Nectar Online Media Archives - Omnichannel Personalization SaaS Solution

02 Mar
2017

Three Reasons Why Email Marketing Really Works

Benefits of Email Marketing

In a world where social media, blogging, and SEO take precedence, email seems like it would be on its way out the door. However, with the business world obsessed with acquiring consumer data, email marketing is not only useful but essential to companies.

Email marketing is one of the most effective and reliable channels for marketers to interact with customers. Here are three reasons why email marketing really works.

1.Easy Way to Reach Mobile Customers

Email marketing is an easy way to reach consumers on mobile without investing in new technology or software. Email channels already exist and are a traditional medium of connection, making it simple to reach consumers. According to a report by Pew Research Center, 52% of cellphone users in the U.S. access their emails via mobile phones. With many consumers constantly on the go, email marketing offers companies a way to send a greater volume of content to consumers in a quick and efficient manner.

Email is also accessible on devices other than mobile phones. According to a study done by Forrester Research, consumers opened 42% of retailers’ emails on smartphones and 17% on tablets. Essentially, nearly 60% of email marketing messages also double as mobile marketing messages. This versatility puts email at an advantage in comparison to text messages and SMS messaging. Consumers are more inclined to open email messages because emails are more accessible. Texting, on the other hand, is only available on mobile devices. Email is also free for the consumer and company while texting risks the chance of an incurred charge on the customer’s end. This diminishes the satisfaction of customer experience and can drive customers away. Also, email marketing is an easier access point for consumers and conveys more content that is useful to consumers.

2. Email is a Transactional Medium

Consumers see emails as a way to get offers, coupons, promotions, and in-stores sales. Email marketing deals drive in-store sales, making product emails key to getting consumers to engage with a product. A study performed by Nielsen found that 27% of online shoppers subscribe to emails in order to save money. 64% of consumers have printed out coupons found on email marketing campaigns.

Since customers expect to see offers and promotions in product emails, they are more likely to be in a buying state of mind. In turn, this can turn into increased revenue opportunity for companies. E-coupons are becoming a huge business with the growth of online sales, and email marketing is at the heart of it. Email marketing reaches out to online bargain hunters and provides consumers with a way to save online and in store. The transactional framework that email marketing provides also allows companies to personalize more toward consumers, engaging them more and further increasing sales opportunities.

3. Tells You What Works

Email marketing allows companies to see what works and what doesn’t. The data obtained from email marketing provides metrics to see how emails are performing and what companies can do to improve email strategies. These insights allow companies to market their products smarter and better. Learning what works because of email marketing also gives companies a better understanding of the needs, interests, and desires of the consumer base. Companies can see the clickthrough rate of an email, which can then provide data as to how shoppers interact with the online shopping platform. Companies use the information provided by email marketing to not only cater to what consumers are looking for, but to better improve the interaction between consumer and company. By using email marketing, companies can track customer activity and better serve their interests.

Some say email marketing is dead. However, email marketing works. It keeps customers engaged and opens channels of communication between the company and its customers. With email marketing, companies can be in the right place at the right time.

24 Feb
2017

Engaging High-Value Customers for High-Value Results

Many companies are shifting their focus to engage customers with higher value and profitability. The goal of engaging high-value customers (HVCs) is to nurture them into becoming loyal power shoppers. Increasing loyalty to a brand this way ensures retention and lifetime value of customers.

HVCs drive a significant portion of a company’s revenues. These customers are not only intensely loyal to a brand, but help promote the brand and its influence as well. Engaging and satisfying these high-value customers will put a company on a path toward greater success.

What Is a High-Value Customer?

Confusing high volume and high-value customers can be easy. However, high volume customers and high-value customers are two different target markets.

High volume customers are those who interact with a brand frequently. Although they may engage with the brand often, it doesn’t necessarily mean that these customers are the most valuable. Often with high volume customers, a brand will see a surge in activity for short periods of time. However, once the excitement fades, so does customer engagement.

High-value customers are those who buy for a reason. These customers look at products, services, and brands as a way to meet a need and satisfy a drive such as status, health or lifestyle. HVCs are customers who are loyal to a brand or company, even in times of financial duress. They will return to a brand and product even when a cheaper alternative is available. For HVCs, the cost is not a priority, and are more focused on having their unique needs addressed. HVCs are also brand promoters and influencers. These are the customers who will share the brand within their social networks.

Focusing specifically on high VALUE customers reflects an understanding of the power that these consumers have. Identifying who the high value customers are and tailoring marketing schemes to satiate these consumers, keeps them happy and ensures the brands’ profit margins.

Evolve With Customers

Customer habits change and evolve. In turn, the way consumers interact with brands has evolved as well. Instead of fighting this evolution, brands should adapt and keep up with their customers. Part of this evolution includes the introduction of new goods and services and outlets, like online shopping. This development means customers are interested in a wide variety of items at all times. A shift towards items outside a consumer’s regular purchase pattern can indicate consumers are turning into HVCs. Dramatic changes in how customers buy items and spend money can also indicate greater trust and loyalty with a brand. Once the customer has extended the olive branch toward a brand, it is very likely they will shift into the high-value customer category.

