Why You Should Choose Event Triggered Marketing Over Non-Targeted Push Marketing
Posted: Tuesday, September 29, 2009
by Kristin Hambelton
Neolane
Event triggered campaigns are currently underutilized by many marketers, who tend to employ them as a one-time tactic usually limited to email, such as when a customer abandons an online shopping cart or experiences a technical glitch. However, there are far more possibilities with event-triggered marketing.
As marketers now have even more channels of communication with customers, from print to web to phone to SMS, their dated event-triggered practices must be updated as well. Simply mining a large database is no longer sufficient to drive new revenue.
Some organizational changes may need to be made to existing marketing technologies and processes to fully realize returns on event-triggered campaigns. However, research indicates that the long run payoffs are well work the effort. Findings from Gartner show that a well implemented event-triggered campaign can save up to 80 percent of a marketer's direct mail budget. These savings are earned by using personalized on-demand printing based on triggered events, rather than mass mailings of uniform brochures to an unfiltered list of unqualified prospects. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Once a system for event-driven marketing has been put in place, it is easy to establish goals the entire organization can appreciate and understand: new clients, and up-sell and cross-sell offers to existing clients. With a transparent set of measurable strategies, marketers can negotiate budgets from a stronger position, and are more likely to be able to acquire the necessary funding for implementing event-triggered campaigns in future campaigns.
To start, marketers must have clearly defined goals for event-triggered campaigns for both new and existing customers. Focusing on one of these groups in the beginning may provide a way to test and evaluate new campaigns on a smaller scale. For now, begin by selecting a few metrics that will allow you to easily measure progress and establish solid benchmarks.
Next, look at your current methods and technologies. Ensure that the proper technology is being used to take advantage of the customer data collected regardless of which channel it came from, and as you track your metrics, make sure your system is designed to flag inconsistencies so that the proper adjustments can be made.
Gartner has found that event-triggered messages have a response rate that is five times higher than that of non-targeted push messages. These results are attainable for campaigns than pull information from a single database that has automatically tracked customer data from all points of customer contact, from brick and mortar stores to websites to customer support calls and more. If these communications between the customer and company aren't used, it's much more difficult to measure the effect of cross-selling or up-selling customers. By using event-triggered methods based on previous customer actions and trends, marketers gain a full set of tools to initiate new contacts, and bring old ones back for more.
Kristin Hambelton is the Director of Marketing at Neolane. Neolane provides the only event triggered marketing automation software specifically designed to manage, automate and optimize programs across traditional and emerging channels including direct mail, email and mobile.
This Article has been viewed 34 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.