Posted on 7 January 2008 by Hurol No Comments

High Performance Online Marketing

These days, it’s not enough to blast your customers with one-size-fits-all emails, blogs and newsletters.

Electronic Direct Marketing (EDM) – or email marketing – is spearheading a revolution in the way businesses interact with customers and partners. With the right strategies in place, EDM can work effectively with other online marketing initiatives to achieve measurable outcomes.

How? By using a set of strategies that we call the High Performance Online Marketing Framework.

But first, what about the EDM revolution?

As EDM has evolved from cut and dry communication to a dialogue driven interaction with customers, we have seen a profound shift in the way that organisations leverage the tool to target customers. It’s been a quiet revolution, but it’s now making big waves.

This shift is shown in the diagram below.

As you can see, the best practice stage in the evolution uses deep-dive analytics to instil intelligence on all fronts, customise the message to fit the audience’s behaviour, preferences and needs, and integrates this approach across all channels.What stage is your business at?

Our High Performance Framework

We’ve created this the High Performance Online Marketing Framework to show our clients exactly what’s possible – and how to get there – when it comes to online marketing.The framework is shown in the diagram below. In the middle is the repository of all customer insights – demographics, preferences, interests, campaign responses, product holdings and more.

On the right of this repository, in ‘predictable territory’, are engagement programs and how you measure them. The left side, in ‘optimisation territory’, is your testing ground, where the innovations and initiatives for enhancing response rates happen.

The success of your online marketing program depends on a few simple principles. Let’s take a look at these now.

Analytics. It’s mandatory. Embed analytics from day one to ensure ROI while gaining informed and optimal growth. Profiling, segmentation and targeting are key to achieving optimal results. Ongoing measurement and analysis help build marketing intelligence and should be a standard activity that feeds into all campaigns.

Build infrastructure. Steadily build infrastructure that supports online member acquisition and retention. Analyse the member profiles and define the segmentation requirements. Collect profiling elements ‘iteratively’ to facilitate targeting.

Think customer. Think about your customer programs and design their journeys foremost. In other words, don’t focus solely on tactical campaigns. Rather, campaigns should create impetus for action.

Maintain momentum. Don’t cannibalise existing programs but provide choice by adding ‘optional’ online components. Design integrated campaigns that use both online and offline channels. For example, if a customer expresses interest by clicking on an email link, but don’t respond, include the lead in telemarketing.

Rigorous process. Develop effective processes for repeatable and predictable results.

Have patience. It takes time to achieve quality results online. We aim to get the audience to anticipate and embrace our online communication but to do this we need to hone-the-tone of the language first and commit to a medium to long-term evolving program.

Be ruthless. Test and optimise to get optimal results. Identify variables such as creative, calls to action, and offer; and measure their performance to get an optimal mix. Monitor performance and attempt to improve it iteratively. Innovate but also don’t refrain from culling under-performing campaigns.

Sound easy? Remember, online marketing is hard work and requires ongoing momentum. But get it right, and you’ll reap the rewards.

Learn more about Bienalto’s marketing services