Transforming Customer Experience With Data: 5 Tips
Usability and transparency are key when it comes to data and analytics. Brands suffer from one of two extremes: Either insights are so impenetrable that only data scientists can decipher them, or interpretations are so superficial that they provide no value to stakeholders.

Q&A: Michael Brenner on Empathy and Marketing
We chat the author of  “Mean People Suck author and discuss why compassion and empathy should be on the mind of marketers—and why so many people in general today seem to be lacking in these qualities.

B2B Online Shoppers Want Loyalty and Simplicity: Report
Over half of B2B online shoppers use loyalty programs, optimizing benefits both for the company and employees, according to new research from UPS.

5 Tips for Creating An Agile Marketing Environment
Was 2019 the year your team pledged to move to a more collaborative, agile marketing approach, testing and iterating new ideas more quickly? You’re not alone.

Integrating AI Into Your Marketing Strategy: 6 Steps
Implementing AI in a marketing strategy is becoming the new standard. In fact, 70 percent of business leaders expect marketing AI to be critical for the future success of their businesses.

Direct Mail Improves Multichannel Mix: Report
Direct mail ROI goes up by nearly 63 percent when the tactic is used as part of an integrated marketing campaign, according to new research.

Don’t Be Afraid: The Risks—and Benefits—of Driving Change
Increasingly, consumers are looking to businesses to drive change on issues they care about. Edelman found that 64% of buyers say CEOs should take the lead on change rather than waiting for the government to impose it.

Q&A: PWC’s Path to Digital Transformation
Reggie Walker, chief commercial officer of PwC, recently chatted with Chief Marketer about the part digital transformation plays in addressing shifting customer needs, and the challenge of connecting with a global audience.

Why Martech Investments Aren’t Optimized: Infographic
Over half of marketers expect their martech budgets to increase in the next year, but many still don’t feel they are optimizing their technology spending, according to Chief Marketer’s Martech Outlook Report. 

The Changing Face of B2B Social Media
For B2B marketers, social media no longer necessarily just means having an up-to-date LinkedIn page. Today, savvy B2B marketers are expanding their social circles to connect with audiences where they want to engage.

The post October’s B2B and Martech Top 10 appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Understanding customer needs and desires across their journey and ensuring organizations can respond accordingly has never been more important. According to Gartner, 81% of marketers say they expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of customer experience in by 2020.

Brands who get the customer experience equation right reap greater loyalty and increased revenues. However, those that fail risk customer defection, as two in three consumers say they’ll happily jump ship to brands that provide the best experience or service.

How do companies go about creating inspired customer experiences? They pay attention so they can anticipate and accommodate customer needs. Consider these best practices from brands focused “what’s next” in customer experience, keeping their brands relevant and simplifying and modernizing interactions with customers to maximize convenience.

Commerce Bank: To serve its increasingly tech-savvy customers expecting more personalized banking experiences, Commerce Bank has endeavored to add new offerings that are of value to its customer base and offer added convenience.

Seizing on an opportunity to address a huge need, Commerce Bank started offering hospital financing a few years ago, allowing consumers to apply for a zero-interest loan to finance medical bills. The program has been phenomenally popular.

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Plus, the bank is in the process of launching a new omni-channel offering, providing value-added service via one of the most ubiquitous touch points within the banking landscape, the ATM machine. The innovative Video Teller Talk offering gives customers the opportunity to connect with a live agent right at the ATM, adding ease and convenience.

Mercury Insurance: In the highly regulated insurance sector, customer experience is what sets brands apart. Over the past few years, Mercury Insurance has revamped its contact center and back office operations, undergoing sweeping change to support improved operational efficiency and customer experience, combining three disparate call centers into one large virtual center.

With great power to change, comes great responsibility. Mercury has undertaken this technology transformation with an equal emphasis on change management to give its employees the support needed to get behind the initiative.

Mercury’s perspective has been if you embark on a transformation of this nature without the proper change management discipline in place, you had better have the time and money set aside to do it all over again. Wise words from an organization that understands technology alone doesn’t power change—people, planning and the proper mindset do.

