The Future of the Travel Industry Puts Customers in the Driver’s Seat

Mobile is radically re-shaping the travel industry

The future of the travel industry is in customers’ hands — at their fingertips, to be exact. With a few apps, some swipes and clicks, and one-on-one conversations with big brands through social media, an entire travel experience will be planned and confirmed by the customer alone.

That’s a complete transformation from how it used to be. Not too long ago, if someone got the itch to visit an exotic location — or his grandmother in another state/country — he would pick up the phone and dial a travel agent. The expert on the other end of the line would then go to work conducting research and collecting brochures.

Fast-forward 10 years, and most travel agencies have closed shop, their agents succumbing to other lines of work. The world of travel has shifted from a human agent-dominated sales channel to a web-driven model where online travel agencies have largely supplanted traditional agents and, more often, suppliers communicate directly with consumers.

Download Expert Business Member resource – Travel Trends Guide

Our specialist marketing trends resource for the travel sector will help you keep you up to date with whats going on in the world of travel marketing, so you benchmark and keep up. The online guide is full of examples case studies and metrics to help you drive your travel marketing forward.

Access the Travel ecommerce marketing trends 2016-2017

Digital marketers have led this online evolution with fresh ways to draw more guests to travel services. New ad formats with immersive experiences and compelling messaging have built strong brands over time. These ads, supported by a competitive market and highly tactical promotions, have driven the business of perishable travel products in an entirely new direction.

The Shift in Power

The move toward a web-driven model has put the power in the hands of the customer. Price comparisons on sites like KAYAK and perishable inventory sales through Travelzoo have increased the worth of sightseers’ dollars and given them the confidence to make informed decisions by themselves.

FlyerTalk, TripAdvisor, and SeatGuru have empowered consumers to shop for the specific experience they desire. Travelers can even customize their travel plans by purchasing seats with extra legroom and choosing airlines based on luggage charges or food for sale.

Rather than waiting for the professional to get back to them, vacationers now control the experience they’re planning and get the firsthand thrill of securing a great deal. This power mitigates potential disappointment and creates a strong pull for satisfied customers to share their excitement or positive experience online.

But how can travel marketers continue to leverage this power shift for their own brands?

An Experience Worth Sharing

Capturing and sharing content created by vacationers creates a dynamic real-time experience for those watching and reading online. Capitalizing on sightseers’ shared experiences is the most influential form of advertising currently available to digital marketers — one they should take advantage of.

When travelers have a great experience, they talk about it. More than ever, travel marketers can benefit from strategies that are informed by word of mouth. By putting tools in consumers’ hands, travel fanatics — sharing their adventures with other travel fanatics — are organically promoting the travel products, services, brands, and even specific people who have delivered the experience they so enjoyed.

Marriott Hotels & Resorts recently partnered with GoPro to take advantage of the personal escapades of its hotel guests. Guests in 18 of its Caribbean and Latin American resorts can now check out video cameras to capture memories throughout their vacations.

Vacationers are then encouraged to upload their footage to Instagram and Facebook using the hashtag #TravelBrilliantly, giving Marriott free and shareable advertising to attract potential customers all over the globe. The partnership with GoPro not only gives Marriott the ability to easily collect footage, but it also brands the hotel chain as part of the adventure niche.

Marriott has also jumped headfirst into the content marketing space with a popular online travel magazine, a short film, and even a TV series. “We say we’re going to own the travel lifestyle space like Red Bull owns action sports. We just happen to sell hotel rooms,” said David Beebe, Marriott’s vice president of global creative and content marketing.

The Ability to Solve Problems

When travelers are disappointed or need something, they also want to talk about it. With the social media tools now available, digital marketers can react to subpar customer service issues and solve problems in real time.

Because of social media’s response speed, both Qantas and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines use Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms to actively engage with customers. With the help of software, digital marketers can check for content posted from their on-site lounges, monitor messages sent to them (or posted about them), and respond in real time.

At Qantas, if a customer posts a photo to Instagram from one of its airport lounges, the customer care team is alerted immediately. Staff members then have a chance to resolve any issues.

