Product Documents

The CMO behind Equinox’s bold and provocative ad campaign

By: David Lizerbram Originally posted on Marketo.com on August 12, 2015 | Modern Marketing Podcasting has become big business. For those of you who aren’t up on the medium, a podcast is simply a recorded audio show that you can download or stream and play any time you like. Top podcasters like John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Businesses are jumping into the podcast world as a hot new marketing channel—and as a new source of direct revenue. Many companies are embracing podcasts as a fresh component of their content marketingstrategy. With that being said, you may want to monetize a podcast directly through advertisements, paid expert testimonials, and endorsements. As with any other type of advertising, there are a few laws that apply to podcast ads. But don’t worry—they’re very straightforward and easy to follow. In this post, I’m going to share five simple rules to follow to help you avoid legal issues while you’re monetizing your podcast, based on two documents put out by our friends at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and .com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising. At the end of this post, we’ll talk about the financial penalties for not following these rules. Trust me, you’re going to want to know the laws. To keep it simple, I’m going to use the word “endorsement” to include any type of endorsement, testimonial, or affiliate arrangement. Also, you might be asking, “Which kinds of products do these rules apply to?” The answer is that if you’re endorsing or advertising just about anything, these rules apply. When in doubt, disclose! …And Now For the 5 Simple Rules: Rule #1: Be Honest The Guides states, “Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser”. What This Means: If you listen to some popular podcasts, you’ll hear that the host often promotes a product or service. Ford has been advertising cars on the wildly successful podcast Startup, while many podcasters have been known to talk to their listeners about web services like Squarespace. The rule here is pretty simple: be honest. If you haven’t used the product or service that you’re advertising, don’t say “We use this software every day!” Rule #2: If You Claim to Be an Expert, Actually Be an Expert The Guides state: “Whenever an advertisement represents, directly or by implication, that the endorser is an expert with respect to the endorsement message, then the endorser’s qualifications must in fact give the endorser the expertise that he or she is represented as possessing with respect to the endorsement”. What This Means: Let’s say your company is paid to state on your podcast, “We’ve tried every product on the market, and Social-Ad-O-Rama can get you the highest converting social ads”. This statement suggests that you’re an expert. Don’t make this kind of statement on the podcast if your company doesn’t know the first thing about social ads. Let’s be clear: it’s fine to run a pre-recorded advertisement for a product that you’ve never used and don’t know much about. That’s happened on every TV show and every radio show since those media were invented. It’s called “advertising”! However, you personally shouldn’t endorse or testify, on behalf of your company, about the quality of a product that you’re not familiar with. Rule #3: It’s About the Relationship The Guides are just that—indications of how to go about making the proper disclosures. Ultimately, the key is to communicate the nature of the relationship so that your audience understands what’s going on. The FTC states: “The issue is—and always has been—whether the audience understands the reviewer’s relationship to the company whose products are being reviewed”. Here’s what the Guides say on this topic: “When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement…, such connection must be fully disclosed”. What This Means: Advertising law is based on the assumption, right or wrong, that people want to know that a host has been paid or received something for free in exchange for an endorsement (or even a potential endorsement). So if your endorsement fits into that category, you need to disclose that information. Keep reading to the end of this post to find out the financial penalties for not doing so. Rule #4: You Can’t Hide or Bury the Disclosure The .com Disclosures says, in bold letters: Don’t be subtle. Therefore, the disclosure must be clear and conspicuous. Say it upfront. It’s not enough to endorse something at the beginning of the podcast and then reveal at the end of the show that the company was paid or otherwise compensated. If the endorsement is repeated in your show notes, blog post, or other medium, the disclosure must be repeated there as well. Rule #5: Fancy Legal Jargon Is Not Your Friend From the .com Disclosures: “For disclosures to be effective, consumers must be able to understand them. Advertisers should use clear language and syntax and avoid legalese or technical jargon. Disclosures should be as simple and straightforward as possible”. Easy enough. Use the same type of language to explain the relationship between your company and the product that you’d use in explaining anything else to your audience. Thus… Don’t Say: “This statement is here to comply with the requirements of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission”. —Who knows what that means?! Do Say: “Just so you know, Amazon pays me a small commission every time you purchase the book through this link. That helps support this podcast and allows us to bring you this valuable content for free”.