Citizens Energy Group: While many businesses talk customer-centricity, Citizens Energy Group walks it, shutting down the company for one full day so that everyone in the organization can participate in Customer Experience Training.

Citizens Energy Group is a broad-based utility service company, providing natural gas, thermal energy, water, and wastewater services to about 800,000 people and thousands of businesses in the Indianapolis area. It’s the only utility in the country that is a public charitable trust, so customer service takes on a whole new level. The company does extensive customer journey mapping, and educates every employee on what its customers say and how they feel about their experiences with all aspects of the utility — even what an ideal journey looks like for its customers. Finally, the customer experience training focuses on “Eight Best Practices to Improve Customer Satisfaction.”

It’s a great example of making customer service everyone’s business—and ensuring every employee understands what it’s like to walk in the shoes of its customers.

VyStar Credit Union:  From a consumer’s perspective, trust is one of the most vital attributes for customer loyalty. In a post-GDPR era, consumers are more educated than ever on their rights and the responsibilities of the brands they do business with regarding the protection of their information and interests.

Every brand must protect its customers against fraud, and this is now a top contact center priority as fraudsters are targeting contact centers as a vulnerable entry point for identity theft.

VyStar Credit Union, the 16th largest credit union in the United States with more than 660,000 members, is taking a leading position in the fight against fraudulent calls in the contact center. Their innovative fraud detection technology simplifies, modernizes and automates member authentication, and enhances security while improving the overall member experience, a true win-win for VyStar members.

Ryan Hollenbeck is svp of global marketing for Verint Systems.

The post Four Brands Getting Customer Experience Right appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Customers no longer just want to buy from brands with great products and services. Today, customers want to support brands that share their values and have the courage to act on those beliefs.

That means that brands can’t afford to take a passive role in the narratives affecting their industry and their customers, says on-demand marketing consultant Katie Martell.

“Thanks to the prevalence of marketing—we see thousands of marketing messages a day—businesses play a massive role in modern society as culture-makers and opinion-drivers,” says Martell, who is moderating a keynote discussion on the next decade of marketing this week at Connect to Convert in Boston.

Once upon a time, there was a church/state separation between brands and hot button issues,. But today, those lines are blurred, and cause marketing is top of mind for brands, she notes. Consider how Patagonia took a stance on environmental protection by donated $10 million saved in tax cuts to grassroots activism, how Nike supported Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police brutality against African Americans or children’s magazine Highlights stance on family separation at the border.

“This is not just a PR issue, or a matter of including certain societal hot button issues in a marketing / PR campaign,” says Martell. “It also extends to internal policies about who companies chose to do business with.”

The future of marketing lies in being value-based, but that can’t start from the marketing department, says Lindsey Christensen, CMO of Thoughtbot. It has to be embedded in the company already, and be a part of how the company operates.

“It needs to be reflected in how leadership is thinking and acting,” says Christensen. “If that exists, then as a marketer you have this gift to amplify those values that are already true to your business.”

Stay True to Your Brand

For Constant Contact, the idea of getting involved is baked into the company’s DNA, says Hannah Budreski, vice president of marketing.

“At the end of the day, we’re a mission based company,” says Budreski. “We’re hyper focused on the success of small businesses, and that’s an easy proposition to get behind. How could anyone be against America’s small businesses?”

More From Connect to Convert Keynote Panelists:

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• The New Rules of Feminism in Marketing

That’s an admittedly non-controversial stance, but the company has had conversations about getting dipping its corporate toes into other issues, like a “get out the vote” campaign. Still, even something as vanilla as that can have consequences.

“Somebody said ‘you know, there will be a lot of angry calls, because this is [perceived] as a super liberal issue’. I thought ‘What????’ I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “No matter what you choose, you’re going to alienate somebody. But your brand can’t be everything to everybody.”