KLM uses feedback from social media channels to enhance customer service. Suggestions from its online consumers have prompted the company to create destination guides based on crew members’ favorite locations, and it now allows those who aren’t passengers to purchase gifts and services for those traveling on the airline.

An Opportunity to Anticipate Needs

Picture a scenario in which a sudden surge of social media content related to canceled flights at Chicago O’Hare International Airport prompts hoteliers to act. Using the tools at their fingertips, they respond proactively by messaging travelers with last-minute savings on nearby room rates.

Likewise, car rental agencies could promote their one-way rental inventory and rates. These opportunities meet the needs of the market in real time — not simply to sell more product, but to also be there when customers need them. Utility is the frontier of travel marketing.

Moving forward, digital media experts will continue to push marketing into even more useful arenas, and customers will feel like advertising is a benefit, not a hindrance. Travel brands will meet customers in their moments of need with an empathetic message or offer, informed by better data and delivered via savvy media management.

Real-time insights like these — combined with programmatic media buying and a dynamic creative presence — can deliver a compelling message in ways marketers had once thought were a mere dream. Digital media has already transformed the travel industry, and the future of the market is only an imagination away.

Thanks to Matt Cronin for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Matt, a founding partner at House of Kaizen, is a pioneer in digital performance marketing and brand management, having joined the movement more than 15 years ago. Before House of Kaizen, Matt developed techniques to create online word-of-mouth and social media solutions to more effectively understand and engage clients’ constituencies. Matt is also an adviser to nonprofits and startups and a featured speaker at online marketing forums. Matt has developed innovative digital strategies for the likes of Tiffany & Co., MGM, JPMorgan Chase & Co., British Airways, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, and Columbia House. You can connect with Matt on LinkedIn.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/the-future-of-the-travel-industry-puts-customers-in-the-drivers-seat/

Social media listening tool comparison

Updated report shows the why, what and how of selecting social listening tools

‘Listen first!’ is the first step in almost all advice on creating a social media strategy. To listen effectively you need to choose the right tool. There’s certainly no shortage of choice. Back in 2009 (and updated since) Smart Insights created a comparison of 36 of the best-known online reputation monitoring tools including free and paid tools. Since then, there has been an explosion of new tools on the market, making the selection process now even more bewildering. Our free tools guides has a select number of services.

Download free resource – Essential Digital Marketing Tools

This guide will recommend the best types of tools and the most popular alternatives in each category based on our experience and talking to other marketers.

Access the Essential Digital Marketing Tools 2016

In order to enable companies and individuals to make effective decisions about the selection and use of SMM tools and services, the November 2016 comprehensive comparison of social media monitoring tools by Ideya Ltd provides overview and comparison of 200 tools to help you make the right choice. It is the most comprehensive report currently on the market. Of the services reviewed, 160 are paid, with the remainder free or using a combined model.

The 62 pages long report extract below, also published on SlideShare has a good level of detail on how to approach selecting tools, a listing of all tools and detailed sample profiles of 5 tools (out of 200 profiles available in the full report). Those that are included in the Excerpts are: (1) BoomSonar, BoomSonar SA, (2) Buzzcapture, Buzzcaputre BV, (3) Coosto, Coosto, (4) Snaptrends, Snap Trends, Inc., and (5) YouScan, YouScan Ukraine Ltd.,

What are social media listening tools?

Social media listening or social media monitoring (SMM) tools can be defined as comprising listening, monitoring, analytics and often intelligence and engagement capabilities. Simple social listening platforms provide a basic capability of capturing online conversations based on the specific search query, offering key insights through the analysis of those conversations.

How do social listening tools help in marketing campaigns?

SMM tool metrics and measurements are designed to evaluate company activities and inform an overall social media strategy. Companies should develop marketing campaigns based on the insight gained through social media monitoring, focus on the highest potential markets or groups identified through market segmentation and influencer analysis and identify optimal time for engagement.

The metrics may involve statistics about the share, reach, sentiment, impact and speed of conversations about the company. These parameters can be used to assess the company image and perceptions before and after campaign and measure campaign effectiveness and identify trends that lead to new marketing and product tactics. Many tools also offer day parting metrics showing the effectiveness of an outbound message at different times of the day to identify optimum posting time and frequency.

