Thank you to all who joined us for our webinar, 4 Steps for Multichannel Marketing Success.
In our 30-minute webinar, we covered how to combine email automation, search engine marketing (SEM), social advertising, and display ads to drive brand awareness, nurture leads, and increase sales.
Watch the webinar recording and download the slides to learn how to implement a 360-degree approach and apply lessons learned from one channel to the next for more personalized customer experiences and deeper engagement.
Last year saw the continued heightening of customer expectations for simple, memorable, and consistent experiences. In 2020, businesses will apply a lot more operational rigor in pursuit of connected customer experiences in 2020, and this will play out across five main trends.
Whereoware’s CEO Michael Mathias on transformative ecommerce trends that will dominate the new year.
Somewhere
between jack-o’-lanterns and Christmas trees, our industry takes stock of the
year past and looks to the year ahead. Last year saw the continued heightening
of customer expectations for simple, memorable, and consistent experiences,
increasing performance pressure across all aspects of business. In fact, in a
recent study by Saleforce, 80% of customers report that the experience a
company provides is as important as its products and services.
As we
look to 2020, be honest with yourself. Were you proactive or reactive to
customers’ demands? Were you bold and decisive, or did you take a haphazard
approach?
If 2019
was a scramble to compete on customer experience, I foresee businesses applying
a lot more operational rigor in pursuit of connected customer experiences in
2020, playing out across five main trends.
Achieving marketing and sales alignment is tough. Sales reps are on the hunt for better leads, while marketers seek more effective ways for evaluating their impact. Instead, imagine a unified approach, where marketing and sales teams work hand-in-hand to pinpoint the most qualified prospects, and market to them accordingly.
According to MarketingProfs, by aligning sales and marketing teams, companies experience 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales win rates. End the sales and marketing tug of war, send your ROI soaring, and reach your revenue goals with Account-Based Marketing (ABM).
We’re diving into the ABCs of ABM: what it’s all about, the benefits you can’t ignore, and a crash course on creating a winning campaign.
While social
media marketing has come a long way over the last decade, its goal remains the
same: to foster interactive platforms for individuals to share, discuss, and
co-create content.
When done the right way, social media has big-time potential to build your community, grow your customer reach, boost engagement, and drive traffic to your website (and conversions too!). In fact, according to Sprout Social, when consumers follow a brand on social, 87% say they’re likely to visit that brand’s site or app.
Social media is no longer just a “nice-to-have” for enhancing your online presence. After all, it’s where your existing and potential customers and buyers hang out the most. But sometimes, your social media efforts can do more harm than good if you’re not sending the right message, participating on the channels in a meaningful way, or are failing to collect and track data effectively.
Do any of these not-so-rare social media cardinal sins sound like you?
Are you:
… guilty of throwing content out into the universe without a clue of who you’re talking to? You might be a Community Crapshooter.
…employing a “more is more” strategy (or lack thereof), by posting as much as possible in an attempt to stay relevant? You might be an Over Sharer.
…using social channels as a soapbox for your brand and failing to truly engage your followers? You might be an Anti-Social Ghost.
If so, you
may have fallen into an impersonal social media vortex that many brands find
themselves in. Fortunately, we have some tips for how to break the cycle and
put the “social” back in your social media.
Whereoware is excited to introduce Acoustic, the newest iteration of the IBM Watson Marketing suite of tools, released on July 15. The release follows Centerbridge Partners’ acquisition of IBM Watson Marketing software (the marketing automation suite Whereoware specializes in and has used daily for the last decade.)
Born from the desire to focus solely on marketers, Acoustic is dedicated to building products that “bring humanity back to marketing.”
Marketing is Acoustic’s number one priority, rather than an add-on feature to a larger technology suite.
Why
Acoustic?
What’s in a name? In the words of Mark Simpson, Acoustic’s CEO, “our new name is a symbol of our ability to create environments that draw people in, inviting closer and more personal connections. By providing purpose-built solutions, we can empower marketers to make these true human connections. Only by listening carefully to consumers can marketers make themselves heard.”
It’s no secret that personalizing your customers’ experience boosts satisfaction, loyalty, and sales.
Successful personalization delivers a consistent and seamless customer journey across channels (email, website, social, etc.). In fact, according to Salesforce, 75% of consumers expect consistent experiences across multiple channels, with 73% likely to switch brands if they don’t.
To help you get started, we’re sharing three tips for connecting your website and email personalization strategy so you can deliver relevant, memorable experiences that build brand loyalty, motivate action, and increase sales.
Imagine: you’re on a webpage with an enticing offer. You’re excited and ready to go when suddenly, a long, bulky webform form with several required fields appears.
If we’re being honest, most of us are unlikely to stick it out and finish the form, and you wouldn’t be alone. In fact, according to The Manifest, a whopping 67% of users will permanently abandon a form if they encounter complications.
Webforms are, however, vital to engaging your customers and
communities online. Not only do they increase both B2B and B2C account
registration (which is, by the way, an important KPI for new websites) and
email capture for marketing, but forms also offer the convenience for users to
sign in from anywhere and proceed through checkout more easily.
There are many factors that contribute to user frustration, so follow the tips below to start addressing the usability issues on your forms.
Amazon Prime Day (the summer’s “Black Friday” holiday boasting tons of discounts on popular items for Amazon Prime members) started as a 20th Anniversary promotion in 2015 but has since become a shopping phenomenon across Amazon and competitive online shopping sites.
Amazon will hold its longest Prime Day yet—48 hours of deals—from July 15 to July 16. This year, major retailers Target, Walmart, and eBay are joining in on the fun.
This year’s Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE 2019) in Chicago was a blast! We enjoyed awesome speakers, fun networking opportunities, and more during our visit to the Windy City.
We co-presented a stand-out speaking session with Yamaha on Selling a Lifestyle: How Storytelling Motivates Different Customer Types to Buy. The presentation covered proven techniques for segmenting different customer types—from first-time visitors to your highest-value clientele—and online personalization approaches to drive brand loyalty and sales. Download the Persona Worksheet and get the presentation slides to get started on building personalized customer journeys.
Did you miss our session or need a refresher? We’re recapping how Yamaha develops user personas and combines email and website personalization to deliver every prospect and customer a relevant and compelling brand experience.
Don’t just sell your products. Follow our 4-step guide to brand storytelling, selling a lifestyle, and gaining lifetime customers.
One-size-fits-all marketing is a thing of the past; your customers expect a personalized experience everywhere they interact with your brand.
Your messages and incentives should be tailored to each individual: relevant to their needs, addressing their concerns, demonstrating your value, and persuading them to convert—all at an appropriate time in their individual purchase cycle.
It may seem impossible to cater to each customer’s individual needs, but one way to simplify this process is to develop user personas.
User personas are fictional characters representing different segments of your core audience, so you can engage individuals with the right approach, timing, and messaging to move them down the conversion path.
Getting your personas right and successfully personalizing the customer experience is a huge opportunity.