—That type of language is clear, simple, and provides your listener with an opportunity to feel good about supporting your show. OK, But What If I Don’t Follow These 5 Simple Rules? The FTC states that failure to follow these rules can result in penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. Let’s say your company has a podcast that runs three times per week, and in each podcast you have three ads where you don’t follow the disclosure rules, and you’ve been doing so for three years. Well, multiply all that times $11,000 and you’ve got a nice fat check to write. Don’t worry—I’ve got a calculator handy—it’s $15,444,000! Most likely, the penalty would be adjusted according to the particular circumstances—but if I were you, I wouldn’t rely on asking a judge to give you a break on the fine. It’s much easier and less of a headache, not to mention less expensive, to follow the rules in the first place. To wrap this post up, there’s nothing wrong with monetizing your podcast. You just need to know the rules and disclose the details to your audience. As long as your audience is clear, you’re in the clear. For more information, take a look at the two aforementioned guides: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and .com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising (which is available in ebook format.) Of course, since this post should not be taken as legal advice, I recommend you familiarize yourself with those documents before proceeding with your advertising program. Looking for more legal tips for business podcasters? Download my free ebook, Podcast Law, at PodcastLawGuide.com. David Lizerbram is an attorney and business law strategist in private practice in San Diego. When he is not assisting clients or working on his blog, David enjoys watching movies, listening to podcasts, and sipping craft beer. Check out his blog at http://LizerbramLaw.com/blog/

During the development of our whitepaper “Designing a Marketing Organization for the Digital Age,” published by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR-AS), Eduardo Conrado, executive vice president, Strategy & Innovation Officer (and former chief marketing officer), Motorola Solutions, was interviewed. He spoke about how marketing and sales work together at Motorola Solutions to create meaningful customer experiences. Below is an excerpt from his interview. HBR-AS: What are the pressures you see falling on the marketing organization and how is it responding? Conrado: Marketing has to assume the role of engaging with customers and employees. At the same time, as you drive communications channels outside and inside of the company, they tend to be more digital in nature. So by default, marketing has a duality of the traditional communications engagement role along with a technology role. HBR-AS: So how is that affecting the structure of the marketing organization? Conrado: In some companies you see marketing and IT combined, as we did at Motorola Solutions. In other cases, you see marketing and IT working together. If there is a lack of leadership or knowledge-sharing between the CIO and CMO (in terms of CIOs being more customer-facing and CMOs being digitally savvy), and if you see the Chief Digital Officer role being created, it means the CMO or CIO is not stepping up to his/her role. HBR-AS: Can you tell me the story about how you assumed both the IT and marketing roles and how that came to pass? Conrado: When I was CMO, we had digital marketing teams, but the digital implementations ran through an IT development team. It made more sense if we had thoseteams tightly linked. So during conversations with the CIO, we decided to combine the teams into one, reporting into my organization. The strategy and the actual implementation go hand-in-hand. In order to make the IT department more customer-facing, it would need to go through marketing or sales. I already had a passion for and knowledge of the IT component, so I picked it up. HBR-AS: What was the customer experience before you made this combination and what is it like now? Conrado: We’re in the process of building it out. I will tell you that investments are being made based upon functional priorities. Before the teams were combined, we had websites for each of the customer transaction types. Now we have a more holistic view of the customer as the information flows across the organization. That allows us to break down what the customer is trying to accomplish by customer type. Then we can identify and repair any broken systems within the company to improve their experience. HBR-AS: Is it a single experience because it’s all online in one website? Conrado: What we’re building is a way to define what the customer is trying to accomplish and how to make it easier to do it digitally. Going back to your earlier question, the CMO role is evolving from being marketing communications to actually heading up technology-enabled customer interactions. The role of the CMO should morph, depending on the company. It could morph into impacting the way that technology gets deployed. It could morph into playing that role in terms of how the company shifts and defines user experience beyond just website design, reflecting a holistic view of design thinking. HBR-AS: More of the selling process is done online through content, which is more of a marketing role than a sales role. How is that changing things? Conrado: It really didn’t change