To measure the value of your social media activities, you should also look at the overall results your company is generating and carefully examine how social media was engaged in increasing your bottom line through growing revenue and increasing efficiency looking at the incremental revenue after a particular promotion, number of conversions, lead generation effectiveness, number of leads per dollar spent vs. traditional advertising campaigns, and others.

In the area of Marketing and Communications, Ideya says that social media monitoring tools typically assist organizations in:

1. Acquiring real time social marketing insights to inform social media marketing and communication plans.
2. Optimizing design of marketing and advertising campaigns based on customer insights.
3. Developing social content strategies to promote products and services and engage with current and potential customers across social media channels in real time.
4. Monitoring and applying'word of mouth' consumer recommendations as a form of direct advertising by identifying and engaging with key influencers, generating buzz, and establishing and building relationships with key influencers.
5. Making better decisions about campaigns and brand extensions with a clear understanding of the key factors influencing brand's health.
6. Supporting rapid social marketing engagement, and
7. Developing performance metrics.

I’d add that they’re also useful in getting insight about customer perception of product categories and how your products or services are considered relative to competitors. This can help inform new product development.

Depending on the maturity and complexity of the SMM tools and its key features, the tool can also support social media marketing professionals in social media publishing, SMM, analysis, and engagement, conversation management, and SEO

Requirements for social listening tools

So that’s the 'why' of social media listening tools, but how do you decide? Issues to consider when selecting social media tools are summarized in the following table:

The following graph illustrates how tools differ in terms of product features, but also shows that the SMM technologies are continually introducing new product features.

SMM Product Features - Percentage of SMM Products (200) Offering Specific Feature:

The number of SMM Tools offering Campaign Management and Monitoring feature has increased significantly in the past several years. According to Ideya’s 2016 Report, the number of featured tools offering Campaign Management and Monitoring feature has grown from 68% in 2015 to 73% in 2016, while the number of the tools offering engagement and workflow management capabilities grew by 8% and 7% respectively. Similarly, about 78% SMM tools offer API integration - a very valuable option for organizations with complex social media programs, which is eight percent (8%) more than in 2015. The above graph also demonstrates increased focus on segmentation by location.

For more information on the Report, check out the Report Excerpts below:

Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services Report Excerpts 2016 from Ideya Business and Marketing Consultancy Ltd.

 

source http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-analytics/social-media-listening-tool-comparison/

Digital Marketing in the airline / aviation sector

How digital innovation is engaging audiences and improving customer experience in the airline / aviation sector

This is the first in a new series looking at digital innovation and transformation in different B2B sectors aimed to inspire business-to-business marketers, this post from regular B2B marketing commentator René Power looks at how digital technologies are being deployed within the blossoming air travel and aviation sector to enhance customer experiences at every stage of the process.

As you read, think about what ideas you might take forward into your own sector?

Air travel is a growing sector

There continues to be an explosion in air travel, which makes it a very lucrative industry to be in. Air travel numbers themselves are mind-boggling. Published forecasts predict the total number of people flying on U.S. airlines will increase by 0.8 percent from 2013 levels to 745.5 million in 2014 and grow to 1.15 billion in 2034.

But it's not just the U.S. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released its first 20-year passenger growth forecast, projecting passenger numbers to rise to 7.3 billion by 2034 - a 4.1% average annual growth in demand for air connectivity that will result in more than a doubling of the 3.3 billion passengers that travelled in 2014.

And China will overtake the U.S as the world’s largest passenger market. By 2034 flights to, from and within China will account for some 1.3 billion passengers, 856 million more than 2014 with an average annual growth rate of 5.5%.

What does the passenger experience look like?

This infographic illustrates how technology sits at the heart of the sector and enables the incredible growth in Digital Marketing in the Airline industry we're seeing.

The customer pathway in air travel can be segmented into the following areas:

• Pre-travel - online reservation and online check-in
• Check-in, validation, baggage & security
• Airport services and 'passenger way-finding'
• Lounges, gates and boarding
• In the air
• Immigration and arrivals

Let's look at some of the more prevalent areas in chronological order.

Online reservation

Every airline, and airport, has a responsive, ecommerce platform (and increasingly an app) that integrates the latest UX thinking to get customers quickly to the point of search, select and purchase.