Pay Attention

The data provided by a customer’s recent activity can predict if a customer is high value or becoming high value. Data points such as high clickthrough rate, frequent site visits, and large purchases can indicate a customer as a high-value customer. One way to monitor customer involvement and identify high-value customers is through a triggered marketing campaign. Triggered marketing includes a continuous stream of messages sent to customers based on their shopping activity, browsing history, purchases, etc. Triggered marketing indicates to customers that a brand knows its customers.

Loyalty Rewards

Loyalty programs are teeming with information about members. Everything from brand preferences and item category to price sensitivity can be found in loyalty member data. Harnessing loyalty data helps brands personalize more towards HVCs. Knowing where, when, why, and how customers engage with a brand, can empower companies to create personalized experiences across multiple channels.

Loyalty programs also remove the barrier between customers and their next purchase. These loyalty programs make customers feel like “power users.” Their actions directly correlate to the experience found with a brand and company.

High-value customers make up the untapped bread and butter for many businesses. Understanding the behavior patterns of high-value customers enables brands to engage and target this niche group of customers. Providing high-value customers with the attention they desire keeps them engaged with the brand and propels companies to further success.

12 Jul
2016

4 Ultimate Personalization Tools and How To Use Them

Personalization can be a powerful tool in all facets of your business. From growing your e-mail list to increasing sales, giving your audience targeted content can thrust your business to a new level. In fact, by not personalizing you could be sacrificing prospective customers.

Look at it like this. You’ve gone to a site in order to learn how to increase traffic on your blog. You’ve read a couple of articles, but a pop up on the site keeps urging you to sign up for a free guide on e-mail marketing. You don’t even have an e-mail list yet. It seems pointless right?

If the pop up would have targeted you with a guide to using social media for increased traffic, you would have jumped on it, supplying your e-mail and potentially reading more from the site. But instead they lost a potential customer.

The ability to collect behavioral information about your clients is becoming pivotal in creating a successful enterprise. Marketing trends are proving this. Previously, the ability to capture all this data was limited to the Fortune 50 and those who could spend the money. Now, there are attainable options to collect the information yourself, so creating an omni-channel personalization strategy has never been easier.

To further drive the point that personalization is important, look at this article from BCG. It’s expected that by 2020, “roughly 8 percent of the combined GDP of the EU-27” will be from using personalization. That’s a huge percentage when looking at all the other contributors to the GDP.

Personalization and Privacy

Prior to any strategic execution, offer full disclosure to what information you’re collecting and how you’re using it. Also, allow them to control what or how much data you’re able to extract via a preference center. Giving them these choices, along with the ability to opt-out at any time, will keep your business’s integrity and establish greater trust between you and the customer. You’ll be surprised at how many people see the disclosure and quickly accept it. This is a sign of the times we’re in. There is an audience segment that wants nothing to do with their activities being tracked, but the overwhelming majority know giving this information translates to better, more relevant content and services.

When using social media, the platforms do most of this work for you. Sites like Facebook allow the user to determine who sees their profile and who can interact with it. By leaving their personal page open to the public, they’re allowing businesses to collect information from their posts, likes, and interactions. This information can be translated into data for your personalization strategy.

Now that you have that figured out, let’s get to the list of channels you should be considering…

1. Web Content

The old adage that, “It’s only advertising if you don’t want it,” still stands true. Consumers know their data has a value and they’re willing to share it if you provide them value in return. This is where content upgrades, lead magnets like offers, and custom calls to action come into play. They are the currency you’ll use in exchange for better information about your target consumer and customers.

Like in the example above, you need to identify the obvious ‘why’. Learning why a customer is on a particular page of your site is the most basic form of personalization. Without needing to pick up any actual information on the user, you can arrange a pop-up to offer a related product or content upgrade as soon as they read a percentage of the page. The percentage verifies they’re interested in the material, since they’re actually reading it, and it also let’s them get hooked before the pop-up arrives, making it more than a pesky distraction.

On top of this, you can arrange for different versions of your site based off the information collected. For instance, the experience of a user from Denver through a Google search will be offered content for the area and pop ups directed towards the keywords they searched. If the customer is searching for a product, tailor the pop-ups for that item. When a user from Montreal arrives through a Facebook post, they’ll have a different set of content elements, and the specific article they were looking at with content upgrades related to the topic.

A lot of sites do a basic version of this by storing cookies. You’ve seen these, right? Every 7 days, you’ll be asked to join the e-mail list until you do. Some will take it further and use a different style of pop-up for each visitation. Is this right for your brand? That depends on your “brand promise” or the “pillars” your brand has been built upon and the specific use case, but there has to be that exchange.

The important thing to remember is you should always be testing and learning. The way to do that, as you develop your personalization strategy, is by using dynamic content and presenting it as close to real-time as possible using algorithms to identify the effectiveness.

