A recent blog post by David, highlights the perils of relying on so-called “accepted wisdom.”  Similar to relying on conventional intuition, “accepted wisdom” is indicative of a failure to question assumptions and support conclusions with facts.  It is, as the author notes, the “number one enemy” of marketing success.  Edelman cites an example in which Google realized they were using two similar – but different – shades of blue in the hyperlinked calls to action in their ad products.  Rather than simply go with the intended shade as most companies would have done, Google tested both blues, only to learn that one delivered dramatically higher results than the other.  Similar situations occur every single day in marketing departments:  The designer who designed the landing page wants to see the page aligned with his original vision.  The marketer instead opts for the less aesthetically appealing version that delivered a higher conversion rate in multivariate tests.  “Accepted wisdom” would have us choose the prettier page; data drives us to choose the one that works best, pretty or not.

Analytics make it easy for us to make those decisions.  While data can seem overwhelming for some, when distilled and properly analyzed, it becomes actionable, a roadmap to successful marketing.  A good analytics or data management platform can tell you everything you need to know about your audience – what they click on or engage with, what they’re buying or not buying, where they are, how old they are, what they like or don’t like.  With that information at your fingertips, it’s harder to make a bad decision than a good one.  But you have to have a thirst for data - you can’t just go with the pretty design.

Below, David shares why intuition is still important, and how to make data work for the marketing process.

Does Big Data Mean the End of Intuition?

Simple answer: No way.

Marketers need intuition more than ever before.  The masses of data that they can analyze, and the tools available, can certainly find interesting patterns on their own, but that is just one ingredient in the value creation recipe.  Since there’s so much data out there, good intuition (and by that, I’m including judgment as well) is necessary to set priorities for what to look for, what matters to the customer, what the competitive landscape looks like and how behaviors are changing over time.  That intuition and judgment comes from a deep understanding of customers—ethnographic research, shop-alongs, discussions—to know what to do with the data.

Excavating insights from data fuels the design of experiences and products, which still cannot be automated.  So many of our interactions with customers are not all digital and automated.  People still shop in stores, call phone reps and send tweets expecting a human interaction.  We need intuition to think ahead about how to deliver the experiences and products to the front lines where people are interacting with customers.  From data discovery through design and then delivery, great "intuition" will still drive the winners, who shape the customer decision journey to their own advantage.  Yes, you can optimize search terms, display ad placements and personalized interactions, but that is no substitute for intuition, judgment and innovation.

To make data work, you have to envision the people who will be using it:

·      Align everything against the Customer Decision Journey.

Think "next interaction to cultivate,” not just "next product to buy.”  Think about measures of interim performance across the decision journey, not just conversions.

·      Make the data easy to understand for your employees on the front lines.

Whether they are reps who handle customer interactions or managers who are evaluating the next program to create, new visualization tools can highlight what is important and why it is happening.

·      Use data to help the customer.

Enable them to see how the information they provide you helps them, so they are comfortable with increasing the sharing involved.  Help them track their activities, find new ideas, set goals or connect with others.  Make that data exchange part of the value proposition itself.

·      Don't lock the analysts in a separate room.

Mix it up.  Seat integrated teams together, who can analyze and act on the data, but keep the analysts connected as a community.  They need to share ideas and grow, but they also need to deeply understand the context of the business.

We are working with many clients right now, who are re-engineering their marketing processes to integrate new data tools, and we learn a ton from seeing what it really takes to make things happen at the rock-face of execution.  That takes people, which means you need judgment and intuition.  At least, that’s my intuition.

To learn more about how data science is changing the role of intuition, watch presentations from the recent Advertising + Data Science Congress (ADS-CON).

Building a List

The first and most difficult step in setting up an email marketing campaign is gaining a list of people who want to hear more about what you have to offer them. Starting from scratch can be intimidating, since you have to strike a careful balance between urging visitors to sign up, but you don't want to come across as too forceful. Here are a few ways you can build the email list:

-      Online Signup - Place a sign up form on your blog or website

-      Social Media – Request followers to sign up through tweets or Facebook news

-      Email signature – Include a link for signing up to your email list in your email signature

-      Offline Signup – place a clipboard on the counter in your business

All of these have their advantages and disadvantages, but the common ingredient is time and patience.