The data and permissions at this point are critical to employing technology further along the process.

Often, there is also the opportunity to bundle, and as we've seen with some providers, giving a mobile number at the point of booking and reconfirming at check-in can allow for targeted offers and information alerts throughout the journey that follows using some of the technologies that follow.

Wayfinding - iBeacons

When a new technology arrives on the scene, it often takes a number of years to gain the traction it needs to realise its full potential. Take Near Field Communication (NFC) as an example. This technology has been touted as the “next big thing” for a number of years without yet gaining the widespread uptake it initially seemed destined to achieve.

However, iBeacons have come to the fore, and unlike NFC, the technology has quickly emerged as a popular tool among travel industry stakeholders. The key to its rise seems to be the fact that a variety of uses have already been highlighted. American Airlines is using iBeacons to improve wayfinding at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.

 

EasyJet is using them to send location-specific messages to passengers’ smartphones, Japan Airlines is tracking members of staff in the gate area, and Virgin Atlantic is using iBeacons to improve the airport experience for its premium passengers.

With so many use cases already apparent, and even more likely to emerge in the coming months, iBeacons appear to be far more than just a short-term fad.

Airport services - digital display

The rise of airport and airline apps, and the widespread preference among passengers to search for and consume information via their mobile devices, had some people questioning whether digital displays in airports would soon become a thing of the past.

Instead, quite the opposite is happening, as airports and suppliers have identified that smartphones and digital displays can actually complement one another.

A great example is Qantas, which has launched Qview, a digital experience for premium passengers that is enabled by synchronising electronic devices with the digital displays in lounges. If a passenger is reading a news story on their tablet, for example, it can also be displayed on the digital screen in the lounge, alongside real-time gate and boarding information, meaning all the information they need can be found in one place.

Also in Australia, there are trials involving Google, in which passengers could use NFC or QR codes to interact with dozens of digital billboards to access the Google Play store and download content via the airport Wi-Fi.

LAX is offering a digital, multi-sensory experience in the Bradley West Terminal, which allows passengers to interact with the infrastructure using smart phones and tablets.

The digital traveller is clearly the future, so expect to see airports finding innovative ways to allow them to interact with their surroundings going forward.

Predictive modeling for traffic flow

Tracking passengers throughout the airport has a number of benefits, ranging from knowing how many people are in a specific retail area, to proactively managing bottlenecks as queues start to build up at certain checkpoints.

At Copenhagen Airport, for instance, sensor-based predictive modeling is used to measure the passenger flow and waiting times, allowing the airport to allocate staff and optimise every inch of the terminal based on the number of people in one area at any given time.

Elsewhere, Finavia has also announced that it will be the first airport to track passengers via their smartphones throughout the entire airport journey, from the car park to the departure gate, both to manage queues and to create new commercial opportunities through the ability to interact with passengers based on their location.

These digital innovations may not be seen directly by passengers, but they can certainly help to contribute to a less stressful, more personalised experience for them in the terminal.

Retail - apps integrating NFC

Tapping into today’s ‘coffee culture’ Air New Zealand has been featuring barista’s who make freshly brewed coffee to passenger’s preferences in its ‘Koru’ lounges for some time.

Lounge guests can order their favourite coffee by ticking a few boxes on a piece of paper, add their name and hand it over.

In a clever move, flyers now can order Barista-made coffee via ANZ’s tablet or smartphone app the minute they walk into one of the airline’s Koru Clubs around New Zealand, including its international lounge at Auckland Airport.

Boarding - wearables

A list of the new technologies that will play an important role in defining the airport experience of the future wouldn’t be complete without a mention of wearable technology. Virgin Atlantic led the way with the first trial of its kind in London Heathrow’s Upper Class Wing, and has since announced that it will productionize Google Glass.

The likes of Vueling, Iberia and AirBerlin already offer smartwatch boarding passes, Copenhagen Airport has undertaken a passenger-facing trial of Google Glass, and Japan Airlines has equipped select members of staff with smartwatches as part of an ongoing trial.

With Google Glass set to drop in price as its various uses in the enterprise space continue to be highlighted, and with other players such as Vuzix and Droiders making significant advancements in this space, it won’t be long before these wearable technology trials become permanent implementations.

