Segmenting an audience base and optimizing for measurable communications
performance are not new concepts. It is fair to criticize, however, the
traditional association of segmentation and optimization concepts and
tactics with erudite marketing processes and out-of-reach business
intelligence applications.
Those tools are too often beyond the reach of marketers; as a
consequence, everyday tactical achievement of communications relevance
suffers.
Segmentation strategies and messaging optimization are rarely viewed
correctly: as the right, responsibility, and opportunity for the
marketing organization—and not merely for senior executives and
managers.
Today, a more proletarian view of segmentation and optimization is
needed.
Free Data With Advanced Segmentation
As discussed in the previous installments of this article series,
achieving relevance in direct digital marketing demands that the entire
organization and processes be aligned to support operational
integration.
Segmentation tactics that take place in one corner of the marketing
operation merely help proliferate a siloed consumer experience.
Processes that span channels but are out of touch with frontline
operations obstruct flexibility and fluidity.
We need a different kind of data environment, one that supports new
segmentation principles—one that is holistic and comprehensive, as well
as accessible, to the marketing populous. That environment is the data
mart.
As opposed to a warehouse, the data mart is a user-friendly
storefront where valuable data attributes are merchandised and browsed.
Here recipes are defined in advance or on the fly based on what looks
good on the shelf. The direct digital marketing data mart is defined by
access and action, instead of restriction.
Consistency and Fluidity
Simply extending the right and opportunity for the marketing team to
create and deploy segmentation strategies is not the only key.
The ability to maintain the integrity of a segment's definition
across channels is an imperative. Cross-channel consistency is a
consumer expectation. There is a single brand in the consumer's mind,
not a loosely associated group of departments. Communications across
channels should, at a bare minimum, reflect consistent segment and
content assignments to reinforce message impact and increase
effectiveness, across channels.
With consistency as a baseline, fluidity is a secondary objective.
Leverage the specific context of individual channel interactions,
consumer behaviors, or observable events to inform content strategy, but
with the capacity to modify the strategy as behavior warrants. For
example, online and offline messaging can vary for a consumer who has
shown propensity to be an "online responder" as opposed to an "offline
responder."
As the sophistication of direct digital practices grows, and
consumers adopt more technology in their lives, marketers must account
for changes in demeanor or preference. Likewise, segmentation strategies
that account for today's perception of the brand—whether very satisfied
or unsatisfied with a recent brand experience—must fluidly adapt when
perception changes.
Real Time View of the Consumer
Effective segmentation must incorporate a real-time view of the
consumer. Sophisticated data modeling, business intelligence, and
audience segments often are based on a static and outdated snapshot of a
consumer profile.
Consumer behavior, events, and milestones are insightful attributes
that fall outside the frame of the static snapshot. Segmentation
principles today need to account for online behavior, retail behavior,
and milestones that are used to initiate or trigger communications that
are far more timely and relevant.
For instance, a static snapshot of a consumer profile may indicate a
satisfied customer who has the propensity for a significant upgrade in
services, or is ready to make a big-ticket purchase. With real-time
access to data indicating the customer also visited the website recently
to browse products, this behavior adds the "research phase" indicator
to an already defined propensity. Now there is a micro-segment defined
for someone ready to act immediately.
Propensity alone should not define the design and deployment of
direct marketing. Propensity, plus intent, creates the more valuable
"opportunity" segment—where the marketer can respond with well-timed
messaging.
Quantitative and Qualitative Standards for Optimization
Simply put, optimization means observing the principles of relevance
that work and the principles that don't, then applying that learning to
future opportunities.
Classic objective forms of optimization include cell testing, A/B
testing, multivariate testing, and more. Optimization of this type is
facilitated well in direct digital marketing because of its inherent
measurability.
Optimization, however, goes beyond the numbers. Subjective
requirements must also be considered: What is the feedback from your
frontline retail or call-center employees? What are your customers
saying about your brand online? What comments are found in the inbox
where replies to your campaign emails and SMS are delivered?
The deluge of consumer feedback is forcing marketers to adopt a new,
more-qualitative standard to communications optimization.
The entire marketing operation—not only the aristocracy of marketing
sciences—is responsible for optimization of every communication: from
the frontline employees who must accurately relay consumer feedback
quickly, to behind-the-scenes marketers who must own a process for
aggregating and digesting quantitative and qualitative knowledge.
The entire organization must adopt objective and subjective standards
for optimization.
DNA-Level Optimization
The pace and speed of communication, and the nature of consumers'
increasingly sophisticated expectations for personal attention and
on-target information, are relentless. Optimization is an internal clock
that keeps the quality of the content at the forefront of the
marketer’s consciousness. An effective optimization cycle is as follows:
an hypothesis of effective content, content creation, execution,
analysis, and redesign. If the cycle lags, or any one of the steps is
overlooked, the internal clock sets off an alarm.
The consumer's sophisticated expectations also demand channel-neutral
strategies, accounting for the website, email, social media, mobile
tactics, and more. To aggregate this view of consumer interaction across
channels, and respond accordingly, is no small task.
Optimization standards are established at marketing's DNA level and
are an inherent responsibility of the entire organization.
Operational and Tactical Populism
Segmentation and optimization tactics of a marketing organization are
proletarian. This thesis is consistent with the first two keys to
achieving relevance in direct digital marketing: breaking down
organizational barriers that subvert integration; and empowering
marketers to take responsibility for technology decisions where
consumer-facing communications are at stake.
Generating better ideas for more-relevant communications is not
exclusively the domain of senior executives. The well-understood
practices of segmentation and optimization should be re-examined and
reassigned as a responsibility across the marketing organization, while
the tools for tactical execution are made accessible and useful to the
proletariat.
Source: marketingprofs.com
Date: 22/06/2010
Author: Bryce Marshall