Toast also chooses to focus its cause marketing efforts on issues close to the hearts of its customers and employees. The restaurant management platform recently launched Toast.org, a nonprofit arm focused on solve food issues in communities

“The food landscape is core to our mission,” says Kelly Esten, senior director of product marketing at Toast. “And it’s important for us to think about what is important to restauranteurs. Many of our employees grew up in the food and beverage industry, and are passionate about that and seeing small businesses thrive.”

Issue-based marketing needs to be something that is a truth for the company, Christensen says. For Thoughtbot, an unexpected opportunity came up when someone on the team put together inclusivity guidelines for internal use, to offer guidance on things like making sure everyone feels represented, and helping avoid micro-aggressions. The guidelines were posted in conference rooms, and also reposted as an open source on GitHub and pinned to the company Twitter account.

“People started flooding us with messages,” says Christensen. “The response was amazing, with people telling us how they were going to use it and giving feedback on how to improve it, which was welcome.”

Be Brave

Courage is an important characteristic in life and marketing, says Rahim Rajpar, head of insurance marketing and direct to consumer business of John Hancock.
“Societal issues are something brands should embark on and corporations do have a larger responsibility the community. But deciding what to stick your neck out on requires consideration.”

Your commitment to a cause may feel empowering and energizing to segments of your audience—but it won’t click with everyone. “Certain segments may see your brand as one they now don’t want to do business with that,” Rajpar notes.

If a brand is committed to a cause, they need to go beyond just changing their homepage for the day, he says. Customers will see through that in a heartbeat. “Customers are savvy, so you have to be cautious.”

In Massachusetts, where John Hancock is based, the company stood behind Question 3 issue, a gender identity anti-discrimination initiative. “It was important for our employees, so we stood behind legislation that was going to further the cause, says Rajpar.

“If you’re really about making a stand, get behind legislation that would further the cause,” he adds. “Fund employee groups in your company that support the issue. Don’t just change the logo.”

It’s key to make sure that whatever you do is truly in the spirit of giving back and not just a ploy to be relevant in the latest news cycle, agrees Constant Contact’s Budreski. When a hurricane hit Houston, it took out a few of the company’s data centers in the area. It donated to organizations providing aid in that area, and assisted some nearby customers, but didn’t make the effort public.

“We just did it because it was the right thing to do. If someone asked us about it, that’s fine,” says Budreski. “We do the right thing because we believe in it. I think some businesses exploit that a bit. For example, everybody celebrated Pride. Are you doing it because your company is really behind it, or because everybody is celebrating? We try to understand where are customers are and what they care about—if they’re aligned with where we are and what we care about, then it’s a great fit.”

The post Cause Marketing: Why Brands Should Take a Stand appeared first on Chief Marketer.

For B2B marketers, social media no longer necessarily just means having an up-to-date LinkedIn page. Today, savvy B2B marketers are expanding their social circles to connect with audiences where they want to engage.

Budgets are backing up that need for increased engagement: 50 percent of respondents to Chief Marketer’s recent 2019 Martech Outlook survey said they would be investing in social media management software within the next 12 months.

For Constant Contact, having a mix of social channels is important, says Hannah Budreski, vice president of marketing. “People jump from social channels—our social director calls it ‘fleeing audiences’—so we can’t be too invested in any one channel to keep them engaged.”

How people interact with the brand on social has evolved, she notes. Where in the past, conversations might have occurred directly on the social channels, now, people are instead direct messaging with questions or comments.

“We’re seeing a lot more lurkers and people searching for content,” Budreski notes. “They might not be inclined to engage publicly via social, but they might send a message via Facebook Messenger, so we’re having a conversation there. It’s just getting taken out of the public eye.”

Thoughtbot has built a social audience by sharing ideas and thought leadership both through LinkedIn and Quora, where it can target interests by topic, notes CMO Lindsey Christensen. Social content helps with lead nurturing, and can help increase engagement at live events, where someone from the company might be speaking.

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The design consultancy—which helps technology innovators and start-ups design and deploy applications—also builds social momentum with podcasts, such as “Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Robots,” which talks about the design and development of software, or “Build Phase,” a weekly discussion on iOS development.