that much. I think we got the teams to work a little bit closer together. As you bring in conversations that take place between sales, marketing, and IT around the customer, then those pieces have to work closer together by default. HBR-AS: So they’re just working closer together or how does it reflect that more of the customer journey is managed by marketing? Conrado: No, marketing is just one part of it. Sales also has a big role to play. It doesn’t change the relationship between marketing and sales in terms of what the teams do, rather it broadens the conversations that marketing and sales can have together. HBR-AS: There is a lot of discussion around the traditional marketing role of creativity versus one now which is much more focused on predictive analytics. How do you see that skillset changing going forward? Conrado: If you go back three decades, marketing was actually advertising, and creativity plays a big part in that. I still think there is a big creative element in terms of what marketing does to get the right message out. But now, with the complexity of the roles and the fact that you’re also adding technology to it, you’re adding data, and you’re adding insights based on that data, which is what analytics provides. So the role of the CMO itself has become much more complex, along with the skills and the types of teams they oversee. When you look at the marketing department, you might still have a brand team and an advertising team, but then you also have a digital team as well as an insights team that has analytics within it. In the future, CMOs are going to have to be comfortable with technology and with the use of data for insight. HBR-AS: So how is the marketing organization currently measured and how do you think that is going to change in the future? Conrado: I think that companies measure customer engagement based on revenue growth. It is part of the sales organization, but ultimately, what are the programs marketing is putting in place to support that? There are some programs that you can attribute direct revenue to, but there are a lot of them where that’s not the case. If the marketing and sales teams work together with common goals, they will produce revenue growth.

By: Crystal Vaughan Posted: December 15, 2015 | Modern Marketing If building a customer community for an organization were like planning a wedding and inviting guests, customer communities often are the second cousin who’s invited only when slots open up on the attendee list. But take it from me (I’m in the middle of planning my own wedding), they really should be a guest of honor. The Importance of Building a Customer Community Many companies see communities as a ‘nice-to-have’ and not as critical to the organization as sales and marketing, but the reality is that a customer community is a critical direct line to your customers and has the power to build your brand with your most powerful advocates. 2016 is the age of the customer, as the market moves at a speed not yet seen before, driven by customers’ high expectations for personalization of their journey. Businesses will need to realign and reorient their strategy specifically around the customer or risk losing out on developing and fostering a valuable channel as customers form communities of their own. During the last few months, I’ve researched and planned for the 2016 execution of an online community for Invoca. At the same time, I’ve also been planning a wedding and actively applying the lessons I’ve learned along the way to help lay a successful foundation upon which I’ll build Invoca’s community. Below, I share my advice on the three most important things I’ve learned from wedding planning that’s helped me assemble an online community proposal: 1. Get Executive Buy-In Early On While the tradition of asking the bride’s father’s permission before proposing is somewhat outdated and not as frequently used anymore, asking permission and getting buy-in is still a vital part of a community-building process. Getting internal buy-in and support is a rule of thumb within organizations as they build large initiatives. But, like a nervous fiancé about to ask permission, I bet you’re wondering: what’s the best way to set yourself up for success when you ask? Start by doing your research. Then create a project plan and define methods to measure your results—think about what success looks like for this initiative and ask yourself the hard questions you’ll likely get. Then present your plan to an executive sponsor. Their buy-in as you build an online community will help support your goals and guide you with your project plan, ensuring you stay in alignment with the overall business objectives. It will also assist with defining exactly what is being built and the importance of the initiative to the rest of the organization. 