A static page with related content may generally work in the beginning, but that will start to fade. If a viewer reads an article about horses and is offered an ebook on horses, great. If he immediately returns and reads an article about cows and gets an offer for a guide on raising cattle, less great. You could be missing out on an opportunity to sell the Ultimate Guide to Raising Farm Animals. Perhaps the customer arrived through a Google search for the top 10 animals to raise on a farm. Missing that key piece of personalization could cost a sale.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of The 4 Personalization Channels and How To Leverage Them

There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in this scenario, but the point is that you need to be constantly using the data that’s available to you in order to maximize the effect.

Creating a website that tracks the behaviors of customers is very manageable now with various approaches. It may take some initial work, but you will know the value of the content you’re serving and you’ll know it by the individual vs. trying to make all content resonate with all visitors. And it’s worth the effort. Optimizing your site to target specific actions and interests of specific individuals can increase your profits as much as 15-25%.

2. Social Media

The benefits of social media outweigh the issues every day of the week. Along with the free platform to engage with your audience, you can also pick up a lot of great information to better your sales. Don’t confuse personalization with socialization, however. Where personalization uses data from an individual to custom tailor an experience, socialization uses a group to apply pressure.

Being recommended to ‘like’ horses, because you like ponies, is personalization. Being recommended to ‘like’ horses, because 11 of your friends do, is socialization.

Facebook is quite likely the strongest social media platform when it comes to personalization. Everything on site collects data. Even if a business can’t collect information from the users, Facebook can.

Ads purchased through Facebook can appear in sidebars along your newsfeed and profile. Featured posts can become embedded into your newsfeed, appearing as though a friend has had a great experience with Tide. Facebook all but monopolizes the market by personalizing the content. Digital marketers know they can efficiently target customers through this system.

When creating ads, you have the ability to target key demographics. Things like location, likes, and interests can be selected to fine tune who sees your ads. Facebook’s ad campaigns also allow you to see your ROI on personalization. They show the amount spent, the number of impressions, and the dollar value of engagements.

Twitter is a different beast. Like Facebook, Twitter collects data from all of their users. The issue is that a tweet is seen for a significantly smaller amount of time than a post. Because of this, understanding your community is essential.

Since the average tweet stays ‘alive’ for only 18 minutes, marketers need to identify when their users are most likely to be online. Study the amount of impressions based off the times of given tweets to know when is best. Take into consideration what time zone a majority of your followers are in. Posting multiple times may be the best course of action.

Ads works generally the same way as Facebook, but stand out more, because of the amount of traffic a feed on Twitter receives. Look over your business’s feed and see what people are sharing the most. You can use the most searched hashtags to forecast marketing trends and coordinate your ads to show up more often.

Social media is your ticket to some easy personalization. Harness its strength to start converting at a faster rate.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of The 4 Personalization Channels and How To Leverage Them

3. E-Mail

This is one of the most used and undervalued channels for creating consumer engagement.. By collect data on what products the customer has previously purchased, you can custom target e-mails to meet their needs. eConsultancy reports that 77% of business owners claim that “personalization based on purchase history has a high impact.” A percentage that large illustrates that it’s vital you don’t ignore it.

When a customer makes an entry into the sales funnel, they make the statement, “I am willing to spend money.” That’s the point where you need to identify what other items they’ll be willing to buy. Targeting them with products that don’t pertain to their interest will waste time. After they purchase that horse, send an e-mail offering brushes or feed. You know where their interests sit. Now it’s time to pour gas on the fire.

With modern e-mail automation, it’s easier than ever to have pre-written messages for when a customer buys specific products (i.e., triggers). Strong copywriting can let you capitalize on a customer already willing to spend money.

Creating targeted e-mail lists can benefit your audience, as well. Maintain a massive distribution group for general company information or other stuff you may want to send out, but keep smaller segmented lists for targeted content. One group for horses, one for chickens, but a large for your barnyard news. Your audience will be more likely to open and read emails focused on their interests, giving you more opportunities to make impressions and conversions.

4. Single View of Customer (SVOC)

If 60% of consumers are saying they want personally relevant content and offers, you would think every company would start doing that, right? Well, only a third of corporations report their technology and platforms are providing them an adequate single view of their customer so that 60% is going to be waiting a while.

SVOC is the centerpiece of great omnichannel personalization and it’s a mindset shift for a lot of companies. For years corporate marketing has been built on the concept of mass campaigns and channel programs. The two rarely shared a database and even more rarely combined sales data with them. Today, organizations can truly get to that SVOC with solutions like NectarClickstream and the next step is on the mindshift of marketing to an individual based on their behaviors, as opposed to working against massive segments.

Whatever solution you use, make sure it’s not completely dependent on third party pixels. The ideal tracking platform will incorporate 1st party pixels, redirect links, social data and operational data. This will take some coordination, but when you start seeing that data flow around each individual platform you’ll immediately understand the value and the questions (and corresponding use cases) will start flowing.