Sending Emails

Email services such as MailChimp or Constant Contact allow you to easily email thousands of people at a time. These services will provide templates for emails that are easy to set up even if you are not a savvy web developer. If your business is located in the United States, it is important that you follow all of the rules in the CAN-SPAM act to avoid facing penalties. A good automated service will help you stay within the guidelines. The most important part to remember is that you must give people the ability to opt out of receiving any additional emails.

Integrating with Display

Now that you know how to get your email marketing started, next you have to integrate your emails with display ads. Basically, you want to create a virtual loop between the display campaign, your website, and your email campaign. First, display ads serve as little online billboards that catch the attention of new prospects and direct them to your website. Once they are on your site, your email signup form will capture their contact info and add them to the email marketing list. The emails that you send will then urge them to click back to your website.  Anyone who visits your website is tagged with a cookie, allowing the display ads to be retargeted to them as they browse the rest of the web, reminding them that you are there.

Studies done by Smart Insights show just how powerful advertising campaigns combined with email marketing can be:

1. The combined use of email and display advertising increases advertising recall by 13%

2. Email advertising is more welcomed than other forms of advertisement, improving the reach of campaigns

3. Email and display campaigns boost web traffic by a factor of four

When you combine your email marketing strategies with your display advertising campaigns, not only can you reach more of your target audience quicker, you will have a more successful time interacting with your customers and increasing traffic to your main page. Remember if you give people high quality content there is a higher chance that they will click through to your website, thereby keeping the loop going and giving you the opportunity to grow your relationship with your audience.

For more insights on how to make display advertising a powerful part of your online marketing efforts, check out the blog at Vantage Local’s website. Vantage Local is the leader in online display campaigns for locally-minded advertisers.

As we’ve entered into a new decade with new web and social technologies continuing to advance at warp speed, new buyer behaviors continue to emerge.  Some new buyer behaviors, such as informational search, are no longer emerging but have crossed over into accepted reality.  With other new buyer behaviors, such as those related to social influence, we are only getting a glimpse of at this moment in time.  The given in the current state of B2B marketing and sales is that buyer behavior and complex buying processes have changed.

One of the toughest challenges in the past few years has been to figure out how to respond to these changes.  One place to start is for executives to ask a bold question: are we still selling like it’s 1999?  An especially valid question for companies that have traditionally been sales driven and the dominance of a sales culture has reigned for several decades.  Companies have changed and responded - but have the changes been more cosmetically enhancing or truly systemic in nature?  I think there is a big difference and let’s look at a few important areas:

Budgeting

Let’s start with the money trail.  Has the proportion of budgets devoted to sales and marketing changed?  Or are you still having the same ratio as far back as 1999?  I am mentioning this first because companies and people will tend to behave and adapt to how much budget they have and how they are paid.  If the ratio is still the same or the needle has moved marginally – might be good to think about changing.

Technology

Companies are implementing new marketing and sales automation technologies.  The real question is: are new technologies automating new systemic adaptations to changing buyer behaviors or are they simply automating existing sales processes that haven’t changed much since 1999?

Inbound versus Outbound

The inbound versus outbound reflection is fraught with real cultural issues.  Let’s not pretend that there has not been for several decades a kind of power play and power struggle between inside and outside.  For years, most prominently in sales driven cultures, the inside sales teams and inbound marketers have been relegated to the second tier in terms of budget, talent, perception, and support.  If your culture is still a reflection of 1999 where there is top heavy dominance for outbound activities and strategies, then you might want to get past the idea that you have new web site as being your big change.  Inbound marketing and the support of highly skilled inside sales teams are here to stay.