Summary

The customer pathway in air travel starts on a screen on a phone or computer and ends returning home with their luggage intact, incredible memories and new contacts.

These digital innovations bring positive impacts on everyone in the industry - the airlines, the airports, the infrastructure companies, third parties feeding off the growth in travel and, of course, customers.

Have you plotted out how and where digital technologies could be brought to bear on your own customer interactions? What could you implement that would give you a real competitive advantage?

Download Expert Business Member resource – Travel Trends Guide

Our specialist marketing trends resource for the travel sector will help you keep you up to date with whats going on in the world of travel marketing, so you benchmark and keep up. The online guide is full of examples case studies and metrics to help you drive your travel marketing forward.

Access the Travel ecommerce marketing trends 2016-2017

source http://www.smartinsights.com/b2b-digital-marketing/b2b-strategy/digital-marketing-in-the-airline-industry/

2016 Black Friday Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

Chart of the Day:  Black Friday and Cyber Monday Cart Abandonment Rates Jump to 68%

Cart Abandonment is the scourge of ecommerce retailers everywhere, and this year it seems to be on the increase. New data emerging from the two busiest ecommerce days of 2016 (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) shows extremely high cart abandonment rates across the board. These are particularly high on mobile devices, where 78% of carts are abandoned.

Ecommerce retailers should be asking themselves, are 4 out of 5 people abandoning their carts because they're having second thoughts about purchasing, or is it because the checkout pages aren't properly optimized for mobile? If a customer has to use fiddly forms that are hard to complete on a Smartphone they are far more likely to abandon their cart.

It's not all bad news though. Although the cart abandonment rates are huge, many of these customers can be nudged into purchasing through well-crafted cart abandonment emails reminding or encouraging them to complete their purchase. On Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year these emails had an average conversion rate of 17.6%, which is pretty tasty. If you aren't running a cart abandonment email campaign you could be missing out on a huge potential stream of revenue. If 68% of customers abandon their carts and 17.6% of them can be converted by email, then cart abandonment emails could be contributing 10-11% of all sales.

Thanks to Brilliance for publishing this Chart.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-targeting/2016-black-friday-shopping-cart-abandonment-rates/

Omnichannel travel retail strategy – A case study of a new digital in-store technology concept

Lesson’s from TUI’s digitally integrated concept store

Omnichannel is now the de-facto retail strategy for major travel brands or is at least often the desired goal. TUI explored the concept of going ‘beyond Omni-channel’. ‘Beyond-Omni-channel’ to me sounded a lot like ‘Post-digital’, a term that is often misleading. Post-digital is about digital being pervasive and everything being digital, rather than having moved beyond digital. It makes good points regarding the breaking down of silos between departments, but the term ‘post-digital’ doesn’t convey this clearly.

How an Omnichannel travel-booking approaches reinforces the strength of individual channels

An interesting point regarding the effectiveness of TUI’s travel agency service made was that the distribution channels were in no way mutually exclusive, and in fact were self-reinforcing. A survey conducted by TUI discovered that 30% of their customers started their customer journey through a different medium to the way they eventually paid for the holiday.

One third of their sales are still taking part in their physical stores, and they find that often these people had already used the site extensively for research. Many came first to physical branches and then bought online, whilst others researched online at first and then came into a branch to purchase and finalise details.

Doug explained that the customer has become multi-channel focused and the customer journey more complex. Because of this, every interaction with the brand, whether online or in physical branches needs to be optimised to avoid pushing customers to competitors rather than returning to other channels to complete the purchase.

The survey previously mentioned by TUI also found that having physical branches increased customer trust in the brand, even among those who were only researching and purchasing their holidays via the website. Having physical branches gives somewhere concrete to rely on and means there is always the opportunity to meet a representative of the company face to face should any problems emerge. An interesting point to bear in mind for retail businesses considering a shift to digital and ecommerce.

In-store travel technology

The way TUI went about optimising its Omnichannel strategy involved the integration of digital within physical stores, which reflected what customers were already doing. They focused on making sure the technology put into their stores was delightful, usable and useful. It had to excite in order to generate interest in the products on offer, it had to be useable even by the more technophobic elements of their customer base and it had to provide a solution to customer’s problems.