Bringing It All Together with Omni-channel Personalization

What good are any of these channels if they’re not slotted into the larger puzzle?

Omni-channel personalization is your strategy that intertwines the various platforms into a single stream of effort. Getting the systems to play nicely together is more of a challenge than setting up any one individually, but it can drastically increase your ROI.

Remember earlier, when we lost the sale for the Ultimate Guide to Raising Farm Animals? If you can get the systems to talk to each other, you wouldn’t miss that sale. The customer would still provide you with his e-mail for the ebook on horses, but you could follow up with a message for the guide. This method converts interested readers into buyers.

Whatever strategy you use to personalize your channels and improve your customer relationship management, make sure you have a backup plan. Constant A/B testing will allow you to stay proactive with what’s working and you can essentially remove any lull in your sales.

Personalization is your ticket to quicker conversions, higher profits and a more satisfied audience. As long as you operate with your customer’s privacy as top of mind, focus on making their interaction with your business a pleasant experience and you stay curious you’ll be successful in your personalization efforts.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of The 4 Personalization Channels and How To Leverage Them

05 Jul
2016

Omni Channel Personalization: The 2016 Trends

Why A Seamless Customer Experience Is More Important Than Ever

The good old days of customers coming from one channel are over. This is due, in part, to the rapid rise of mobile and social as marketing platforms, and with them, came omni channel marketing. They have created a shifting power dynamic allowing customers to experience and interact with brands in ways they were not able to just ten years ago. This could be visiting a store in person, the website, the social media presence, and any combination of using a laptop, tablet, wearable or mobile device. Nevertheless, the imperative question remains: What is the customer experience like on each platform and how can your brand take advantage of it?

With multiple users coming from every channel, businesses need to shift their marketing strategies from a single channel approach to an omni channel approach and be able to accommodate as many people as possible.

Omni channel, as its name states, is a multichannel approach to the sales process, and its primary goal is to bring a seamless shopping experience to the user. The term “shopping experience” relates to mobile shopping, desktop, by telephone, or even in bricks and mortar stores.

Rather than telling customers where to go, you are meeting on their terms where they like to purchase. Not everyone has time to visit a store in person or is tech savvy enough to follow your twitter feed. A successful modern brand needs to be everywhere at once and deliver a consistent experience across the board.

That, however, is much easier said than done.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the FREE Guide to Personalizing the Consumer Journey!

To successfully carry out an omni channel strategy, you need to know as much about each customer as possible. Luckily, there are more and more data points available to corporate marketers allowing them to make informed decisions. Having a consistent experience is great, but at the end of the day it needs to translate into increased sales, and working with an experienced team can mean that your business can see ROI results in days, not years.

Omni Channels – Everywhere At Once

It has always been important to know as much as possible about your customers, and it is even more important now. Whereas in the past you could rely on a survey or questionnaire done in a store about what customers thought, these days not as many people want or need to go into brick and mortar store. In fact, 7 1% of shoppers believe that they’ll get a better deal online, so why get up to drive to a store when a better price is available from the comfort of the couch. To compete in today’s market, businesses need to have some form of digital presence.

Why Consistency Is The New Black

A modern brand can be thought of like a mosaic, with each tile representing a different channel. If customers are told one thing from one channel, it is safe to assume they should be told the same from another.

As a marketer, it is imperative to keep your messaging consistent while adapting to the speed of digital society. People’s habits are changing faster than ever, and we need to understand where users are and consistently provide value for them no matter what channel. This will help cement a solid brand and a strong customer experience.

Channel Specific Customer Experience

Here is all you need to know: Customers act differently in each channel, and your brand needs to act differently as well.

Here is a quick rundown of general trends for each platform:

Mobile: It is not a question; it is not a fad; it is here to stay. Mobile is a legitimate platform, and you cannot overlook its importance. This is clearly displayed with this past year’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, where mobile accounted for 49% of all visits.

An important thing to note is that while 49% of visits were mobile, only 35.3% of purchases were made on mobile. One-third is still a huge number, but on days other than Black Friday, mobile users prefer to browse rather than purchase. Make sure your content is mobile optimized to look great on any device.

Mobile Trends Summary

– Users are mostly browsing, rather than purchasing

– Customers do quick site visits while on the go

– Tend to have high bounce rate for sites that aren’t mobile-friendly

Exclusive Bonus: Download the FREE Guide to Personalizing the Consumer Journey!

Laptop + Tablet: Buying something online on your computer is pretty commonplace these days, with even technically challenged baby boomers taking advantage of it. Brands know how important it is to have a smooth checkout process with close to 60% of online sales coming from laptops and tablets.

There are numerous challenges moving forward with an omni channel integration strategy with regards to the laptop and tablet segment. Some key tactics to keep in mind include serving location specific content which changes based on the customer’s location, equipping sales associates to help customers checkout anywhere, and integrating in store tools like QR codes, sensors or beacons to engage with customers.