2. Customer Experience Matters Just like you have to understand your wedding guests and gauge their interest in the different elements of your wedding (did someone say photobooth?), you’ve got to gauge the level of interest your current customers would have in an online community. This may not be the main channel they are interested in actively participating on–perhaps they interact more with your brand on your blog or want instant support via chat or a Twitter account. But can you incorporate these elements into your community so they can get everything in one place? Getting consensus on what your customers want before throwing money into developing an online community should be part of your research. You want to establish a channel that supports development of the customer and helps them get value out of their current investment, while also ensuring you see a return from your investment. Establishing this type of customer experience broadcasts that you are listening to what they want and creates a strong foundation for your first interactions with them. So set up a primary channel to communicate with them and nail it. 3. You Need a Team to Bring It to Life When you’re planning a wedding, you’re either one of two brides: a bride that thinks in siloes or a bride that thinks all-encompassing. Those that think in siloes are the equivalent of marketers who have “tool bloat”, needing a decorator for wedding decor, florist for floral arrangements, and caterer for wedding menu. However, in my experience, I’ve found if you bind everything together, it’s a great way to indirectly support the main initiative. For instance, find a venue that incorporates catering, décor, lighting, floral, all in one complete package, and you’ll have an entire team working toward one main goal instead of trying to coordinate between all of them. The same goes for building an online community. Many think online communities are strictly for customer marketing, upsells and advocacy, and as such, marketing-owned. But it is much more than that–they allow for instant, unlimited communication and unparalleled networking, giving customers a chance to build stronger relationships with each other and the business. If your community is going to be a success, it needs to be rebranded internally, adopted widely and owned company-wide. Sales, marketing, customer success, product development and even finance need to work together in order for the business to have a successful community. By putting together a cross-functional team of champions, each person will be able to promote and indirectly support the online community. Aligning the goals of the community with the goals of all your organizational stakeholders is vital. When companies align the community goal across all departments, employees know to make decisions that put the customer first and are more likely to contribute to the world-class customer experience you are trying to build. Ready, Set, Plan The online customer community is often a neglected opportunity. Businesses that incorporate the launch of customer communities in their plans and immediately hire customer community managers know community is a strong driver of business value and revenue. When community is seen as an actual product of the business, organizations will invest in it because they understand that building engaged communities will keep their customers happy, which results in lower churn. Businesses that don’t incorporate communities into their plan will need to play catch up quickly in order to remain competitive in a customer dominated world. In 2016, my prediction will be that organizations will begin to reinvent themselves to focus on the value of loyal relationships and critical real-time customer engagement over resolutions and transactions. I want to invite you to join me as I traverse through the world of the online customer community (sorry, unfortunately, my wedding guest list is already at full capacity!) If you haven’t already, consider building one out yourself. It’s a great time to be a community manager! And if you’re already on top of it, leave me some feedback below on how you have built out your own community, what tips and tricks you can offer, or any other comments you may have!

Two docs about the Future of Marketing - High Lever overview of results (different doc in Marketing Central) - Detailed results Survey by Duke University and McKinsey and company.

By: Renata Bell Posted: February 15, 2016 | Digital Marketing As the primaries heat up, politicians are leveraging digital marketing and social media to capture the hearts (and votes) of U.S. voters.Having a strong digital presence is now table stakes for political candidates. Whether 50 years ago or today, there are 3 things successful political campaigns have been able to learn from marketers: be targeted, be efficient, and be clear with your message across all channels or be lost in the cacophony of the elections. So, let’s take a look at how political candidates, over time, have adapted to incorporate digital marketing into their campaigns to effectively communicate their message. When Digital Marketing Meets Politics What does this look like in practice? Let’s answer that question by taking a look at how political candidates have structured and used their websites and how that has evolved to mirror marketing best practices. Then, we’ll look at how candidates have adapted their strategies to take their message to social media platforms. The Website In 1996, just five years after the first website was built, Bill Clinton and Al Gore took advantage of the web to promote their campaign. These running-mates launched their own site, which is still up today, stating their tagline and offering additional resources. At the time, presidential campaigns had little insight into who would come to their website. With no data to back up their actions and no measures to test by, their website laid out everything—from debate information to biographies to downloadable bumper stickers—in hard-to-navigate columns. By the 2000 and 2004 elections, websites were much more robust with new modules, calendars, newsletters, and lots of content. While these new capabilities were great and candidates seemed to embrace