“We interview founders and technology leaders, and talk to them about their stories, themselves, and the challenges they face,” she says. “It’s a great mechanism for nurturing our audience, particularly with people we want to reach out to—we can invite them to be on the podcast.”

B2B social engagement is a little different for Boston-based restaurant management platform Toast.

“Restauranteurs are not sitting at a desk in front of a computer all day, they’re out on the restaurant floor,” says Kelly Esten, senior director of product marketing at Toast. This means unlike many B2B pros, LinkedIn is not the natural place to find them.

“We’re reaching restauranteurs wherever they are, whether it is on Faceboook, Instagram or via text messages,” she says.

On Facebook, the company recently launched an online community, called Food for Thought. The goal is to give restaurant professionals a place to communicate with each other. While a benefit is, of course, brand building, the intent is not to promote Toast in the community. “We try and stay out of the way—it’s more about our customers,” she says.

B2B Social ROI

For Constant Contact, how the success of a campaign is gauged depends on the goal. “It depends on what we want to accomplish. We’re putting a lot of content out there, but the ROI is different than, say, with email [offering a] free trial,” Budreski says. ‘It’s more of an impression, rather than getting them to take an action right at that moment.”

Toast looks at social ROI through the lens of engagement. Existing customers are the company’s number one source of referrals, says Esten, so using social to connect with them and encourage them to talk about the brand is important.

Christensen says Thoughtbot primarily considers paid social when gauging ROI, which can be a bit more straightforward to track than organic efforts.

“Organic social is trickier,” she says. “If we can track it, great. If not, we continue to share and follow best practices because we can ‘feel’ the results, even if they’re less tangible.”

Hear more from Lindsey Christensen, Hannah Budreski and Kelly Esten at LeadsCon’s Connect to Convert 2019 in Boston, Sept. 25-27

The post The Changing Face of B2B Social Media appeared first on Chief Marketer.

B2B decision makers consider a number of variables when making a purchase, but today more than ever before, customer experience is often the tipping point when it comes to acquiring—and keeping—business.

“Marketers have to look across entire funnel or customer journey,” says  Alison Biggan, president of corporate marketing at SAP. “We have to think about what happens after the sale. What are we doing to engage with customers, help customers understand the product and drive adoption?”

Gallup research shows that only 29 percent of B2B customers are fully engaged, and 71 percent are at risk to leave for a competitor. Engagement is clearly critical: Companies with the highest levels of engagement have 72 percent more fully engaged customers.

What’s the secret to creating a connection? First of all, it needs to be a two-way street. Marketers can’t just talk to customers—they need to talk with them, to see how they are using products and services.

“We need to be personalized and contextual in how we talk to them,” Biggan says, noting that B2B customer expectations are just as high as B2C. “They expect responses inquiries to be fast, and almost instantaneous.”

Pitney Bowes has three different lines of business, and the CX approach for each is a little bit different, says CMO Bill Borrelle.

In its software business, for example, the focus is on building an online community to help clients connect with one another, so they can share best practices and tips.  “We can use the community to launch beta tests, so that experience is beneficial to both us and the clients because they can help [shape] and make the product better,” Borrelle says.

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Within Pitney Bowes mailing business, the CS is comprehensive, spanning from the first moment they touch the hardware or interact with the shipping software. “We think about everything from user flow and where they might be getting caught up all the way through to billing and invoicing, and troubleshooting online,” says Borrelle. “We’ve built a robust online customer experience using all sorts of tools to measure satisfaction as they interact with our technology.”

For the global ecommerce business however, where clients are big retailers like Macy’s or Bed, Bath & Beyond, the CX goals are different.

“The client experience that we think of there isn’t our client but rather their consumer who is buying online,” he says. “What can we do to make that experience better? [Things like] faster delivery or making returns easier.”

The tone of the conversation depends on who you are talking to, agrees SAP’s Biggan. The C-suite or buyer wants to hear about how a solution will solve a business problem. Discussions with the individuals who are using the solution on a day-to-day basis get more into usability and adoption.