TUI used large screens on their storefronts to display excellent content to excite customers. It never showed offers or prices or details, but simply tried to convey how incredible the holiday experiences on offer were.

On entering the store, there are interactive maps on the walls which customers can touch to research specific destinations, as well as show friends and family where they have been. The map screen was made large enough so that other customers could see what other customers were looking at to help inspire them to consider holiday destinations they possibly would not have considered otherwise.

When clicking on certain areas on the map more information can be gathered on specific hotels and destinations, where video content and reviews are displayed.

Table-size touch screens are also dotted around the store to allow customers to research their holidays via powerful search functions where they can use a series of filters and search criteria to narrow in on their dream holidays.

The touch screens can also email content back to users from any screen to remind them what they discovered once they return home to review with their partners than families.

An additional feature is users can research their holidays by ‘mood’, where they are shown various photos of different holiday activates and they select as many as they want and are then given suggestions about what holidays they may enjoy.

When customers have booked their holidays within the store they are encouraged to take selfies which are then shared with their social communities, generating excitement for the customer and possibly attracting additional business for no advertising expenditure.

 

Technology is essential for good integration between digital and physical channels, and by integrating these channels well they can deliver better increases than by optimising either independently.

The results

The results of the technology integration into physical stores were excellent. It delivered ROI via a massive sales increase (sales tripled in their Bluewater flagship store where the changes were pioneered) and average spend also increased in the stores that transformed via the aforementioned technology. TUI was also able to reduce discounts and got excellent feedback regarding the changes from customers, and won several awards.

These changes which were made initially in TUIs blue water store have now been rolled out to 30 shops across the country this has again delivered impressive results.

Download Expert Business Member resource – Travel Trends Guide

Our specialist marketing trends resource for the travel sector will help you keep you up to date with whats going on in the world of travel marketing, so you benchmark and keep up. The online guide is full of examples case studies and metrics to help you drive your travel marketing forward.

Access the Travel ecommerce marketing trends 2016-2017

source http://www.smartinsights.com/ecommerce/multichannel-retail-strategy/omnichannel-travel-retail-strategy-a-case-study-of-a-new-digital-in-store-technology/

Subscriber to Customer: Winning the Conversion Journey with Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation offers the key to effectively nurturing leads through the customer's journey

According to a research published by Smart Insights in 2016, 47% of businesses don't have a digital marketing strategy. The findings show that businesses have a big challenge structuring their digital marketing strategy and knowing where to start.

So, how about we start by laying down some of the groundwork that you need to lay down in order to create and implement your world-class digital marketing strategy the right way from scratch.

The strategy includes 4 key stages of the RACE framework - plus the initial Plan stage. Just in case you're not familiar with RACE, the stages are as follows:

1.    Plan:

This stage involves creating the overall strategy with SMART goals and measurable KPIs to run your digital marketing strategy.

2.    Reach:

Most customer’s journey’s begin through doing personal research instead of simply talking to a sales person. This means that providing content to feed this research is invaluable. Therefore, developing appropriate content throughout the sales process should build awareness and draw people into your sales funnel.

3.    InterACT:

Since not everyone you attract becomes a customer immediately, you don’t want to waste your efforts by letting any prospects slip through your fingers. This means that you have to use strategies to re-target and lead prospects back into the sales funnel. This is the focus of this stage.

4.    Convert:

Once you have attracted good leads you ultimately want them to make a purchase or opt-in to one of your offers. This is the stage where you turn subscribers into customers. And yes, a good marketing automation tool as well as remarketing strategies to ensure contextual relevance (addressing each lead/subscriber’s needs according to their stage in the sales funnel), can help you a lot at this stage.

5.    Engage:

After converting subscribers into customers, you still need to nurture them. The idea here is for your customers to become repeat customers and not just one-time customers.

Nurturing requires personal attention through long-term engagement in order to build customer loyalty. This is done through listening and talking to your customers wherever they may be or wherever they like to hang-out online.

What makes winning the conversion journey with marketing automation difficult?