Talent and Hiring Criteria

Are your hiring criteria’s the same as 1999?  If you haven’t worked with human resources for several years to examine new talent requirements for true systemic changes, then this could be a good starting point.  Does the majority of your sales teams still look like and possess the same talent like it’s 1999?  If so, the attribute and skill levels may prove to be a mismatch to new changing buyer behaviors and having buyers heading towards competitors.  Buyers will want to work with advisors good at orienteering versus sellers good at presenting.

Sales Training and Processes

When was the last time you examined sales training and sales processes?  Are sales people still going through the same or similar sales training that sales teams went through in 1999?  Do your sales processes, despite the addition of new technologies, represent the same 4, 5, 6, or however many stages you had in 1999?  To adapt to new changing buyer behaviors calls for systemic changes to training and sales processes.  Not doing so in today’s evolving buyer driven world will alienate your company from buyers.

The world of buyers and sellers has literally been turned upside down since 1999.  If your organization hasn’t made transformational changes yet, it’s not too late.  The first step to doing so is to take a hard look in your boardroom mirror and ask perhaps one of the most profound question you can ask: are we still selling like it’s 1999?

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Simply put, conversational marketing is all about building and sustaining one-to-one personalized lifetime dialogues across all marketing channels to help drive revenue and marketing effectiveness. On a more technical level, it means unifying inbound and outbound communication strategies, by tracking and managing all marketing activity data to generate targeted messaging and making the best, most relevant offers based on customer behavior and established preferences, regardless of channel.

But where does the term conversational marketing come from? Let’s examine its evolution.

The term conversational marketing isn’t a new term, but when it was first introduced, the concept didn’t have the technology backing to make it a reality, and therefore was considered "hype" in some circles. But to understand this evolution, we need to talk about two previous marketing concepts: multi-channel and cross-channel marketing.

When we first started talking about cross-channel marketing, it was still a relatively new market. This fully integrated approach helps marketers focus on customer experience, no matter how many channels are incorporated into the mix. However, with marketers needing to factor in new channels like social media, as well as rich media devices such as the iPhone and Android, communications channels have become highly fragmented. Because these technologies are so new, campaigns are often innovative yet highly tactical, impersonal and siloed, rather than integrated as part of a cross-channel plan where behavioral data on opt-in customers is shared for cross-channel personalization.

Cross-channel marketing breaks down these channel silos and combines the attributes of multi-channel marketing with tools that manage customer information and marketing performance – across multiple channels, including traditional and emerging technologies, to deliver meaningful content to the right audience at the right time.

As head of North American marketing for Neolane, I have experienced first hand how enterprise marketing technology, and specifically marketing automation technology, has helped enable the shift from single-and multi-channel approaches, and drive organizations along the cross-channel maturity curve.

Today, as marketers reach the top of the cross-channel marketing curve, marketing automation technology can help marketers make the transition to conversational marketing, and provide the critical tools needed to build and sustain dynamic, one-to-one personalized lifetime dialogues with their customers and prospects.

To give you an idea of what conversational marketing is capable of, let’s take a look at how personal insurance company, Mornay services, has embraced its possibilities. The company created a personalized Avatar, known as ‘Julie,’ to help drive customer loyalty and sales. Julie is a fully personalized communications channel that is not only able to recognize visitors but is also able to remember their past history and behaviors. The goal of the Avatar is to complement call center interactions and integrate with outbound channels such as email and direct mail. This integration allows all offers and messages to be coordinated across inbound and outbound channels, including Julie. Mornay’s intent was to have Julie help facilitate navigation of the website for visitors, optimize sales processes, ensure cross-channel message consistency and optimize cross-sell opportunities. As a result, Mornay was able to achieve significant results, including increased website traffic and net sales conversation rates.

Now that single-, multi- and cross-channel marketing approaches are ready to evolve to the next level of customer engagement, conversational marketing technology provides the critical tools - and ultimately the confidence - marketers need to build sustainable one-to-one personalized lifetime dialogues that are so critical in today’s hyper- interactive, digital world.