Laptop + Tablet Trends Summary

– This is where most of the shopping experience happens

– Users will browse multiple sites/stores

– Slow loading will increase bounce rate

Brick And Mortar: They are still the hallmark for many stores, but looking at industry trends, in-store sales have dropped by 10% over the last year. This does not mean that brick and mortar stores are dead, but it is a sign that retailers should start thinking about how to adapt moving forward.

The in-store experience is unique and gives marketers many options for how they want to interact with the customers. The problem is, most brands do not carry their online messaging over into the store. Sure, the logos and colors are still the same, but does the customer have the same experience? Smart brands are doing more than just asking for an email address on checkout. They are offering legitimately good deals if customers visit their website, and letting them order online and pickup in store.

Brick And Mortar Trends Summary

– Large percentage of purchasing still done in-store

– Customers may be browsing but will usually do so online and consequently buy in store

– Brings an excellent opportunity to connect with customers

Social: Social media has quickly become a channel all marketers should have on their radar. Each social channel has it’s own type of content. It’s important to understand that traditional ads are not working like they use to, and now smart marketers are adapting to provide useful, shareable, and valuable content to people. Whether it comes in the form of videos, coupons, emails, or tweets, the messages must include compelling content for communication to resonate with the client.

Social Trends Summary

-Your content must be educational or entertaining

-Curate your content for the channel – i.e.: videos on Youtube, Images on Instagram, news on Twitter, etc…

-Find a your niche and market only to them

Cell Phone Call Center

Without Omni Channel: You take your telephone, and dial that toll-free number to your cell phone carrier. You are calling to negotiate your cell phone contract, which, let’s be honest, nearly everyone with a cellphone has done. You’ve spoken to a rep at your local store who told you about a great promotion but asked you to call their phone support who would be able to activate it for you. Nevertheless, the story changes. At home on the phone, the rep you’ve reached doesn’t know anything about the promotion. He requires access information about your account, and even once they are in (finally), they are not telling you the same thing the in-store rep did. You hang up hoping never to go through that again. #frustration.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the FREE Guide to Personalizing the Consumer Journey!

With Omni Channel: The in-store rep you were speaking with was able to tag your internal account with the offer they mentioned. At home on the phone, the rep can quickly access your account, see the promotion you were promised and activate it on your account. #happycustomer

Do you see the difference? It may not seem like much of a problem for a big company, but it makes a huge difference for building loyalty in customers. People hate having their time wasted, and the better and faster you can serve them, the happier they’ll be.

Though omni channel integration will result in increased sales and revenue, it’s not its primary focus. Rather, it works to keep customers happy, which builds loyalty, and consequently, increases repeat purchases.

Then Vs. Now: The Importance Of Brand Consistency

In the past it was easier to create a fully seamless brand experience, because each brand wasn’t appearing on as many channels are they are now. These days a brand needs to have a multilingual website, multiple social media accounts, a customer service center, and a fully automated system running it all. Though it seems straightforward, creating that seamless experience is very difficult.

From a customer’s point of view, a modern fortune 500 brand should be able to achieve all this, and with the internet at their fingers, they can easily look elsewhere.

To have the right answer at your fingertips, a comprehensive database management infrastructure is essential. We at NectarOM specialize in omni channel personalization, and you can learn more about how we can help your brand get your brand’s omni channel ready here.

Data Management

Most brands have (or can collect) lots of data from their customers. From purchase or browsing history, to when they shop, to their economic status, and the area they live. All of these are very powerful marketing tools. The hard part is using them correctly, and integrating all the different channels. It is essential to manage this data to know about your user’s experience. If someone visited your site on his or her laptop, you, as a brand, need to keep that experience consistent on a mobile device.

Here are two very common scenarios with and without omni channel personalization experience.

Working 24/7

The last important way in which omni channel marketing has changed retail is that stores are no longer open for a set amount of hours. People browse the Internet and make purchases at all times of day (and night), so your marketing needs to work on their timetables.

To do so, it is essential to have all your systems on autopilot. As soon as someone makes a purchase or interacts with your brand, your marketing should reflect that. Whether it means they are getting a confirmation email to let them know their item has shipped, to getting time sensitive promotions and coupons as soon as they become available. There are too many moving parts to run a business manually, and automation is a must in our digital age.

Once a customer has purchased, and your marketing has begun, it’s not acceptable to send generic emails. It is easy enough to say that your messaging must be consistent across all platforms, but it must be specific to the customer’s current situation.

More businesses have become aware of the importance of omni channel personalization, about giving your customers something relevant and useful that consequently builds trust. Once you have trust, you’re able to establish a relationship with your clients, and ultimately make sales. Above all else, keep it simple. There is no point in delivering a substandard experience that will most likely lose you business. Focus on what you already know about your customers and then work backward to enhance their experience.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the FREE Guide to Personalizing the Consumer Journey!

