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November 25, 2016 by DataConsult

Small Business Guide to Customer Experience

What is Customer experience?
These days it seems like everyone’s talking about “customer experience.” But how do you know what it is and how to get it? It’s not just how well your product works, whether or not 2016_principles-of-a-great-customer-experienceprospects like your ad campaign, or if your support agent was polite. It’s the way you engage with customers and the cumulation of every interaction they have with your company. Customer experience is becoming the single most important differentiator of successful businesses — both large and small. It’s time to start thinking about how you can use it to drive your own business today.

5 Key ways to make your customers want to deal with you

Know your customers.
Today’s customers expect fast, personalized experiences. To deliver, you need to know them whenever and wherever you meet them. It may sound hard, but it’s easier than you think – and your customer support tool can help. Use it to see what a customer says about you on Twitter, track customer requests, and build a product roadmap that better meets their needs. And since today’s cloud-based solutions are designed for easy integration, connect your systems so everyone at your company can share information and collaborate to help customers. When you bring sales and service systems together, your sales team will know when a customer has had a problem. Your support team will recognize high value customers, and know when there are open opportunities. With 360-degree views, everyone can deliver the five-star experiences customer reviews are made of.

Make customer experience part of your DNA.
It’s not just enough to *talk* about offering an amazing customer experience. To be successful, you need to make it part of your company’s DNA. Include it in your mission and make it an objective for every team. Everyone in your company — from the CEO to the receptionist — needs to play a role.
Some startups train new employees in customer service as part of their onboarding processes. Not only does this help new employees learn about products and customers faster, it also ensures they’ll keep customers at the center of everything they do. It’s critical that you give your teams the power to go the extra mile with customers. These days there’s no such thing as “that’s not my job.” You’ve got to give customers what they want, when they want it. That means empowering everyone on the front lines to go the extra mile to make unhappy customers happy, or manage opportunities to drive the business forward.

Watch every touchpoint.
Customer experience is the sum of every touchpoint you have through the lifecycle of a customer relationship. It includes advertisements and promotions, sales calls, product usage, and customer support. Building a strong, likeable brand is the first step. And it’s critical that the brand flows through everything you do. A brand guide and messaging document are invaluable to small businesses who are moving fast but want consistent creative. It’s also important to create messaging documents and share them across your business so everyone who’s on the frontlines — in any capacity — uses the same speaking points whenever they engage with customers. Touchpoints also include the experience that customers have with your products, so it’s essential that product and marketing teams talk to
each other, and that quality is built in from the start.

Be easy to do business with.
To create an awesome customer experience you need to truly engage with customers. When they have an inquiry, get them fast, helpful answers. You can do this with a support tool that makes it easy for agents (or anyone interacting with customers) to respond quickly. Today’s customers also expect you to be available whenever they need you. Small businesses can do this by offering self-service support so customers can find solutions 24/7, or by giving agents mobile tools that let them answer questions from anywhere. Some companies are also offering proactive support — getting help to customers before they even know they need it. Transparency and authenticity are paramount when building customer relationships. Check out Salesforce.com’s Trust site to see how one company is
doing it.

Continually improve.
Customer experience is not “one and done.” Providing an amazing experience is something that requires constant attention. You can use survey software to maintain a pulse on what customers are feeling and to measure their satisfaction. Your customer support tool can also give you invaluable information about how customers are using your products, whether they’re having any issues, and what they’d like to see in the future. If you share this data regularly with your product team you can be sure that you are building the products that your customers really want. Another easy win? Take note of excellent service experiences you, personally, have with other companies; think about how you can share them with your team and integrate some of the same techniques.

( this information has been taken out of SalesForce’s white paper – Small Business Guide to Customer Experience – Download here )

Filed Under: Blog, DataConsult List News, Uncategorized Tagged With: customer service, direct mail, direct marketing, email marketing, sales funnel, small business

June 24, 2016 by DataConsult

State of Marketing in Australia – Where do you stand?

Over 4,000 of the world’s best performing Marketers have been surveyed for Salesforce’s annual “State of Marketing” report.

Marketing has entered the age of the customer, where customers have more information, choices, and power than ever before. The customer experience— the culmination of all brand and customer interactions — now matters more than anything. Core business tenets like customer satisfaction are progressively falling under the CMO’s umbrella, expanding the breadth and depth of what marketing means in 2016. At the same time, marketers’ success measures, priorities, and even challenges reflect the rising emphasis on customer experience. Customer satisfaction — historically, the domain of service teams — is the number one success metric for marketers today. This is further evidence of the blurring lines between marketing, customer service, and sales. Marketing is more about building and sustaining customer relationships than merely filling the funnel.

