Ten Top Tips to Achieve Channel Harmony
We all know life can be a little complicated. On a morning, you’re hunting for your shoes and car keys before navigating through the traffic to make (or avoid) the school run before dodging the headache of the M6. At work, there are processes and governance to follow, acquisitions to address and problems to resolve. When you get back home, you remember that you’ve run out of toilet paper and milk. So, you venture back out for a quick run to the local Costcutter.
The moment your phone reconnects with WiFi, it starts beeping like a malfunctioning robot. You have 48 unread emails, 16 tweets, 3 LinkedIn messages and 102 Facebook notifications to trawl through. It’s nice to be popular but who is Joseph and why is he inviting you to his leaving do? Every day, thousands of media messages flood your TV, radio, inbox and phone. If you feel swamped by it all, this means your members and customers will do too.
So, let’s get strategic. Grab yourself a big flip chart, marker pen and let’s get brainstorming!
Agree your goals and KPIs
Set the desired end result from the start so you have something to work towards. Set up and agree KPIs. You need to be able to track and report the results to help you measure what is working and what isn’t working so well.
Create one view of your member or customer
This is easier said than done!
With legacy systems that don’t talk to each other and the sales team preciously guarding their own contacts it is difficult to get a coherent view of who’s saying what to whom and when! Therefore a key challenge for 2017/2018 is the inadequate integration of management systems.
Breaking down the silos and creating one view of Members & customers and prospective Members & customers is essential so they can be spoken to in a relevant, coherent way.
A few stats from a recent Experian Digital Marketer Report:
85% of CMOs say omni-channel strategy is thwarted by access to data
81% of marketers report challenges in achieving a single customer view
38% say knowing their customers remain their top challenge
Release the power of your data
Once you have one view of your member or customer, you can unlock the value of their data.
What do they like? What matters most to them? Learn your members’ or customers’ needs and expectations. The more you talk to them as an individual, the less likely they are to leave your brand.
Learn what channels your members or customers prefer to use. Understanding their channel of choice makes it easier for a member or customer to buy or convert. Look at the social sites your audience use and be selective as posting to every social site doesn’t work! Consider the notifications you receive – how many of these do you dismiss without looking at?
Maximise progression. Take your members or customers on a journey with you so they can progress with your club or business. Everyone wants to feel part of something! How many of your members or customers use loyalty cards? Everyone loves a card.
Enhance retention. Look at what you offer to promote loyalty to your brand. In a recent survey by Ashridge Communications, 36% of students don’t transfer to a higher membership grade when they are eligible and 10% do not renew within their first five years of membership.
Create a sales & marketing strategy and proposition
Tailor your campaigns to your services and benefits. Be specific and clear. If you have their details, don’t forget to follow up with a friendly call!
Create an activation plan/calendar/ publishing schedule and stick to it!
Write up everything. Your tweets, blog ideas, content, etc and diarise time to complete the tasks. Where possible, create content once and then repurpose. Using an editorial calendar, mark when the tweet will go out or when you will post your blog. Link them together – use snippets of your blog on emails, tweets and so on.
Align Your Message…
but naturally adapt the content to suit. Consider the language, style and length of the message you want to send. For example, the tone of LinkedIn is very different to that of Twitter and no one, I repeat, no one wants to read a 4 page letter better suited to direct mail on an email! Becoming a champion of multi-channel communications means mastering the tone, style and vernacular of each platform.
Automate where possible
Make your life a little easier by automating posts to save time but remember to stay human! You need to remain accessible.
Get social!
Now you have written your tweets, tightened your tone and got to grips with your chosen platforms, you are ready to send your message in to the world!
Things to remember:
Don’t sell too much – one fifth of comms should be sales. Free advice, education and insight should make up the main bulk of your posts.
Develop a social sell when you’re positioned as an authority/thought leader. This makes it much easier for you in the long run!
Make sure your website is up to date and Smartphone friendly. Spring clean your team and FAQs page.
Stick to your activation plan/calendar/ publishing schedule! Don’t allow your hard work to slip and cause your audience to lose interest.
Harmonise and sequence
Email and mail make perfect partners. Research shows that using both channels in harmony results in:
13% more consumers visited the sender’s website
21% consumers made purchases
35% more consumers redeemed vouchers
Create cut through
In a world where every 60 seconds: 400 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube, 205 million emails are sent, 3.3 million posts to Facebook, 3.2 million Google searches, 422,340 tweets and 55,555 photos are uploaded to Instagram and there is still only 1 letterbox!
We are bombarded with media messages all the time and sometimes without you realising it. To make your message stand out, you need to make yourself heard across this sea of digital noise. One way is to use direct mail. Take a look at your inbox and chances are it’s overflowing with everything from January sales to the latest newsletter on baking. Your letterbox is significantly less busy.
Campaigns including mail are:
27% more likely to deliver top ranking sales performance
40% more likely to deliver top top-ranking acquisition levels
ROI is 12% higher for campaigns that use mail
Mail is kept 37 days on average. It may be on your table, under your toaster or on the stairs but it is always in your sight.
Mail drives on-line activity
The only lasting competitive advantage comes from acting on the information about your members and customers to create relevant experiences that your competitors cannot. Here at Synergy, we man a great little lifeboat to rescue your multi-channel marketing and give your members an exciting and engaging experience to keep them on-board (and to help you sign up new recruits on the way!).
To see how we can turn your whisper in to a bold, bright shout across the waves, call us for a chat and bring calm and harmony to your marketing.