08 Nov
2013

5 Effective Ways To Hyper-Personalize Communications

Every Customer Deserves Personalized Attention

One of the top priorities of any marketer is to capture, build and retain customers. Effectively engaging customers to keep any services and products in the forefront of their mind is a difficult task. It requires advanced marketing personalization with turbo charged hyper-personalized content, products and information. No two customers are the same. For that reason, it’s important to hyper-personalize communications with content that is tailored to each individual.

As a marketer, you need to deliver meaningful, useful, and effective content that will address your customer’s needs in real time. That’s no easy feat. There’s a tremendous amount of competition out there. Millions of emails are sent out everyday to millions of customers. People are busy with very little time to spare. With several hundred emails lurking in a recipient’s inbox, you’ve got to stand out in order to be noticed and considered. A generic or “slightly personalized” marketing campaign wont’ cut it. Sally isn’t going to open your email just because it addresses her by name followed by a catchy slogan.

How do you effectively deliver hyper-personalize communications for your customers?

1. Connect the Customer Dots – Imagine you’re asked to make a sandwich for Sally. The only information you have is she prefers white bread and doesn’t like mayo. Based on that, you make her a turkey and cheese sandwich on wheat with mustard and hope for the best. She’s not impressed. Why? The sandwich was plain, bland and lacked her personal preferences. The same holds true when you’re trying to hyper-personalize communications. Without big data under your belt, you’re going in blind. You need data from crucial sources like CRM, website, email, transactions, browsing history, 3rd parties, etc to create relevant content for each individual customer. Once you have those valuable dots to connect, you’re able to leverage every piece of data. This time around, you make Sally a roasted turkey sandwich on lightly toasted ciabatta bread with honey mustard, tomato, avocado, lettuce, bacon, extra pickle and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Now…you have her attention.

2. Create 360 Degree Customer Profiles – Once you’ve connected the customer dots, you’re able create rich customer profiles that is worlds beyond a profile established from traditional data. This can mean the different between “Sally likes to buy shoes” and “Sally likes to buy shoes preferably in the spring and summer months. She gravitates more towards trendy styles and adores heels. Her mission is to purchase designer brands without paying the designer price.” You can use this portion of her 360 degree customer profile to send her products and offers that are useful, caters to her buying preferences and communicate offers and products that would further enhance her buying options through your company.

3. Pay Attention to Real Time Behaviors – Want deeper insights to the lives of your customers? With Nectar’s data processing tools, you can gather information about what your customers are sharing, liking and what their interests are. It’s taking the process a step further and listening to what your customer is doing through the use of algorithms. Is your customer taking a step out of the box? Are they spending additional time in other categories? Is your customer making purchases that veers away from their typical habits? This is all vital information that will update and combine with existing social data. This in turn gives you the ability to connect more dots and convert this data into valuable insights. The result? Turbo charged hyper-personalized communications. You know that Sally likes shoes, but lately, she’s showing an interest in vintage decor pieces. She’s liking items in that category and recently make several purchases. She’s in the market for both small and big ticket items. Why? Sally is renovating her home.

4. Address the Customer’s Needs – Utilizing real time behaviors opens the door of opportunity. Based on Sally’s decision to renovate her home, you can create a slew of products and offers that will address her needs at this time. Based on her browsing and purchase history, you’ve determined she is partial to vintage styles and the color blue. Sally’s purchases have been sale or clearance items and so far, she’s worked on the livingroom and dining room. With all of this big data, it’s time to send out a few marketing campaigns with tailored products and offers. These offers can be a mix of items for the 2 rooms she’s currently working on and a few for other rooms in the house because eventually she’ll be in the market for those as well.

5. Execute Immediately After a Trigger – Life happens and changes are always taking place whether sudden or those that are planned out. These changes produce triggers. Some of these triggers may include a birth announcement, save the date, engagement, new job, relocating to another city, booking a 2 week vacation to an exotic island overseas, birthdays, and other milestones. Amid these triggers are opportunities to cultivate products and offers based on a customer’s immediate needs. A customer’s birthday might trigger sending a personalized Happy Birthday message with an exclusive coupon to their most frequented store. An engagement annoucement is a trigger to send an email with products and offers that are tailored specifically to that moment…like save the date cards or wedding invitations.

Nectar’s products allows your brand to hyper-personalize communications with the right offers and products in real time that’ll drive revenue.

22 Oct
2013

5 Reasons Why You Need Marketing Personalization

All things considered, it’s a must…

There’s lots of decisions to be made and various avenues to consider as a marketer. One of the more prominent, hands down, is Marketing Personalization. The road map of promoting your products, generating interest, acquiring customers, obtaining & expanding a loyal customer base and boosting your revenue is vast. It’s no easy feat.