“One of the key ways to break through is to make sure you understand what they care about and what business challenges they are trying to solve, and reach them through non-traditional ways,” she notes. “We talk a lot about going where customers are, rather than bringing them to where we are.”

Just as consumers expect relevant and contextualized marketing offers, so too do B2B customers. “There’s an expectation that you know the things I care about and where I’m spending my time, and my history with your company,” she says. “It’s important that we’re connecting all the systems in the background, so whether you are hearing from sales or marketing or support, everyone understands [the history] of engagement.”

This is especially crucial in today’s environment, Biggan says.

“The reality is that it is much easier than ever for people to switch based on a bad experience,” she says. “If you are not differentiating based on experience, and doing everything you can to meet your customer’s expectations, you’re opening it up for a competitor.”

The post B2B Customer Experience: Why CX Matters Across the Entire Funnel appeared first on Chief Marketer.

For decades, brands competed on price, product, place and promotion. More recently, marketers have gone toe-to-toe using carefully-crafted predictive customer journeys. Now, the new arena is mobile customer experience (CX).

Consider that 65 percent 65% of customers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising. It’s more important today to quickly provide customers with the precise services or information they need than almost anything else. This evolution in competitive mindset isn’t just for upstart industry disruptors—it’s critical to established brands of every size. Consider that East Coast filling station Speedway and heartland grocer Hy-Vee have moved to the forefront of payment convenience with mobile wallet services powered by Apple Pay.

Indeed, regional and national players are looking to stay technologically ahead because once consumers experience something great, no matter the industry, format or channel, they expect it everywhere. So much of innovative customer experience centers on mobile, and for good reason: By the end of this year, Forrester estimates that 86 percent of the U.S. population will own at least one smartphone.

It takes 12 good brand experiences to make up for one bad one, so taking care when designing your mobile CX strategy is important. Here’s four brands that are getting it right.

Subway Takes SMS to the Next Level

Text messages have seen a resurgence because brands experience unusually high engagement rates with the channel. Millennials actually prefer communicating with brands over text (SMS) more than any other channel. The next generation of SMS is rich communication services, or RCS, a buzzy technology that will rapidly replace today’s plain texts with rich imagery and interactive customer experiences. RCS is projected to be a $74 billion industry by 2021.

Subway, with 5 million customers on its text message list, has been testing RCS to send promotions with detailed images such as menu items and maps for the nearest store as well as multimedia. The fast-food retailer’s RCS system also offers AI-powered chatbots to assist customers in ordering their meals with a few clicks. As a result, Subway benefited from a 144% increase in redemption rate compared to the same promotion employing basic SMS.

Other brands are seeing success with RCS: A RCS pilot by Vodafone saw 40 percent click-through rates (CTR) and also used fallback to SMS if the consumer couldn’t receive RCS. That’s impressive compared to the industry CTR average for display ads, 0.35 percent.

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Chipotle Goes to Lunch with Venmo

For a week in mid-March, Chipotle teamed up with peer-to-peer payment mobile app Venmo, surprising burrito-eating consumers by depositing between $1 and $500 in their digital wallets. Via push notification or email, 25,000 people a day were alerted that virtual cash had been awarded to their Venmo account. Chipotle also became the first restaurant brand to have its own emoji—a hot pepper—on Venmo that was utilized for sharing payments. Venmo users, who skew young, often split up lunch or dinner costs via the app.

The digital wallet and emoji aspects underscore savviness: Chipotle was clearly targeting millennials and Gen Z, which should be the brand’s key demographic after losing ground with those groups last year. What makes the ideas smart is that these young adults greatly prefer Venmo over Paypal or old-fashioned cash, and they love emojis. Chipotle is delivering the experience they want and expect.

Burger King’s Mobile Caffeine Buzz

On March 15, Burger King’s mobile app began testing the offer of one coffee every day for five bucks a month. Burger King sends daily reminders via push notification, text message and email. With the price of a large BK coffee in mind ($1.79), if you order a cup every day, that price comes out to be about 30 cents per day. Not too shabby.

