With
the right marketing automation solution, you can automate both
simple and complex marketing activities with just a few clicks from
one-off to batch messaging, data movements, integrations, and
report delivery.
No matter what your industry, marketing automation can simplify
repetitive marketing tasks and drive more sophisticated uses of
your customer data. For example:
-
Financial services: Back-end operations like
account statements, low-balance alerts, and lifecycle marketing
campaigns
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Technology: Subscription renewal programs,
interactive account reminders, and product updates
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Manufacturing:...
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Each Thursday at 11am EDT, marketers from around the world join the
ExactTarget Nexus
partner ecosystem on Twitter for a conversation about trends
and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry.
We call the virtual coffee chat the
Nexus Café.
A recent #NexusCafe chat featured our partner,
Metrics Marketing, talking
about targeted marketing campaigns during and after the holiday
shopping season. Here's a snapshot of the conversation we had about
smart strategies for interactive marketers to leverage this
season.
@ETNexus: Tis
the Season (soon)! Let’s first identify the most...
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We know that everyone has
loved our
Subscirbers, Fans, and Followers Research. But,
because marketers are short on time, we’ve reduced more than 100
pages of social media research from the first seven SUBSCRIBERS,
FANS, & FOLLOWERS reports into this digestible summary, which
includes only the key social marketing tips and takeaways.
The
SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS 2010 Executive
Summary includes Graphical statistics, visually-appealing
charts, and limited copy making the key findings easy to
understand—especially for individuals who are short on time.
Here is a peek at what is inside:
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Deliverability: Holiday Smackdown Edition
The holidays are the time of year
when email marketing becomes a contact sport. Retailers are
notorious for cranking up the email volume during the holidays,
especially around Black Friday/Cyber Monday (the weekend after
Thanksgiving). Everyone knows that there's a delicate balance
between pushing a few more emails and burning out your list with
unsubscribes and complaints. So what can we do to accommodate
the extra emails, cut through the clutter that your competitors are
so inconsiderately creating, and keep our lists healthy?
Some common holiday...
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Businesses are reporting real results after integrating
CoTweet 3.0 Enterprise Edition into their social marketing
strategy. moneysupermarket.com, Britain’s
number one comparison site specializing in financial services,
announced today it has increased Twitter followers 70 percent in
one month using CoTweet. This is just one more example of how
businesses can grow their following and increase sales by
participating in social media.
moneysupermarket.com (@moneysupermkt) attributed this success to
CoTweet's enterprise-class workflow capabilities enabling 14
employees across six business units to...
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The email marketing question of the day isn’t "
Should we be sending email?" anymore. Instead, what you’ve
got to answer for your business today is “
What
emails should we be sending?” That is, what emails are directly
essential to the success of the business, and just how important to
that business are they?
If you can answer that, you’ve
defined your Mission Critical sends.
In some industries, it’s simple to define
what’s Mission Critical. Financial services have a pretty clear
directive on this - it’s account alerts and updates – the email
alerting a customer they’ve reached their credit limit...
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Why am
I excited for
Connections 2010? Well, for
one, I’ve never been to Connections before. (pause for gasps) I
know, I know – it’s the largest interactive marketing conference in
the world! It
might also be because the first day of
Connections is my birthday. (Go ahead, write it down.) But my being
a Connections first-timer is probably the biggest reason why I’m so
pumped. Here’s why you should get excited too:
5. Volunteer Day – NEW!
Before you start fueling the conversation, you can join in
powering the communitytoo. With so many of our friends in town (i.e. you), we couldn't
think of a...
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One of my summer projects is to collect information on some of our
most successful clients, and organize them into training slides for
our sales team. This will allow them to have access to a wide
base of knowledge on how other salespeople have solved their
clients’ most pressing needs. Having access to this resource
will make the sales team more prepared to know exactly which
ExactTarget offerings will provide future clients with the
best possible
integrated digital marketing solutions.
Tasks like these are by and large my favorites, because they
provide me great insight into what makes...
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Looking to “go green” and dive into the world of email, or simply
want to make your emails more effective? Here are some basic
recommendations when designing marketing programs for the financial
services industry.
Brand Synergy
It’s crucial to stay true to your brand and ensure that all media
channels and programs have a consistent look and feel. With solid
brand synergy in place, the rest revolves around delivering
appropriate content that your subscribers want to read.
Transactional Design Recommendations
- Position content front and center – keep it simple.
- Don’t include too much cross-sell...
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The best thing my bank has ever
done for me is provide me with online banking. Sure it’s
nothing new, but it is the epitome of the accessibility and
visibility that I want from my bank. It endows me with the
ability to be directly in touch with my financial information
whenever I want and wherever I want. As the financial services
industry and surrounding competition continue to evolve, any
development in convenience or transparency will be deeply
appreciated.
ExactTarget Sites offer a variety of ways to develop in both of
these areas:
1.