When it’s time to substantiate a plan of action, there’s a slew of questions darting from every direction. The most pressing of all questions leans towards, “Is there a need for marketing personalization and how important is this?” An extreme “in a nutshell” answer is YES and VERY. But, you’re not here for one word answers…

Let’s sift through to some of the more salient fundamentals of marketing personalization…

1. You’ve got some hardcore competition – Ninety trillion emails are sent out each year. Approximately 70% of those emails are not personalized and are considered generic while 25% contain a trivial amount of marketing personalization. Bottom line…less than 10% of emails received are considered legit by the recipient. The rest are deemed as “spam” and dispersed to the trash bin unopened. That’s not where you want to be. We’ve all heard the expression, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” With 90 trillion emails being sent every year, there’s a tremendous amount of competition. Swimming in the sea of mediocrity isn’t going to cut it. You’ve got to do more than make an impact or come up with a catchy slogan. You need to gather,disparate and segment your data efficiently to deliver the most relevant content, products and offers.

2. Customization vs Personalization – Although similar, these two terms are sitting on opposite ends of the stick. To differentiate the 2, lets think about a cup of coffee. A customized cup of coffee is based on general information. John likes coffee. Regular. Cream and sugar. He enjoys a cup of coffee periodically throughout the day. A personalized cup of coffee transpires from connecting big data, connecting the dots and creating a 360 degree customer profile. Jane is a coffee aficionado. Regular. Columbian Dark Roast from a local cafe down the street. Medium cup. Two raw sugars. A splash of skim milk. She enjoys a cup at 9 am, noon and 3 p.m. Jane does not drink coffee after 6 pm. Customized is good. Personalized will get their attention.

3. 360 Degree Customer Profile – As they say, no 2 snowflakes are the same. The same holds true for your customers. Without marketing personalization, John is simply a 35 year old male who lives in a small town. It’s flat and notably generic. There’s very little data to create a relevant marketing campaign for John. Adding marketing personalization into the mix allows you to segment and individualize each morsel of your big data to execute hyper-personalized communications. One-to-One marketing connects your customer dots from across the board through social, email, website, CRM, mobile, transaction, and 3rd party channels. With all of this information, you’re able to create a 360 degree customer view on John. Based on this data, you now can leverage and distribute the most relevant information, products and offers to John in real time..

4. Turbo-Charged Personalization – You’ve noticed that John is spending a lot of time in the home office categories and purchased several small ticket items. This was compiled from his behavior and transaction data. The big question is why? With turbo-charged personalization, the channel to social information opens. In the world of marketing personalization, this enables you to stand out from the rest because now your customers shared social information is included. John is shopping home office items because he started his own business and will be working from home. However, he’s on a budget and waiting for the big ticket items to go on sale. As a marketer, this is your opportunity to deliver hyper-personalized messages in real time based on pre-planned points.

5. You’re aiming to please – Over 70% of online customers have expressed their frustration when companies send them emails with offers, products and information that have no relevancy to their life or needs. Your goal is to please your customer, not irritate them. Without marketing personalizaion, you’re going in blind. Marketing compaigns will be generic and lack value to your customers. Maybe you sent John an email that included special offers for pet food and baby items. The offers are stellar and select items are over 80% off. That’s great, but how does this apply to John? It doesn’t. The email isn’t opened and immediately transferred to the virtual trash bin. With marketing personalization you’ll have the big data to hyper-personalize communications. You’ll know that in addition to John embarking on a small business venture, he’s also in his mid 30’s, allergic to animals, single, and he’s an outdoor enthusiast. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, traveling and mountain climbing.

As a marketer, you’ve invested a great deal of time and money. You’re on the right path. Now it’s time to face forward and onward march. Adding a solid marketing personalization plan gives you the opportunity to take what you already have and move towards success. In this day and age, customers expect personalization throughout their entire buying process. They want to be acknowledged, enticed, and have their interest sparked with emails loaded with offers, products and information compatible with their life…in real time. When a customer is checking emails, you’ve got only a few seconds to catch their attention and make an out-of-this-world impression. It’s not the time for impromptu.

Nectar can provide your company with the easiest One-to-One Marketing Suite and help you connect your customer data, increase customer engagement and revenue.

20 Aug
2013

SXSW: Vote for Us to be on a Panel and Learn More about Hyper-Personalization

Asking for your vote for SXSW Interactive 2014

SXSW Interactive: It’s huge. It’s music. It’s technology. It’s THE place to be in March of any given year. And we at Nectar are very excited (and also honored, maybe a bit nervous) to say that we made it through the first gateway to speak at SXSW Interactive in Austin next year.

With this opportunity, we have a chance to share our vision–to bring hyper-personalization to the B2C masses. We would love your vote to help us accomplish this. With this in mind, we ask you to please vote for our talk, “Hyper-Personalized Marketing: Easy as 1-2-3”: The steps for voting are:

1) Setup your account: https://auth.sxsw.com/users/sign_up

2) Log in: //panelpicker.sxsw.com/

3) Go to this page to vote for our submission: //panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/21906. Click the thumbs up icon so it turns green.

4) And you’re done. (Feel free to comment of course.)

Thank you!

Patricia Blair, Nectar Online Media

01 Aug
2013

Where Did the Name nectarom Come From?

nectar + om = nectarom { the secret formula for squeezing the juice out of your marketing }

Nectar Online Media, Inc.

