Understanding ‘who’ to target and ‘when’ to engage with them (see my previous posts) becomes a moot point unless you’re able to determine ‘how’ to communicate with customers in a way that will drive a positive response. This is where a lot of mobile marketers water down the idea of ‘personalization’ – cycling through preconceived offers versus really determining what’s best for a specific customer.
THE MYTH: Higher value offers drive better results.
“If I offer you more for less, you’ll accept and become a devoted customer.”
It’s an easy assumption to make, regardless of what product or service you’re marketing. But consumers have figured out the ins and outs of dangling carrots, and marketers are realizing that long-term success requires more than offering ‘the most’ or ‘the greatest’.
Offers based on value alone tend to fall into a few categories:
“Too good to be true”: We’ve all had the pleasure of answering that dreaded phone call – the one that inevitably comes right at dinner time with someone offering us a free trip to an exotic resort. Most hang up the phone before the offer is fully revealed, but for those who choose to wait it out, that ‘too good to be true’... Read more
Tagged 'contextual marketing' 
Debunking the Myths of Mobile Marketing: Creating Valuable Offers
Debunking the Myths of Mobile Marketing: Acting in Context
Delivering personalized offers based on an individual’s behaviors (see my previous posts) is only valuable if you can determine the best time to engage. It can be challenging for marketers to pinpoint given the ever-changing contexts of mobile users but those who can up their game are rewarded with better results – and happier customers.
THE MYTH: Event-based marketing is all about context.
Think of the kid who gets into a fight on the playground. Before he even gets through the door, his mom is grounding him for his inexcusable behavior. All the way to his room, he’s pleading with her – “just let me tell you the whole story!” Once she takes the time to listen she learns that: the classroom bully has been picking on him for weeks, the teacher has done little to address the situation, and it all came to a head when the bully was on a mission to push him off the monkey bars. Suddenly, her take on the appropriate action quickly changes.
Herein lies the problem with event-based marketing – it’s based on a single data point and disregards the circumstances leading up to a specific action as well as what’s predicted to happen next. Event-based... Read more
Finding the diamonds in the rough: what you need to advance your marketing
Are you a log splitter or a diamond cutter?
In my last post I discussed how marketers are changing their methodology for driving more effective campaigns by expanding their testing from A versus B to A to Z. In that same post, I cited the power of machine learning to test in-numerous combinations to determine the winners.
Some people took the post to say, “Great. Now with machine learning I can find the best offer not from a simple bake off but against any number of offers. I’ll take the best one out of an A to Z test (which will clearly be better than what I’d get from a simple A/B test) and scale that one, say offer T, to EVERYONE, right?!”
Wrong. That’s like taking a highly trained gem cutter and replacing their facet cutting machine with an ax to cut a rough diamond. Imagine the amount of waste of that precious mineral. Customers need to be thought of in a similar way; like precious metal versus a piece of wood.
Woodcutters don’t care how they treat each log. Each one is cut indiscriminately with the goal of building a big pile of fire word and getting a good work out. Traditional... Read more
From A/B to A/Z Testing: How Machine Learning is Transforming Mobile Marketing
A/B testing has been used by marketers for decades. The concept is simple. Present two versions (A and B), then measure the response rate, determine ‘the winner’ and then target that offer to everybody.
Originating with direct mail before being applied to online, A/B testing continues to be used as a means for determining what is more effective in driving response rates. But when are marketers going to stop shooting for the average?
A typical A/B test would help you measure the impact of certain elements, such as:
Does a percentage or dollar value discount drive customers to respond?
Does a concise or extended amount of product information lead to online purchase?
Does an immediate or extended call to action more likely to drive a purchase?
Does a confident or humorous tone lead to a higher response rate?
The assumption is made that if group A’s treatment results in a higher response rate, than this is the ‘winner’. A perfect fit for all? Not likely. What about the people that actually preferred offer B? Force offer A on them? And what about offers C, D and G relative to offers A and B? What about messages F, J and M? Content elements G, H, and L? Plans... Read more
Scoring Goals Using Customer Analytics
What makes for a good offensive football player? Is it how tall they are? Where they grew up? Their foot speed? How cocky they are? Who they’re related to?
Most people size up talent based on heuristics or to be blunt – factors that don’t really matter. For every sport, there are certain “rules of thumb” that are typically based on guesses or intuition. If someone was an all-star player in high school, they’re destined to be an all-star player in college. But is that really the right way to predict talent?
Marketers are much the same. We tend to rely on intuition and if we leverage data to fuel our campaigns, we often look at a subset or consolidated view (i.e., profile or segmentation data), which is often proven to give incomplete – or even false – reads.
Let’s look at two Dutch soccer players – Arjen Robben and Klass-Jan Huntelaar. Who’s better? If you compare their profile, they’re almost identical – same position, age, birthplace, height, weight, years in the league, etc. If you dig a bit deeper and look at the outcome of the 2010-2011 season, you’ll see that Robben ranked 12th and Huntelaar came in at 26th based on... Read more