According to a survey by Ascend2 and Research Partners done on February 2016, there are several barriers that make marketing automation unsuccessful. The most significant barriers are as follows;

How to win with marketing automation

In order to be successful and win with conversion journey marketing automation, setting SMART goals for your marketing automation system and for your overall sales funnel will be necessary for you to follow through on. The following goals should be your priority:

1. Growing lead generation
2. Enhance lead nurturing
3. Grow sales revenue
4. Enhance customer engagement
5. Enhance marketing productivity
6. Enhance performance measurability
7. Enhance campaign targeting

With these goals in mind, the following activities need to be a part of your marketing automation strategy, especially from the subscriber to customer phase.

1. Triggered actions

Paying attention to subscribers and having real-time responses to the changing status of leads in the sales funnel can make the difference between losing a customer and winning them over. Through marketing automation alerts, you can stay on top of targeted responses.

This will mean that careful profiling of prospects before they become subscribers will help you to better keep track of their stage in the sales funnel. As such, using lead forms to build profiles and tracking website behavior will help you figure out intentions, and the leads current buying status to better segment and nurture them.

2.    Analysis and reports

Analyzing the effectiveness of campaigns allows a better understanding of what’s most important in moving individuals through the sales funnel. This is very useful since it will allow you to move leads through the sales funnel much faster due to automated nurturing.

Important metrics and points of analysis to pay attention in marketing automation

3.    Lead nurturing

According to The Annuitas Group, nurtured leads makes 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. If you want to nurture your leads most effectively, personalized one-on-one attention is a must. If you don’t engage in personalized nurturing, your competitors will and you will lose customers.

Personalized attention is about having interactive experiences, building relationships, trust and recognition for your brand. Providing this positive experience will allow you to win the nurturing game and contribute to a successful conversion journey for your leads.

Additionally, by providing contextual relevance, that is, through providing dynamic content in order maintain interest and engagement, you will create a better user experience.

4.    Email marketing

Using marketing automation to appropriately educate and remind subscribers that you are the best solution when they are ready to make the buying decision. Marketing automation can help you to stay top of mind.

5.    Integration capabilities

Since sales and marketing teams have been using other technologies like CRMs long before marketing automation tools, integrating these tools with marketing automation tools is crucial.

For example, sending the CRM all the intelligence and data that you gather trough the marketing automation tool will provide for better interaction and conversations with leads. This is because the sales teams will have all the necessary information in the same pipeline that they are already comfortable using.

6.    Lead scoring

Since sales teams have to do so much more within a shorter time period, time is more precious than ever before. This means that leads have to be prioritized in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness. As such, setting up lead scoring systems through marketing automation systems will bring the urgency and prioritization to the forefront of the sales teams tasks.

7.    List segmentation

Email lists are important for determining who receives emails through the marketing automation system. What’s more important however is after initial lists have been created, rules need to be set up so that the list can be refined and leads moved to relevant in-between lists in the sales funnel.

The refined lists will allow leads to receive appropriate content with respect to their stage in the sales funnel. This is mostly done through behavioral segmentation.

Conclusion

Converting leads and engaging customers is definitely not easy work. Customers expect personalized attention and this requires significantly more meticulousness throughout the varied channels where leads and customers interact.

Fortunately, this is where the promise of good marketing automation systems come in. In essence, marketing automation allows for personalized attention through the different ways that businesses engage with their prospects, leads and customers. This thorough, personalized, unified and seamless sales experience is what will allow you to win the conversion journey.

 

Mohammad Farooq works as a Social Media Analyst. When not doing anything related to Social Media or Analytics, he goes backpacking around India. He regularly blogs about Travel, Movies, Political Issues and a lot of other things on his blog "ReveringThoughts".

source http://www.smartinsights.com/lead-generation/marketing-automation/subscriber-customer-winning-conversion-journey-marketing-automation/

4 proven ways to generate website leads at events

Examples of companies successfully using events to generate high-quality leads

Whether you’re organising events or attending them, face-to-face marketing can be one of the most powerful lead gen tools in your arsenal. Pair this up with a killer data capture campaign and you’ve got a recipe for success. We asked four companies to share their lead generation tips so you can follow their success.

Content

According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing – but costs 62% less. An industry report, for example, is a particularly cost-effective way to capture leads and get eyes on your brand.

