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Your Secret Sauce

Mixing Mobile, Social

and eMail SucceSSfullY

Signal

How often do the following statements cross

your mind when you think about what it’s like

to be successful marketer today?

“It’s difficult to know my customers well enough

since I don’t have one place where I can view

my data on them (like purchase behavior, social

media conversations and demographics) and my

marketing efforts (like email, mobile and social

media campaigns) together.”

“It’s much harder than it should be for me to have

meaningful conversations with customers and to

give them only the content that’s relevant to them.”

“There’s a lot of talk about ‘cross-channel marketing,’

but I still really don’t know how that’s any different

than what I’m doing already.”

If you’ve had these thoughts,

consider yourself among the majority.

You are no doubt devoting an

increasing proportion of your

focus—and your budget—to

digital marketing. But your

business, as many do, may

be struggling with how to

integrate channels such as

email, social media and SMS

in a coordinated way with your

other marketing efforts. Ditto

for determining how to create a

comprehensive picture of your

customers using data about

them that is fragmented across

various databases, surveys and

social media. These challenges

certainly make it difficult to

determine true ROI of your

digital efforts.

Finally, you’re probably tired of hearing buzz phrases

like “cross-channel marketing,” “conversational marketing

platforms” and “marketing automation.” These terms do

point to useful strategies and tools to help achieve them,

but frequently the “how” is far too vague.

Our goal is to change that.

In the following pages, the

buzzwords will be demystified

and you’ll learn strategies

and tactics for improving

performance of your marketing

campaigns by building your

customer knowledge and

translating those insights into

the type of communications

your customers will be delighted

to receive. You’ll learn how

to weave email, mobile and

social media marketing into

your marketing mix in a way

that gives customers what they

want, when they want it. You’ll

see how some of the nation’s

most successful businesses

have cultivated and grown a

base of passionate customers

using a strategy based on

listening, empathy and targeted,

personalized communications

designed to inspire loyalty and

repeat business.

index

The Recipe Demystifying the Buzzwords into a

Simple Framework for Marketing Success

The Ingredients Turning Data Into Integrated Email,

Mobile and Social Campaigns

The Taste Test Measuring Your Results

The Presentation Delighting Your Customers

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Most importantly, we promise all the “highlighter-worthy” data and

tips you can handle. Whether it be convincing your boss to support

a key initiative, or simply tweaking the timing of your Facebook

posts to maximize comments and likes, you will walk away from this

paper with at least one actionable insight that will make you more

successful today.

Let’s dig in.

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the recipe deMYStifYing the buzzwordS

into a SiMple fraMework for Marketing SucceSS

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“Cross-channel marketing” and “cross-channel campaign

management” are often thrown around so vaguely that

they may appear to be no more than meaningless jargon.

But, when used correctly, these terms refer to critical and

very real strategies that are important to understand.

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They can be broken down into the following concepts:

• Using multiple marketing media to communicate with your

customers. Most commonly, the media people are referring

to are email marketing, mobile marketing (in particular text

message marketing) and social media.

• Using all of your customer data to determine the media, timing

and content you should use to reach specific customer segments

and individual customers most effectively.

• Adding insights about how customers respond to you

marketing to your database. This will allow you to continuously

improve the relevancy and effectiveness of your campaigns.

• Building your base of subscribers and social fans/followers.

This can mean using media together to move customers

up the commitment ladder (e.g., asking Twitter followers to

join your email newsletter list). Or it can mean using multiple

media to increase the reach and effectiveness of promotions

or offers designed to generate lots of interest (e.g., running a

sweepstakes that people can enter via text message, web form,

Facebook page or tweet).

• Accomplishing all of the above from a single platform or

product that places all your customer data and campaign

information together at your fingertips to save time and money

and increase effectiveness.

Throughout this piece, we will discuss each of these concepts and

give you tips for executing them successfully. But first it might be

worth discussing why marketing across the full array of digital

channels is so important.

The reality is that some businesses still are not active in all of these

channels, or may only have a minimal footprint through a basic

website, a rarely updated Facebook page, or a minimal or nonexistent

SMS marketing plan. But the same can’t be said for their customers.

To truly reach your customers most effectively, you need to reach

them with the content they want over the channels they prefer. And

there’s no escaping the fact that consumers today want to—and do—

communicate with brands through multiple channels. These include

email, website, Twitter, Facebook and SMS as well as traditional

face-to-face and voice interactions. And each and every one of these

interactions contributes to their overall view of the brand.

For this reason, it’s important that marketers not only be active and

effective in each of these channels, but also that they coordinate

their communications across them. Otherwise, customers may be hit

with inconsistent, conflicting messaging that lessens their confidence

in the brand—and in its ability to meet their needs.

This may jive with your current experiences and beliefs, or

perhaps you’re not yet convinced that consumers care about

interacting with your brand on social networks or their mobile

phone. We’ve got news for you: consumer expectations about

transparency, responsiveness and empathy have changed. And

the digital media that have emerged are critical both to fueling

and fulfilling these new expectations.