them, the sites suffered from looking cluttered and lacked a clear call-to-action. In the two examples below from the Bush/Cheney website in 2000 and then again in 2004, you can see the evolution of call-to-action and site organization. A marked departure from the clutter of the earlier websites, Barack Obama’s 2007 website harnessed the power of a clear message and call-to-action. Taking a page from the marketing playbook, instead of overwhelming his readers with more information, he created a clear message and call-to-action (join the team), with a more organized display for additional information. Overall, you can see a drastic shift in the site design to be less cluttered and provide clear visuals. In fact, Obama’s website was launched by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, who created it with the intention of being a networking site where volunteers could create groups, plan events, raise funds, and connect with each other. Look how far it’s come today: Digital Marketing is a Cornerstone for the Modern Campaign Not only did website capabilities advance as time progressed, but so did the different web properties to help candidates reach a broader audience—namely social media. The 2008 campaign year was an unprecedented turning point in which candidates embraced social media. This was especially true of the Obama campaign, which harnessed the power of social media and digital marketing to connect with his supporters on a new level. As Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post said, “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee.” Obama also leveraged YouTube like never before. The campaign’s official channel was collectively watched for 14.5 million hours, as reported by political consultant Joe Trippi. And from Obama’s success, a lesson emerged that political candidates from any party, running for any office (from local mayor all the way to president), will not soon forget—candidates need to be everywhere their audiences are if they want their message to reach beyond their base of voters. As for the current presidential candidates, almost all of the candidate sites today echo a similar format: clear message, clear call-to-action, neat navigation, and a giant email signup (plus links to social media sites). The emphasis on digital spending, social media, and other online paid ads is only going to increase as the election gets closer. Already, some candidates are changing their strategy to focus their spending specifically on digital marketing channels. Consider how presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has mixed traditional avenue with digital. She spent early on and often on traditional methods—$12 million on television, $6 million on direct mail, and set aside about $6 million for digital advertising. She has leveraged the most diverse and unique channels to interact with her followers: Instagram, Pinterest, Periscope, Snapchat, even a Spotify list with Clinton’s curated music including Katy Perry and JLo. Does listening to Clinton’s playlist sway more people to vote for her? I don’t think so, but it’s just one piece of the cross-channel puzzle. In fact, on hillaryclinton.com she has 14 or so webtrackers, including Optimizely, Facebook Custom Audiences, and Google Adwords. In contrast, Donald Trump has only 3 (Facebook Custom Audience, Google Analytics and Google Dynamic Remarketing). However, Trump hasn’t turned his back on digital marketing and social media. His website, like the other candidates, is simple above the fold and then below it invites visitors to sign up for SMS alerts, watch his YouTube videos, and participate with the campaign on social media. Trump Website: Above the fold Trump Website: Below the fold Among his Republican candidate primary competition, Trump seems to be using social media most effectively, although he is arguably one of the loudest (albeit THE most controversial) social media contributors. Which makes sense: small statements can travel far at the speed of light with social media. Stats released by Twitter after a GOP debate Take a look at another candidate, Bernie Sanders. He has spent more money than any other politician before on digital marketing: a whopping $10 million, while he has spent minimal funds on traditional avenues such as television and direct mail (Bush spent $35 million on television ads alone). Digital marketing has been at the heart of his marketing strategy, and that appears to have started to pay off with the target demographic of the millennial generation. After the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus, some 84% of voters ages 18-29 voted for Sanders. While millennials are an incredibly loyal generation, they also see through political pomp and want nothing to do with political campaigns from the past. Being able to interact with candidates on their own terms, on their own channels, is incredibly important to them. It won’t be surprising to see the rest of the presidential candidates start to pay more attention to digital marketing channels as the need to appeal to different, segmented groups grows more pressing. One thing’s for sure, while smart political campaigns are certainly applying marketing best practices—targeted and clear messages—undoubtedly, they could get even more personal and create more tailored message to followers that care about certain issues more than others. Do you think having more curated and personalized content from your representatives would be helpful? Let me know in the comments section below.