Find out what they’re saying about customer satisfaction, digital, customer journey strategy and much more.

Download the report here.

Filed Under: Blog, DataConsult List News, Uncategorized Tagged With: direct mail, direct marketing, email, email marketing, marketing, sales funnel

May 11, 2016 by DataConsult

Direct Mail – No one is doing it! You should!

Direct-mail-marketingOn a regular basis I get asked by clients what is the best method to contact potential customers in order to build their business. I always respond – Direct Mail.

Why? Because no one is doing it! Most marketers are convinced that email, telephone or search engine marketing is the most efficient use of their funds. They believe these methods will give them the best results. They forget one simple marketing principle – to use a marketing strategy that other companies are not doing so your message will stand out.

You are probably aware of the problems Australia Post are having at the moment. Their postal division is losing money year on year. The suburban Postie is very hard to spot on the street anymore. Many suburban dogs are sitting lonely in their front yards, waiting for somebody to walk past.

Just notice how many letters you are currently receiving at home or at the office ( apart from bills ) compared to 10 years ago. Very few I suspect. The odd direct mail piece I receive, I open. Do you open all your emails? Do you screen your telephone calls?

The opportunity for companies in the B2B and B2C space to send out a professional direct mail piece has never been so great. Yes it is more expensive than the other options. Yes it takes time to plan and the results take longer to gauge than email or telemarketing however your offer will have a higher cut through rate than these methods.

Charities are still using direct mail for prospecting and always have. The charity sector is one of the largest direct mail users in Australia. If a charity will spend their hard earned marketing dollar on direct mail why aren’t you. They must know something!

In terms of lists, there are far more list categories to be targeted with mail than email or telephone lists. With the Do Not Call Register having a major impact on who can receive telephone calls and the permission based email list choice fairly narrow, mail will open up more potential customers to the savvy marketer.

Have I convinced you?

Contact DataConsult and we will  let you know what data segments are available and send you a free quote.

 

Filed Under: Blog, DataConsult List News, Uncategorized Tagged With: direct mail, direct marketing, lists

February 19, 2016 by DataConsult

Do CEO’s really spend time on Social Media?

With all the hype around inbound marketing particularly Social Media, we sometimes forget what medium our target audience is likely to use.CEO-pano_12194

If you think the majority of CEO’s of medium to large companies sit in their ivory towers surfing the net, reading twitter feeds, updating their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts on a daily basis then you are mistaken. They just don’t have the time.

Yes some CEO’s will do this and are very comfortable with the digital age however most are not.

Companies that are targeting potential clients via inbound marketing need to be aware of where these people hang out. In the case of marketing to CEO’s then outbound tactics will give you better results.

CEO’s still read direct mail ( or their PA does then passes it on ). CEO’s will most likely take a phone call from a reputable business with a strong offer. CEO’s will open an email if they see it is important to their company.

Social media also takes time to kick in. With outbound or direct marketing, the results are faster.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe companies must have a Social media strategy however this must be run at the same time as outbound campaigns in order to reach those executives that do not communicate in this medium.

A good old fashion direct campaign targeted to the right companies and executives still works. The key is in the timing and the offer. Get these right and you will elicit a response.

By the way you need to know what type of response you are aiming for. Are you trying to get an appointment to further explain your product and offer? Do you want the respondent to download an e-book or whitepaper in return for their permission for you to contact them again? Do you want to invite them to a free seminar or webinar?

Give it a go and you will be surprised with the results.

Contact DataConsult for quality Business Lists.

Filed Under: Blog, DataConsult List News, Uncategorized Tagged With: direct mail, direct marketing, email, email marketing, lists, sales funnel

June 10, 2015 by DataConsult

How to build a Sales Lead Funnel?

I came across this great blog from a direct marketing expert called Bob McCarthy. With all the noise and confusion at the moment in the digital space we sometimes forget the basics. Here is a good summary on how to build a sales funnel.

By Bob McCarthy, on November 5th,2014

sales lead funnel As marketers, most of us spend a lot of time worrying about of the “front end” of our marketing efforts.

Advertising campaigns … direct mail campaigns … email campaigns … search campaigns … PR campaigns … content marketing campaigns … trade show campaigns … etc., etc.

These are all important parts of your marketing and well worth your time in planning, creating and execution.

For the most part, these campaigns are designed to reach out to a cold audience and generate your initial leads.

Over time, if you track and measure the performance of these different campaigns, you should be able to determine the most effective method so you know where to invest your future marketing dollars.

