Relevant and Targeted
BMB guides corporates towards an intelligent and relevant online strategy
Accountability is a powerful weapon in the new media arsenal. It has already helped to persuade advertising companies and their clients to place more money in the hands of online media than in conventional media. And as new media matures and extends its reach, the likelihood of yet greater predominance is growing.
Online Marketing Activity
“There has been a massive change in focus over the past three years,” says Jason Lannin, head of digital at full-service agency Butterfield Morris Bushell (BMB). The company’s largest client is General Motors, and the American automotive giant has switched dramatically away from direct marketing and towards online microsites and email initiatives.
“It’s partly due to budgets getting tighter,” says Lannin. “They are now generating leads through intelligent data capture. Budgets are going online.” With the ever increasing number of internet users and the capability for a global audience, shifting online seems the logical idea.
Email campaigns are used to aid in customer retention, brand building and online registration. “We try to educate clients,” adds Lannin. “Their campaigns have to be relevant and targeted. Then, following the campaign, we data mine use information for a follow-up campaign, so the whole process is evolving, timely and relevant.”
A Specifically Targeted Campaign
Customer data is filtered, so that customers with different profiles can be contacted with different offers. “We have flagging tools for GM to flag specific offers,” says Lannin. End users embrace specifically targeted campaigns as they evoke a sense of individualism and involvement, rather than general campaigns which result in consumers feeling generalised and harassed.
At GM itself, Linda Unsworth, Fleet Communications Manager, has employed BMB to develop two striking campaigns: one for the launch of the new Insignia model, where an email and website invitation provided an opportunity to include product information, a full itinerary for the three-day event and background information on the location, among other details. “The site acted as a virtual travel representative at a fraction of the cost of the real article,” says Unsworth.
There was a section of the website where invitees could download maps, travel documents, flight tickets, hotel information and car parking details. Further sections gave details of the sister model to the Insignia, the Cadillac CTS, which attendees at the launch could also drive. “The whole site was laid out in a very user-friendly way,” adds Colette Casey, Digital Marketing Manager at GM. “It had video content with a voice-over, which really brought our products to life. The balance of visual content and text was excellent.”
GM has found that migrating communications and marketing to digital platforms has not only saved a great deal of time and money, but has brought in additional revenue. Unsworth adds, “Other manufacturers have started to move to similar electronic means of contacting people”.
The Xtranet
The system, developed by BMB for the company’s fleet management means that executives responsible for company car fleets and the drivers themselves have access to an amazing range of information. This includes tax and benefit calculations, fuel consumption, car specifications, the ability to book test drives and so on. “The Xtranet is unique to GM among car manufacturers,” Unsworth explains. “Fleet managers don’t give out data for their drivers, so it is hard to contact them. But this system is linked directly to their intranets.”
The system can be altered according to each client, to show relevant cars for different seniority grades, for example. “I can think of at least two large blue chip companies where the Xtranet made a difference to them doing business with us,” says Unsworth. The resulting contracts added up to hundreds of thousands of pounds and there are now more than 700 companies with access to the Xtranet system, of whom 65 per cent are active users. “From a digital media point of view, it’s a really great tool,” says Unsworth.
Improving performance
Although BMB customers such as GM and The Big Yellow Storage Company are aware of the drive towards accountability and efficiency through using new media, they turn to an agency such as BMB for specific ideas in how to implement an online integrated strategy. “They’re looking for us to educate them,” says Jason Lannin at BMB. “They want to see how we can improve their performance and show them how to conduct usability tests on their sites. They look at us to push the boundaries.”
BMB is able to monitor the way that customers interact with their clients’ sites, alerting them for example to the point at which a customer may have dropped out while filling out a form. “We can contact them and convert them into a customer again,” says Lannin, who claims that as many as 60 per cent of dropouts can be re-persuaded in this way in certain scenarios. This particular type of analysis is a prime example of what to expect in the not so distant future. Event activated response will most definitely become, if not already, one of the most crucial devices offering valuable and reliable statistical feedback.
Here again, the key issue is relevance, “rather than a marketing message which will put customers off”, alongside accountability. “Instead of a four page leaflet, our clients much prefer to put up a microsite, or conduct an email campaign where they can account for every click and measure everything we do.”
The shift towards targeting and accountability has been achieved partly through changing from passive to active engagement with customers, from viewers watching TV advertising because they can’t be bothered to change channel, to internet visitors clicking on something they want to read or watch, or (better still) being sent a clip or article by a friend.
The important issues remain relevance and targeting, as Jason Lannin at BMB explains. “Whenever a piece of new technology comes along, we take time to analyse whether it is relevant. It’s a question of the technology being right for the job.”
Author: By David Nicholson