the rise of the social consumers' organisation, placing the power in the hands of consumers. We now have to create a dialogue with each individual consumer: we have to put an effort into building a relationship and we have to become an honest, transparent partner. The client has to believe our brand is accessible, co-operative and listening. The brand and client have to become friends. Afterall, friends are popular: friends are people you'd gladly introduce to your neighbours, family and friends or colleagues. And that's exactly where we want to be.

The structure of 'social branding' submits there must first be a connection between the brand/product and the client. Then, it's up to us to facilitate the relationship between the client and his own network: we provide the tools that allow him to socially share our product or service with the people around him.

Thirdly, we ensure that the network our clients have created can also carry our own 'buzz', such as through virals, communities or consumer generated content.

Fourth, we develop the right tools to allow news and information to spread through the network. Basically, what I describe here is the process of old-fashioned word of mouth advertising. Only now it's automated, optimally using the speed of new media.

Popular tools here are viral concepts based on video or games, but there are more interactive ways to reach large crowds when we also use the loyalty among customers, prospects and fans. Research shows that conversion is a lot higher in these cases, as the sender is now a trusted familiar person. 'Social branding' and 'social marketing' are growing phenomena with impressive results. Kentucky Fried Chicken's first viral, five years ago, reached 193 million viewers and pushed turnover by 6%. Dutch political party SP sent comical videos to 40.000 of its members; a year later, close to the national elections, more than one million people had seen the political videos.

The marketing organisation's DNA will have to be tuned to these important new developments. If over the next five to ten years mass media is virtually replaced by consumers' personal 'content channels', we'll need new techniques and new methods to reach out and touch consumers. Right now, 'social marketing' can already give us excellent results, so long as you keep your clients and fans happy.