Bigger picture: Burger King is bringing the direct-to-consumer subscription model—most often seen in fashion retail with brands like Rent the Runway of Stitch Fix—to cups of java. What’s more, this test is a smart way to see if Burger King can steal young adult coffee drinkers from Starbucks and Dunkin’. The price is right compared to the competition, and it’s mobile-minded and convenient—all of which should appeal to millennials and Gen Y.

Foot Locker Steps Up With VR Scavenger Hunt

Foot Locker made an incredible revenue rebound by the end of last year. The New York-based retailer’s executives pin their turnaround on partnering with D2C brands like Rockets of Awesome and Super Heroics. Foot Locker focused on mobile marketing during Q4 and lifted sales among sneakerheads, specifically with fans of LeBron James and his latest team, the Los Angeles Lakers.

On the first day of the NBA season, October 20, Foot Locker ran a VR-enabled, scavenger-hunt effort that first encouraged Los Angeles area consumers to download the brand’s app and enable push notifications or SMS messages for the mobile game. Players were directed to locations around Tinsel Town to unlock AR clues and earn the chance to be among the first to buy the LeBron 16 King “Court Purple” sneakers. The shoe sold out in less than two hours, and the purchasers aren’t likely to forget the experience anytime soon.

Mike Stone is svp of marketing at Airship.

The post Mobile CX: How Burger King, Chipotle & More Are Getting It Right appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Many B2B products might not be as flashy as their B2C counterparts, but that doesn’t mean they—or their marketing campaigns—should be boring.

After all, what seems like a snooze to one person is fascinating to another.

“The reality is that B2B products, especially those sold at the enterprise level, are not built for the consumer,” Elliot Schimel writes on Forbes.com. “How ‘exciting’ something is depends just as much, if not more, on who you’re selling to as what you’re selling.”

The idea that B2B has to be all substance and no flash is misguided, he says, noting that presentation is an area where B2B marketers should look to their consumer counterparts for guidance. For example, if you’ve commissioned research, don’t just churn out a standard report or whitepaper.

“Do that, but also create engaging, snackable content, especially something visual, such as infographics that illustrate compelling facts or a video series that breaks down the harder-to-understand portions of the research, without devaluing it,” Schimel says.

Check out how these five brands broke the mold and took the “boring” out of B2B:

Lenovo Gets Artsy: Computer manufacturer Lenovo turned to Japanese digital artist Hideo Kojima—best known for his video game work—to engage professionals in media and entertainment. Videos featuring Kojima’s work are part of an influencer strategy designed to connect with B2B brands in a number of verticals.

Hiscox Cracks the Code: Insurance company Hiscox launched its first fully integrated campaign this year, using barcodes to illustrate that not all B2B brands look alike. The campaign, slated to run throughout 2019, includes everything from print ads and social placements to a partnership with Major League Baseball.

Citrix is Off to the Races: Many B2B brands are taking advantage of sports sponsorships, but Citrix’s partnership with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing goes the extra mile. Last year, the team came up with the idea to do a stunt at a downtown Miami building. A race car was lifted to the 63^rd floor, where the driver did doughnuts. From an earned media standpoint, it was the equivalent of an estimated $5 million worth of exposure, thanks to coverage not only on social but ESPN and NBC as well.

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Brex Fryes the Competition: Corporate credit card Brex targeted start-ups with a campaign in NYC poking fun at the corporate card funded Fyre Festival fiasco. The campaign rolled out across the city in March on over a dozen billboards and 1,000 subway cars with the tagline “The Corporate Card that actually lives up to the hype.” Taking a humorous jab at Fyre—which had its beginnings in the Magnises membership card, which offered perks and benefits for entrepreneurs—seemed like a natural for the brand.

EyeMed Gets Seen: EyeMed—the vision care division of Luxiottica (parent company of brands like RayBan, Lenscrafters and Oakley)—is creatively using direct mail to get the eyeballs of prospects throughout the entire customer journey.  Dimensional mailers using everything from things like Amazon Alexas to toy magic genie lamps open the door for conversations and boost overall ROI.