Salesforce recruitment specialists Mason Frank International did just that at Dreamforce 2016, when the company unveiled its latest salary survey.

“From a lead-gen standpoint we wanted to engage job candidates by supplying genuinely useful information on how much they should be earning as a Salesforce professional,” explains Nicola Lloyd, the company’s Senior Event Marketing Executive.

“Potential clients – for example, a company looking to hire a Salesforce developer – also benefited from our insights into employee motivation, current software trends, and Salesforce migration.”

The success of the report hinges on data capture. In order to download the survey, interested parties were asked to supply their name, email address, telephone number and employment status – or collect a printed version at the company’s Dreamforce booth.

“Our salary survey and supporting presentation helped drive footfall to our stand, which again allowed us to identify interested parties and find out how we could help them,” says Nicola.

Social media

Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert, believes social media is the key to creating a buzz around events.

“It used to be you spent five minutes registering for an event, and then showed up on the big day, went to a few workshops, drank two free Coronas, and went home,” he explains.

“Social media changes all of that, enabling events and their planners to have long-term, nuanced, shifting interactions with attendees.”

Baer’s advice can be distilled down to this:

1. Use social media (and event websites) to shout about your attendance – then encourage your followers to get involved too. Polls and competitions are great ways to drive engagement.
2. Create teaser videos from your speakers and partners and build out blog content around the venue, event or city you’re visiting.
3. Map out a hashtag around your event (the shorter the better) and track its success using a tool like TweetWally.
4. Create your own media and push it out through social. This could be a daily podcast or a Facebook Live stream from the event.

Mobile workshops

Pedro Carvalho works at Vidsy, a leading platform for brands to create mobile-first video for social at scale. Interactive events play a huge role in their lead generation strategy.

“We're on social video, which is a very new way for brands to connect with their audiences,” explains Petro.

“As a result, there's a lot of education to be done. Clients want to be educated and we deeply believe that the more educated they are, the bigger the probability of them wanting to work with us.

“We’ve developed something called the Vidsy Mobile Workshop, which is a two hour event where we explain everything on mobile video and do some fun exercises with our prospects.”

Pedro says that demand has been great so far. In the last 10 months alone the company has worked with the likes of Unilever, L'Oreal, Vodafone and Barclays.

The Daily Mail, Marks and Spencer and Barclays have also signed up for the company’s online workshops.

“Our workshops are very practical. We usually kick-off by explaining to companies how online video works and what they can do to increase their chances of a successful campaign.

“Once everyone has the basics, we make teams and give them assignments. These assignments are usually tailored to the business we're visiting and include:

• Defining their audience on the web
• Adapt a whole previous TV campaign for mobile / social only
• Write a briefing for a fictional product

“Usually, we end with a contest where each team has to explain to the group their ideas. We always choose a winner. A bit of competition never hurts!”

So, what advice would Pedro give to other companies looking to run events as part of a data capture strategy? “Only do it if you can really provide value. Boring events can destroy your relationship with the client.

“Also, you don't have to run your own events. There's a lot of things happening in the event industry and you'd be surprised how easy it is to get a seat, become a speaker or sometimes just go and network with your prospects for free.”

Free stuff

Hayley Smith, founder of Boxed Out PR, organises events for her clients – including launch parties, trade shows, exhibitions and press events.

“Though each event has its own requirements and set up I use similar mechanisms in order capture data and generate leads,” explains Hayley.
“For B2C events, competitions and live offers are always beneficial to promote engagement and for converting traffic to social followers.”

Offering something free in exchange for a follow or a like is simple, but can also create recognition that will really help with your branded search.

“Tote bags are always useful or play to people's interests. If you're a fitness brand, offer branded water bottles or sportswear - and be clever with it.

“Ultimately you want to engage with your audience and use it as an opportunity to collect data so you can remarket to them.”

 

Thanks to Andrew for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Andrew Dipper is a freelance journalist writing about business, technology and marketing. He has written for a number of print and online publications – including the Sunderland Echo, Sunday Sun, Northern Echo and The Crack Magazine. Andrew edited the comedy website Giggle Beats from 2010 until 2015.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/lead-generation/event-marketing/4-proven-ways-generate-website-leads-events/