Joe Stanhope, Chief Strategy Officer, SDL Campaign Management & Analytics, told Loyalty 360 that targeted, relevant email communications are extremely effective for engaging customers, driving loyalty, and generating business.
But he added that generic “batch-and-blast” email campaigns can have the opposite effect. As a result, SDL this week announced upgrades to its Intelligent Marketing Suite, with feature improvements to the SDL Email Manager solution.
“The ability to help marketers fall on the right side of the equation and take advantage of this opportunity is why SDL Email Manager is a core component of the SDL Intelligent Marketing Suite,” Stanhope said. “The most recent enhancements to the platform let marketers use assets like video and audio to engage with customers. It wasn’t that long ago that a video embedded in an email would eat up a customer’s network bandwidth or end up in the spam folder. Thanks to robust broadband networks and wireless connections, these types of interactive assets work well in email and engage today’s empowered consumer.”
Given that email marketing is one of the most commonly used interactive marketing techniques with an ROI up to 4,300%, SDL’s Email Manager allows marketers to:
Take advantage of cross-media assets, including video and audio, with seamless integration between SDL Email Manager and SDL Media Manager for a relevant and branded interactive experience.
Create, manage and edit message templates for delivering more personalized, custom communications with an innovative design view.
Leverage greater dynamic content capabilities with the ability to create landing pages or microsites as part of an email campaign.
Stanhope said that with email inboxes overflowing, it’s tough to grab customers’ attention.
“Only personalized, relevant messages are going to be opened and read,” he explained. “SDL Email Manager is designed to maximize engagement through dynamic personalization, as well as support marketers’ larger multi-channel marketing strategy by ensuring that compelling and engaging content is easily shared across channels.”
Stanhope said one of the unique features is the ability to use rich media assets (video, audio, etc.) to create powerful, interactive experiences. Marketers with fully integrated SDL Media Manager with SDL Email Manager can manage, control, optimize and analyze the results of all media assets – images, video and audio – across all distribution channels.
“When executed properly, an email campaign can build loyalty and convert customer more quickly and cost effectively than other tactics,” Stanhope said. “Let’s not forget that email is a unique channel because of its crossover with web, mobile, and social touchpoints, resulting in the direct and viral ability to reach significant numbers of customers. Marketers know that if they can break through the email noise, it can be a very powerful and effective part of a multichannel customer engagement strategy.”
Stanhope defines customer engagement as providing a relevant local experience to customers globally across multiple channels and languages, at all stages of the customer lifecycle -- interacting with customers in the language, the media, and at the moment they choose.
“Customers want to be treated as individuals, and brands need to understand their customers’ needs and invest the time to build a relationship with that individual,” Stanhope said. “It's about anticipating a customer's behavior and personal preferences and interacting with them on the customers' terms.”
The biggest challenge for marketers in creating that ongoing engagement is finding a way to create a natural dynamic between online, mobile, and in physical locations to meet customers’ expectations, Stanhope said.
“Successful companies today need to know more than just who their customers are,” he explained. “It’s essential that they understand where they are, what to say, and how to say it to create valuable and compelling customer experiences.”
Stanhope believes the behavior behind customer loyalty has changed over the past five years in three key ways:
First, trust is and will always be the foundation for customer loyalty. It used to be that trust resided simply between an individual and a brand. Today, social technologies have changed the concept of trust into a multi-factor network comprised of consumers, their friends or contacts, consumer feedback such as reviews and ratings, and the brands themselves. Retailers need to build personal relationships with individuals to earn that trust and understand how the consumer will share that the brand is trustworthy with their virtual community.
Second, consumers used to accept broadcast marketing strategies from brands. Today, they expect a dialogue with brands as equal participants in the process. Consumers want to share information and feedback with their favorite brands, to be acknowledged for their engagement, and have the opportunity to influence formerly proprietary activities such as product development.
Third, behavior occurs in more channels than ever before. Broadcast and direct response are still viable channels, but they are complemented by a myriad of web, mobile, and social touchpoints. And consumers not only want brands to treat them as individuals across this expanded ecosystem, but expect brands to offer engaging, continuous, and relevant experiences across all channels. This new consumer expects easy and consistent access to goods and services, based on highly personal preferences.