Be Dynamic: You know a lot about your customers—use...
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As marketers, we often look for industry specific marketing
benchmarks and examples. As a consultant, one of the first
questions I often get is, “What experience do you have working in
our industry?” To which I generally reply, “Some, but my experience
working with clients across a broad range of industries is more
beneficial to you.”
Why? By knowing what works in one industry vertical we gain an
understanding of the rules that govern our customers’ behavior that
can be applied to other industry verticals.
Take financial services as an example. Here are three statistics we
have uncovered in our...
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Nearly every week, there's one piece of
snail mail I can almost bank (pun intended) on receiving--a letter
from one of my financial institutions (banks, credit card issuers,
investment brokers, etc.) enticing me to "go green" by opting-out
of print statements in favor of email statements.
As a marketer, I appreciate the altrustic call-to-action since a
large percentage of the population these days is moved to reduce
their negative environmental impact wherever possible (and
convenient).
My marketing genes, however, also allow me to understand the true
motivation for the green financial services...
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Bailouts, Big Bonuses and
Fees… The financial industry has been plagued over the past couple
of years with negative press. As a result, many financial
institutions are or should be focusing on rebuilding their brands.
Some have even reinvented themselves by creating a new brand (like
GMAC has done with Ally). Here are some tips for financial
institutions to rebuild their brands, take control and improve
retention through leveraging the power of the following digital
communication channels:
Email: During the financial crisis,
many customers switched banks and moved deposits creating a huge
demand...
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Maximizing your deliverability can be tricky for somebody in the
financial services space. There’s a lot of confusion surrounding
best practices, what things you must do, or must avoid, to promote
consumer confidence and prevent security or phishing issues.
My thoughts here are by no means going to be comprehensive for
every single scenario; there are a lot of moving parts and
different financials have different issues. But, at a high level,
here are a few things that I think companies in this space should
keep in mind when sending marketing or transactional email
messaging.
Avoid Lead Gen or...
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My greatest frustration with my bank right now is that
I can't set-up custom alerts. I want to know when my
balance is low, when a large check clears, when I'm about to go
into overdraft-fee-land. All I have right now is a
daily balance email. Sure: that works; but not
the way I want it to.
You're probably going to recommend that I switch banks. But
it's not that easy, is it? With auto-billpay and direct
deposits, I feel locked into my current bank. . .else deal with a
bunch of new forms and paperwork that surround the financial
industry. For now, I'll have to stick with my...
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How do you communicate with your customers about relevant
and new products or services offered at your organization? I
receive postal mail from every Financial Services company I have a
relationship with on a weekly basis that I quickly turn around and
recycle. Alternatively, I don’t receive any postal mail from
any of my favorite retailers – instead, they send me emails.
Are you communicating with your customers via the best
email marketing channel they prefer? If not, there are a lot
of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities you may be missing out on.
Consider the following:
1.
Do you have an...
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Marketing in the financial industry is not about cool
commercials, bold advertising or slick emails. Rather the
most powerful marketing from banks, investment firms and insurance
providers give customers a reason to remain engaged. Let’s
face it, the financial industry is part of the fabric of our
lives. We work, we get paid, money gets deposited, money is
withdrawn, and we then start the cycle all over again.
Those financial firms that make that vicious cycle easier and more
efficient are the ones that drive positive word of mouth marketing
and create an immersive brand presence that...
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eCommerce Marketer 1: “Well, the Mortgage group
sends out a weekly newsletter and they do NOT match our corporate
brand!”
eCommerce Marketer 2: “Is it true that they are only text
and don’t include any HTML?!”
eCommerce Marketer 1: “Pretty much. Also, I’ve noticed our
unsubscribe rate has went up ever since they launched.”
eCommerce Marketer 2: “How do we at least understand who
they are sending to? We can’t bombard our customers even if they
have signed up for multiple types of information – they don’t get
that we’re on different sides of the business.”
eCommerce Marketer 1: “I have no idea.”
...
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I've been a customer of the same credit union for about 15 years,
and lately I've been thinking about switching to a different bank
that will reimburse me for my ATM fees. I needed to get some
cash before I headed out on a trip, and, being the cheapskate that
I am, I went out of my way to find an ATM associated with my credit
union's network that wouldn't charge me a fee. Fortunately,
it was nearby at a local grocery story.
I got the money without a problem, but I was startled when I looked
at the receipt. You can see the words "Marketing Message" on
the receipt; this placeholder was...
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Financial
institutions go to great measures to protect customers’ assets.
They have vaults with steel locks, unbreakable combinations, and
security guards. Finger prints and passwords are required, and only
certain personnel are allowed to access information. These
institutions are held legally responsible for protecting their
customers’ important belongings, and they place a significant
amount of trust in their Email Service Provider (ESP) to do the
same.
Serving the financial industry is a
big step for ESPs – one which not all can handle. When financial
service companies select a platform...
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