The post 5 Brands That Prove B2B Isn’t Boring appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The effort—centering around the tagline “It’s not stock, it’s Shutterstock”—is utilizing the company’s own imagery to catch the eyes of creatives, says Lou Weiss, global CMO.

“Our issue wasn’t so much misconception as that people haven’t experienced us yet,” Weiss says. “We haven’t done as a great a job as we could about [communicating] what customers say is special about us.”

The campaign launches this month over digital and social platforms in the U.S., the UK, Canada and Australia. Print and out-of-home advertising will be rolled in as the campaign progresses.

The target audience is varied, as Shutterstock aims to reach a wide-range of professionals and creatives who might have need of stock images, including ad agencies, freelance designers, editors, media companies and small-to-medium sized businesses.

A variety of images are used in the campaign, including animals, people and places. “We want to show the breadth of our assets,” he says. “We’re using images that demand you sit up and pay attention.”

Content marketing is also being incorporated into the campaign, such as whitepapers that help professionals think about how to scale content marketing and uses images without breaking the bank. What assets professionals view will help Shutterstock manage what content to serve to them next, Weiss notes.

DiMassimo Goldstein worked with Shutterstock on the campaign, which was budgeted in the “high eight figures,” says Weiss. ROI will be judged both on new customer acquisitions, and increased engagement with existing customers.

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The campaign is not designed as a one and done outing, he adds.

“We’re hoping this platform will have multi-year legs and leverage, and that we can keep it fresh and contemporary,” he says, noting that the next step will be to rollout the campaign in more countries and platforms.

Shutterstock’s library of over 225 million images, over 12 million video clips and tens of thousands of music tracks features the work of more than 550,000 contributors, and is available in 21 languages in over 150 countries.

“Our campaign is a celebration of the amazing artists who contribute these incredible assets to our platform, and highlights the extraordinary value that they bring to creative endeavors every day,” says Weiss.

The post New Campaign Puts Shutterstock’s Assets Into Focus appeared first on Chief Marketer.

A centralized database has helped Dr. Martens create more targeted messaging for footwear customers across multiple channels.

The iconic Dr. Martens boots were born in England in April 1960, originally designed for factory workers who needed protective gear. The utilitarian footwear was then adopted by rock stars in the late sixties like The Who’s Pete Townshend.

“Thankfully, he loved to jump, so a pair of Dr. Martens were in every picture of him,” said Kyle Duford, global vice president of digital, Dr. Martens, who spoke at the recent MarTech conference in San Francisco.

Music became inextricable to the brand’s DNA, and Docs became a force of self-expression.

“One of the greatest things is that when you wear a pair of Dr. Martens, you feel empowered,” he said. “You feel like you can do anything.”

Still, even for a brand with such a strong identity, it is hard to break through.

“Today, everyone is competing. It’s just noise,” said Duford. “Everyone is on their phone all day. Everyone is trying to cut through and connect. A brand like us that is about authenticity cannot just treat people like clicks.”

Personalized, authentic marketing that was at the right place, at the right time, was the route Dr. Martens choose.

“You need to know your tribe, and personalize the experience, engaging on channels that work for them, not you,” he said.

This means knowing who you are talking to—for example, a businessman who wore Docs 20 years ago and wants a new pair to look fashionable probably doesn’t want to see ads for the flowered Chelsea style suitable for young girls.

The brand’s target demographic is pretty large, ages seven to 70. Duford said he’s proud of that wide range, but it makes it hard to identify whom Dr. Martens is speaking to at any given time.

Dr. Martens worked with Lytics to create a centralized, real-time data hub, to map data and build progressive profiles of their customers.

The brand has been able to test how data impacts communications, realizing that small changes can have a bit impact. For example, just putting customer names in email subject lines and email text doubled open rates

Dr. Martens also looked at affinities it could connect with products. Messaging was created for customers than had shown an affinity for veganism, pitching them offers on vegan leather products. Those who had shown an affinity for the company’s museum collection were shown offers for the “George and the Dragon” limited edition satchel. Recent leather shoe purchasers were given offers for a shoe care kit to help break in and protect their purchases.