But that’s a topic for another day.

Today we are talking about what happens AFTER the lead comes in – the so-called “back end” of your marketing program.

The sales lead funnel

The sales lead funnel describes the handling of the sales lead that takes you from the initial lead capture through to the close.

It used to be that this was the exclusive responsibility of sales.

Marketing would create and execute programs that would generate the leads.    As soon as those leads arrived, they would be tossed over to sales – and marketing would be out of the picture.

At some companies, an inside sales team that would follow up with a phone call to qualify the lead and possibly schedule a meeting for a face-to-face sales call.   And a sales rep would be sent out for that initial discovery meeting.

Of course, most sales leads are not sales-ready.  Those leads would be logged in for follow-up calls at a later date, but as those long-term leads piled up, many would fall through the cracks

This sales model is still in place today at many organizations.  And still working pretty well.

But now – thanks to technology – there is a better way.


A new role for marketing

In today’s world, marketing stays active in the sales process long after the lead comes in.

Sales remains involved, but now your sales reps stay focused on only the most qualified, sales-ready leads.  No more prospecting.  No more cold calls.  No more chasing down low quality leads.

And the best part is that much of this follow-up process can be automated.


Components of the sales lead funnel

Before you start generating leads, make sure you have your sales lead funnel in place.

Here’s what that funnel would look like:


Landing Pages
While some leads may come in by phone or mail, the vast majority now come through the web – generally to a dedicated landing page.  A landing page is better than your home page because it’s more focused on capturing the lead and has fewer distractions than your home page.

The primary goal of every landing page is to convert that visitor into a lead.  Don’t ask your landing page to do more than that.

Remember you spent money (or time) to get that visitor to your landing page.  Don’t let them slip away without anything to show for it.

Thank You Pages

This is such an overlooked opportunity.  You’ve captured the lead so the big job is done.  You have their attention.  Now it’s time to sell – or at least to nurture.

Use your landing page not only as a platform for delivering the whitepaper or other offer, but as a way to get things started.

Write a welcome letter.  Provide an introductory video.  Extend an invitation to a webinar.  Offer additional reports or content.

Lead Processing

This the busy work of collecting the lead data, notifying the necessary players on your marketing and sales team and feeding the data to your CRM, marketing automation or email service provider.

If the leads come through your landing page, it’s all automated.  Leads that come via phone or reply mail will need some manual processing.

Lead Qualification

Not all leads have equal potential for becoming customers – and lead qualification will help you sort this out.

Lead qualification is a Q&A process.  What is the real level of interest of each lead?  Does the lead actually need what you’re selling? Does the lead have the financial capacity and decision-making authority to buy?  When is a decision likely to be made?

The phone works best here, but some early leads – especially from online marketing – may not be worth a phone call at this early stage.  Alternatively, you can use online surveys to ask key qualifying questions.

You can also use additional offers to request more contact information – and possibly match that information against publicly available databases to fill in missing data.

To gauge lead interest, website visitor monitoring software can be used to identify leads that continually return to your website.

Lead Nurturing

Unlike the old days when all lead nurturing was handled by sales, you can now control your messaging and the pace of your messaging over an extended period of time.

Email is the most cost-effective option.  As new leads come on board, you can schedule them for a series of email messages to go out on a pre-arranged schedule.  This is called drip email.  You can create multiple drip email sequences and send out the most relevant sequence for each prospect.

Direct mail reminders are still a good option – and given the shift toward email, direct mail now gets more attention than ever.

But lead nurturing is not just about staying in touch.  To do it well, you want a strategy that moves the prospects along in the sales process – and that can adapt to prospects at different stages in the process.

Retargeting

This is not actually part of the sales lead funnel (it precedes the lead capture part of the funnel) but it merits discussion as a stay-in-touch strategy.

Retargeting allows you to continually send online advertising to people who have visited your website but left without leaving their contact information.

You don’t know who they are, but Google does and will continually feed advertising to them over an extended period of time.  Facebook offers a similar program.

Remember, most people who visit your website have some interest in what you do – even if they didn’t leave their contact information.  It makes sense to stay in touch with these people.


One funnel is all you need

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of these components, but the good news is you just need one funnel to get started.

Ideally, you would want to eventually create separate funnels for each product or service.  Maybe additional funnels for each industry or market segment you serve.

You may even have a separate funnel for existing customers – to cross-sell and up-sell additional products or services.

But that can come later.  Get your first funnel in place – and start prospecting.

Filed Under: Blog, DataConsult List News, Uncategorized Tagged With: direct mail, direct marketing, email, sales funnel

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