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Need proof?

A 2012 Aberdeen study found

of top-performing retail companies expanded their use

of digital channels;

of lower-performing companies expanded.

A 2010 Accenture survey found

of smartphone users would like to download money-off

coupons to their phones;

would like to receive instant money-off coupons as they

pass by an item in a store.

A 2012 survey found

Half of American consumers are open to receiving mobile

offers, and a greater proportion would prefer to receive

offers on their phone via text messaging over email,

mobile applications or voicemail.

A 2010 Yankee Group study found

of consumers want to interact with businesses using social

media;

but less than one-third of companies have the strategies,

policies, and processes in place to meet that demand.

A 2012 study by American Express found

Social media-savvy consumers spend more when they

get good customer service than the general population,

tell three times as many people about their positive

experiences, and are more likely to ditch companies when

they don’t get good service.

Another consumer survey found

of consumers have a more positive impression of

companies they receive email from;

are more likely to buy—online or offline—from companies

that send them email.

Once you’ve been convinced

to take the initial step of being

present and active across all the

channels where your customers

live, you still need to find out

more about them so you can

reach them with more targeted,

personalized messaging.

Thankfully, there aren’t many

marketers lacking for data these

days. In fact, we have already

entered what many refer to as

the era of “Big Data.” A 2011

study by the McKinsey Global

Institute projects that the total

amount of data being generated

will grow by 40 percent each

year. The same study estimates

that retailers harnessing this

data fully could increase their

operating margins by 60 percent.

79%

75%

73%

52%

70%

57%50%

-1/3

3x

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How many different databases, reports and tools do the data points

you routinely work with live in? If you’re like most marketers,

the answer is too many.

For marketers, the problem isn’t the amount of data available, but instead finding a way to harvest it in one place to make effective use of it in your marketing efforts. How many of the following types of data look familiar to you?

A 2011 eConsultancy survey

indicated that more than half

of marketers store the data

they gather their multi-channel

marketing efforts in in separate,

siloed locations.

While the term may not make

this clear, the fundamental

premise behind “cross-channel

marketing” is the ability to unify

all this data to directly inform

all of your digital marketing,

regardless of medium.

But accumulating and unifying

this data alone is not enough.

Too often, digital or direct

marketing is read as “sending

communications to people who

should be interested in them.”

While that’s a start, you must

also consider how to get people

interested in listening to you to

begin with. And after you’ve got

them listening, you need to keep

finding new ways to provide

novel and wonderful content

that reinforces why they chose

to listen in the first place.

Humans seek novelty and will

open their gates to many initial

brand conversations, but they

are also pattern-recognizing

machines. Your initial marketing

strategy will work quite well

as your customers open their

hearts for the first time, but

afterwards, they will learn to

filter your marketing efforts out

unless they remain consistently

unique, useful and engaging.

While companies understand

the value and cost-effectiveness

of engaging with customers

more directly through digital

channels, too often they are

reaching their customers in

disjointed and repetitive ways.

When brands don’t differentiate

content by channel, respect

a customer’s preference, or

produce new and useful content,

messaging fails. In a world

where people receive as many

as 5,000 ad messages a day,

each communication must be

channel-appropriate, thoughtful

and engaging.

Lead source data

Purchase/transaction history

Survey data

Loyalty program and coupon

redemption history

Social media brand mentions

and sentiment

Customer conversations with

you over social media or

customer support touch points

Marketing campaign history

(e.g., campaigns received, open

rate and click rate)

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The world’s best brands

recognize this and are

starting to move beyond

the multichannel “blast”

approach. Using digital

marketing tools such as

Signal, they can tie these

marketing channels together

and evolve from multichannel

to cross-channel marketing.

Instead of uncoordinated,

siloed communications for

each individual channel,

companies have the power

to originate their email, SMS

and social media marketing

communications from a single

platform. They can develop

a universal profile of each

customer across every channel

to learn which messages and

communication media each

individual customer prefers.

And they can see how customer

responses to different messages

and tactics change over time.

Once this is achieved, they can

keep these customers engaged

over the long term by giving

them what they most desire.

These companies have

discovered the very sticky

“secret sauce” that delights

customers: messages that

are targeted, personal and

relevant to each customer’s

individual preferences. Instead

of creating the customer

distaste that can result from a

steady diet of uncoordinated,

untargeted campaigns, these

communications create a

competitive advantage and

whet customers’ appetites for

repeat business.

the ingredientS turning data into

integrated eMail , Mobile and Social caMpaignS

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Build a single database

A critical component of getting

the most ROI out of marketing

initiatives is to know what’s

working and what isn’t.

But according to Forrester research, about 87 percent of marketers and 85 percent of agencies misattribute credit: They either attribute all credit to the last touch point or have no way of attributing the credit in a meaningful manner.