A ribbon at the bottom of webpages was used to suggest the “George” offer, resulting in a 60% higher conversion for these customers, with a 20% higher average order.

The brand is also utilizing lookalike modeling to achieve a smarter ad spend, to reach individuals with retargeting that act like customers and are likely to buy. It is also using a CloudEngage platform to tap into location and weather data. When and where users view an ad determines the type of messaging they see—those in colder climates see boots, while prospects in a warm, sunny locale might see sandals or sneakers (yes, Dr. Martens makes both of those too).

The centralized database also enables Dr. Martens to control what messages a customer see in their buying cycle. For example, if you’ve purchased a pair of boots this week and haven’t even gotten your confirmation email yet, you’re not going to be hit with a series of prospecting offers.

“It’s more important to me that you have a great brand experience today than whether you purchase [today],” said Duford. “Our brand isn’t going anywhere.”

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Making tools and data accessible to everyone—not just engineers and data analysts—gives employees the power and insight to think big and make confident, data-backed decisions that deliver bottom-line results, without exhausting resources or budgets.

Here are three lessons learned from MVMT, IGN and Brooks Running about data experimentation.

1. Be where your customers are.

When MVMT Watches introduced interchangeable straps, they tested whether promoting the new straps in the shopping cart, on the purchase confirmation page or on the products page would feel most natural to the shopping process and drive purchases. The team was able to experiment with promotion placement, because they had the right tools to look at data from each iteration and could make an informed decision about the most fruitful option.

Promoting the strap on the product page on desktop resulted in a 2.2% increase in revenue and a small increase in average order. But knowing that 55% of MVMT’s traffic comes from mobile, the marketing team decided to also test the mobile experience. When the mobile experience was static, only eight percent of customers would scroll down to see the strap promotion. To drive higher visibility and engagement, they moved the strap promotion for mobile users to be directly below the “Add to cart” button, resulting in a 5.5% increase in revenue and a 1.6% increase in mobile conversions.

Data insights inspired MVMT’s marketing team to test mobile, the touchpoint for a majority of their customers, and the results helped them implement the option with the greatest return.

2. Empower every employee to use data

Every employee at IGN—the online publisher of popular video games line Fallout 4—makes experimentation part of their daily work to create a better experience for fans and advertisers — and many new features are born from experiments. The product team continuously tests the impact on the user experience to decide which website variations to implement. By analyzing data, the team learns how the audience reacts to features, content and design to inform current and future ideas.

Product managers share those insights with other departments to encourage testing new ideas and creative thinking. For example, Todd Northcutt, vice president of product at IGN, shared six variations of a video player his team tested and had everyone at the all-hands meeting vote which one would perform the best. They were wrong, and that showed to always test your assumptions before pushing through a change. By leveraging data and sharing insights across teams, IGN ensures the team is only taking smart risks that will have impactful results.

3. Dig deep into the fine details.

Brooks Running set a goal to decrease the return rate of shoes. Based on data about customers’ shopping patterns, it experimented with how to improve customer satisfaction and therefore decrease the numbers of returns. The Brooks team noticed that when customers bought multiple pairs of the same shoe but in different sizes, customers returned at least one of those pairs.

These insights sparked an idea: when shopping in a brick-and-mortar store, customers can turn to a sales associate to help them decide the best fit. To bring this personalized experience online, Brooks created a special pop-up message offering shopping support for customers that fall into this target audience segment. The message read: “Not sure what size to get? Our expert customer service can help you figure out the one for you so you don’t have to return one later.” Based on the experiment, Brooks saw an 80% decrease in return rate and an increase in customer satisfaction.

The team accomplished its goal to decrease the return rate by leveraging data insights about customers and providing personalized support to meet their needs.

Linda Crawford is the chief customer officer of Optimizely.

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