By: Sanjay Dholakia Posted: December 2, 2014 | Engagement Marketing “What a long, strange trip it has been…” For those of you that are as old as me, you’ll instantly know that quote is from the Grateful Dead’s famous song “Truckin”. When I think of that lyric – I am not thinking about my high school days. Well, maybe a little. Mostly, I’m reflecting on just how much the science, the art, the profession of marketing has changed in recent years. Pause if you will for just a moment and think about the marketing landscape just 10 years ago. Google had only just gone public and only a small percentage of marketers knew what the acronyms ‘SEM’ and ‘SEO’ meant. The iPhone was in its infancy. Facebook had only just left the college campus and was still being thought of as a place to tell people what you were having for lunch. Now, we can’t imagine a world without them. I’ll often say that marketing has changed more in the last 5 years than the last 500…and, it’s likely to change even more in the next 5. If you pull the lens back, it used to be that we all lived in an era of mass marketing – one where it was ‘one message for everybody’. And, it was all about how good that single message was – how clever we were as marketers. Then, the internet showed up, and we moved into an era of transactional marketing – where it was all about the ‘click’ point of interaction. But, now in this pervasive mobile, social, digital world, we’re graduating to this new era – an era where that click, that interaction, is just the beginning of a lifelong relationship and journey with a customer. Let’s call this the era of engagement marketing. A long, strange trip indeed. This new era of engagement marketing is one that is just starting to unfold and will hinge on the ability of organizations to engage people on a personal level, continuously over time, across all channels, and across all of their experiences. This will be the new basis of competition – organizations with deeper engagement will emerge as the winners. And, all of this puts the marketing function in the driver’s seat even more as organizations increasingly turn to marketing to shepherd this customer journey. A “marketing first” world, if you will. But let’s be honest here. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know exactly how this is going to play out. But, I do know that this wild ride we are all about to take is one that will fundamentally change the way brands and organizations interact with customers and people. To help provide a few guideposts, Marketo commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit to explore  how marketers everywhere navigate this new era. The EIU spoke to some of the brightest minds in marketing around the globe, surveying marketers at companies of all sizes and shapes. Together with the Economist, we have synthesized this data into a series of insights about how to chart a course through this new era of engagement marketing.  Starting next week, I will kick off a 26-week long series sharing these insights. I look forward to sharing this long, strange trip together.

By: Kristen Kaighn Posted: March 21, 2016 | Lifecycle Marketing I have a confession. I have placed 118 Amazon Prime orders in the last 6 months. Now, judging by the amount of cardboard in my garage alone, I should have known I might have a “problem.” Everything I’ve purchased were things that I could easily buy across the street, from protein shakes to batteries, cheddar bunnies to hangers, and, of course, all the things I’ll need for my new baby that’s coming in a few weeks. But my “problem” is really the product of Amazon’s secret sauce and why they’ve been able to retain me (an admittedly extremely fickle shopper) as a loyal customer. What goes into this “secret sauce” of customer retention? Is there a recipe for taking a business model and product from good, to one that customers can’t live without? As marketers, we know that we have to keep delivering value in the form of content, entertainment, education, and services well after the initial transaction in order to keep customers engaged and our brand top-of-mind. But customer retention goes past simply staying top-of-mind. It’s about understanding your customers deeply and ensuring that no matter where they are in their purchase cycle, you’ve got their back. This is what great companies have in common: a customer culture where everyone feels ownership of the customer experience—essentially living by the quote “customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.” Today’s buyers are more likely to switch (brands, vendors, providers) than ever before, regardless of whether they’re a millennial or boomer. However, taking these steps towards building a customer culture in your company can make a big impact on your customer retention and grow your loyalty base: Step 1: Develop a Process Do you have a process for dealing with the positive and negative responses you receive from customers? Step one to building a customer-centric culture is to get your house in order because if it’s messy, everyone on the Twitterverse will hear about it. Okay, so maybe it’s not necessarily Twitter, but today’s customers are not shy about sharingboth their positive and negative experiences with a brand. Your plan will be unique to your business, your product or service, and your support structure, but it’s critical that everyone in your organization fundamentally understands your policy and process for handling customer feedback. As you develop your customer response plan, keep these things in mind: Take the time to listen to your audience. Address their issue with respect and timeliness, but appropriate humor also goes a long way (you are talking to a person after all). Don’t shy away from responding where they are, especially in the social arena. Step 2: Frame Every Interaction as an Opportunity Seize every interaction with your customers as an opportunity to make them happy. The top three reasons why customers switch brands are cheaper pricing, rude staff, and too many mistakes. This means that every touchpoint with your customer is important, especially when you consider the impact that retaining that customer can have on your business. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of your customers.With this in mind, here are three things to remember as you work to create excellent customer interactions: Offer promotions and discounts for your most loyal customers to keep happy customers, well, happy. Build your customer culture and teams with people who share the same values. Fanatical care for the customer can be built into your culture, so think about the different ways you can build it into yours. In some cases, this means that everyone spends time working customer support as part of their training, while in others, customers are the heart of every story the brand tells. Understanding your customers before they tell you something went wrong is critical. Having a centralized view of customers and coordinating their experiences allows you to avoid spamming them and lets you speak to them personally, with relevant messages. Step 3: Nail Your Customer Service As the face of your company, your customer-facing teams are the front line in sometimes tense situations. Their response can make or break you in the eyes of your customer.Arming your service team with the right tools to resolve issues can make a huge impact on your customer retention: Create a channel for service teams to relay customer feedback. Obviously, poor product design or experience will create some unhappy customers, but having a feedback loop from your customer teams to the appropriate contact internally will allow you to actively address and log these issues. Develop an arsenal of resolution tactics. A representative that can’t solve a problem can just make a bad situation worse, so make sure that your service teams have a robust arsenal of resolution tactics. Be prompt. No one likes hold music, so don’t torture your customers with lengthy wait times. Your customers are people and most people don’t love wasting their time on hold, so make their service experience as seamless as possible. Want to learn more about how to bottle your own secret customer retention sauce? Check out our slide deck,Customers Are Your Prospects, Too to discover how retention, loyalty, and advocacy drive revenue and should be every marketer’s biggest focus.

INDUSTRY NEWS Mobile In Mind: Thoughts on the Present and Future of Mobile Marketing Forbes Across all industries, brands are spending more time on researching and implementing mobile marketing strategies. From mobile advertising and mobile wallets to mobile sales mechanisms and reward-based mobile advertising, executives are realizing the current benefits and planning for the future opportunities mobile has in store. Interestingly, researchers have estimated that consumers interact with their mobile devices over 100 times a day. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to determine at what point during these interactions is the consumer most likely to engage with mobile advertising. Internet of Things Data Could Fuel Ad Targeting Ad Age IOT has promised to turn people’s everyday interactions with everyday items into data for logistical and marketing applications. The industry is approaching the next stage of connected appliances and food packaging. This means marketers need to figure out where all this information will go and how it will be used. Marketers Should Use Data to Build Trust with Customers, Says Report by EY and Forbes Insights Forbes Customers have more information available than ever before to assist them in their buying decisions, and winning customer loyalty has become an increasing challenge for companies. Less than a third of CMOs and marketing executives fully understand where trust is eroded. In fact, 51 percent of executives believe that there is a significant opportunity in the use of analytics for customer insight and in expanding the use of external data sources. However, only 37% say they have the capability to use analytics to tailor communications and outreach to the customer. This is a low number considering that many marketing executives see personalization as the next big trend in marketing. Age of the Data-Devoted Marketer Information Age Big data is disrupting the way marketers understand and interact with their audience. However, while analytics will help to identify targets, and understand customers, it must never be at the expense of creativity. This means having the ability to act intuitively and not necessarily because it’s laser-targeted at a key audience. The article highlights that in order to be successful today, marketers must wear many different hats. This means that they are analytical and data-driven, while having a strong grasp of brand, storytelling and experiential marketing.