During many of my meetings, I’m often asked where the name nectarom came from and what we do as a company. Well, here’s the short form: Nectar Online Media is a big data customer analytics software company { yes, a lot of buzz words in there } and then I continue we make the easiest to use 1:1 marketing suite, period.

Almost always, the fact that we make the easiest 1:1 marketing suite out there brings up additional questions and gets people very interested. Now for the part about our name — there is much significance to any name and our company’s is no different.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to name several businesses and it is no easy task. During my MBA course on marketing and branding, I remembered a few things that my professor taught me … a brand needs to be memorable, distinguishable and, ultimately, it’s the guiding force behind the company.

As I was launching Nectar Online Media and thinking about our name I tried my best to keep those principles to mind. I asked family, friends, and our advisors while doing lots of research.

There are many marketers who are familiar with the UK Loyalty Points company ‘Nectar’, we have no relation to them.

So, here goes: there are two parts to our name “nectar” and “om”.

For the first part, “nectar” there are two meanings:

Because we’re a big data customer analytics software company, we want to be able to squeeze the essence, the juice, the nectar out of your data { see what we did there? }
Now the ‘insider’ angle, my name “Amrit” comes from the root language of Hindi called Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, one of the meanings of ‘Amrit’ is ‘Nectar’ … so, in a way, it’s a fun double meaning for our brand.

Now, onto the second part, “om” { you might already be seeing where this is going }:

We decided to add “Online Media” as part of the rest of our name. Reality is we’re about more than online media and we are doing some fun work around ‘offline media’ as well. The practical part was our web domain name, who is going to remember “www.nectaronlinemedia.com” { that’s a mouthful }? So I decided to look for shorter domains and we were able to get www.nectarom.com.

Here comes the fun part again, when abbreviated “Online Media” becomes “OM”. In the Indian heritage , OM is considered a sacred mantra or formula to achieve a higher goal. OM is also considered the primordial sound said to be all pervasive. { okay, yes, deep }. So there comes the meaning of the second part of our name, while we can extract the essence of your big data to help create some amazing results … without the right formula, you can’t reach the goal.

Get to know us … you’ll find all sorts of fun facts about what we do and who we are.

11 Jul
2013

Using Big Data to Micro-Target: Integrating Big Data for 1:1 Marketing

One of the things I love about my job at Nectar is sharing with our customers how we deliver value to their business by enabling them to micro-target messages to their customers. Recently, while reading McKinsey Quarterly articles on big data, I saw a couple of statements from McKinsey directors that really resonated with me, because it addresses the core of Nectar’s value proposition.

1) From David Court: “…the key is to focus on the big decisions for which if you had better data, if you had better predictive ability, if you had a better ability to optimize, you’d make more money.”
2) From Tim McGuire: “Analytics will define the difference between the losers and winners going forward.”

I believe that if you make your customers happy, they will be loyal to you, and loyalty generally translates into greater revenue (and less cost) for your company. How do you make your customers happy? By knowing them. Know how they interact with you, know what they buy from you, know what they like about you, know who they are. At an individual level. Of course, this is easier said than done. But with the right tools and data, it can be done.

When, where, what and how you communicate with your customer is one of those big decisions. Using the data you already have from your customer and combining it with other big data–online behavior, social, CRM, mobile, etc.–enables you to predict what that customer would want to hear from you. This predictive ability, in turn, allows you to optimize your relationship with that customer, which then helps you make more money. (I use the singular “customer” because that’s what a robust Digital Management Platform enables you to do: communicate with each of your customers as an individual, yet do it at scale.)

Technology exists today to bring all of your available big data together to build a foundation from which to make your big decisions. A company like Nectar can help you bring all this data together to enable you to build 360 degree profiles of each of your customers. But we don’t stop there; we then apply our proprietary algorithms to analyze your customer profiles to determine the most relevant communications to deliver to each customer–we call this hyper-personalization. To complete the circle, we then help you distribute consistent hyper-personalized messages across every digital channel your customer uses.

We like our perch at the intersection of big data, analytics and hyper-personalization because when we bring each of these tools to bear for our customers, big decisions not only become easy but they also make you money.

Want to learn more? Please email contact@nectarom.com for more information.

14 Feb
2013

Nectar Online Media Sits on UNT Career Center Panel

Here at Nectar Online Media, we love participating in anything that could foster the growth of our social commerce industry! Last week, we were invited to sit on the UNT Career Center Employer Panel, involving a presentation on job search strategies. Hosted by the University of North Texas, it was aimed at students who are looking towards graduation and the job search they will have to endure until then. The event included time for introductions, Q&A and networking with other Dallas professionals, as we shared with them Nectar Online Media’s predictive social commerce platform that enables email campaign personalization. In addition to this panel, our CEO and Founder Amrit Kirpalani has been asked to join the UNT Career Center Advisory Board, so we look forward to participating in more events with the university.

Want more startup and social media info? Follow Nectar Online Media on Facebook & Twitter!