Using digital marketing tools

such as Signal, you can manage,

monitor and measure all of your

customer relationships from

a single source. You can also

create and track unique offers

for each channel interaction

to determine what’s most

effective. Moving to a cross-

channel approach enables

you to simplify campaign

rollout across all media and

to automatically collect data

from every campaign in one

place. It allows you to establish

a consistent workflow across

channels to minimize the

complexity of scheduling and

sending messages, and to

implement a reliable approval

process from headquarters

for all digital communications.

At the customer level, it helps

you learn more about your

customers so that you can reach

them more effectively.

One Aberdeen Group study found that 47 percent of best-in-class

companies integrate customer data across all marketing channels,

versus 22 percent of average companies and 19 percent of laggards.

The same study found that companies that integrate data captured across all marketing channels achieve a 41 percent better company gross margin than those that don’t.

Best-in-C

lass

50% 47%

22% 19%

30%

40%

20%

10%

Average

Laggards

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Even those companies that

don’t currently integrate their

marketing data realize the

importance of doing so. A

2011 IBM survey of nearly 300

marketers found that nearly

90 percent of respondents

expressed interest in an

integrated marketing suite,

as the industry’s need for

technology grows and adoption

matures. By connecting with

your customers through

social media, email, and SMS

using one source—instead of

maintaining separate, siloed

lists—you will eventually be

able to develop a universal

profile of each customer across

all digital channels. Using your

cross-channel platform, you can

also connect this information to

your point-of-sale and loyalty

marketing data to get a complete

view of your customers’

preferences and behaviors.

Ultimately, you’ll want to import

all of your customer data into

your digital marketing platform.

This should include all of your

internal customer database data,

which may contain information

like purchase history or loyalty

program participation, your

website or mobile apps, and

any CRM products you use

to manage customer loyalty

programs or offline marketing

efforts. If you have such an

internal customer database, or

a CRM marketing tool, be sure

to set up data syncing between

these tools and your cross-

channel marketing platform to

ensure that you have consistent,

up-to-the-minute data and

coordinated marketing activities.

Create communications that are more relevant and personalized

Right now, according to a 2011 McKinsey survey, 38 percent of

marketers say their companies have basic demographic information

on each customer, while only 18 percent say their customer data

includes detailed information such as interests or attitudes.

Respondents also reported that marketing decisions were most

likely to rely on internal sales data that has long been available to

marketing departments.

Marketing fails when companies ignore the expectations of their

customers and take these customer relationships for granted by

sending them too many untargeted messages. And today, many

marketers are not only sending messages that aren’t targeted, they’re

throwing money away on messages that never even reach their

intended audiences.

According to a Forrester study, marketers will waste nearly $144 million in 2014 on marketing messages that never even get delivered.

Signal gives you the tools to more effectively gather insights about

your customers from all of your customer touch points that you can

then use to create more highly targeted and personalized messaging,

while also flagging bad email addresses and mobile numbers for

elimination from your lists.

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One simple way to start personalizing your messaging is to transform

your customer data into segments, which can be done in many

ways. For instance, you can segment by geography to increase

the relevance of your offers, instead of sending your San Diego

customers deals on winter coats. Or by store location, so your

customers get deals appropriate to the local store they shop at. You

can even segment by store attribute (e.g., stores with a pharmacy

attached) to further increase the relevance of your communications.

Mining your purchase data, you can also segment by the kinds of

products purchased to let customers know about the new edition

of a product they bought, or about a product recall. Or you can

segment by price of items purchased, so that you hit high spenders

and budget shoppers with the right kinds of deals to maximize

conversions. Another way to segment is by deal interests, so

you’re not annoying gadget lovers with ads for jewelry. You can

also segment by customer demographics, such as age attributes,

to ensure you strike the right tone in your messages to distinct

customer groups, instead of trying to talk to college kids and over-60

customers in the same way.

Timing is another important aspect of your communications.

Examples would be setting up automatic communications to go to

your customers on milestones that matter to them, such as their

birthdays, or on shared milestones such as the anniversary of the

date they joined your subscription list. You can also time your

messages to create the greatest return for your business, such as

offering enticing deals during low-traffic periods. And you can

ensure that your email and SMS messages speak to your customers

in a more personalized way by using dynamic data tags to address

them by first name, their address, or any number of other attributes

you select.

FRI

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Reach customers across the email, mobile and social channels

According to a 2011 Edison Research study, more than 51 percent

of Americans ages 12 and up have Facebook accounts, up from just

8 percent in 2008. And a 2011 Pew Internet survey found that 70

percent of Americans are on email, while another found that 83

percent of Americans own cell phones and 73 percent of cell phone

owners send and receive text messages. Since your best customers

are likely active on all three channels, it’s important that you

understand their communication preferences across them all to truly

reach your individual customers most effectively.

Attract new audiences through social media.

Social media is the fastest-

growing channel and allows

you to reach an incredibly high

volume of people. Facebook

is on track to have more than

a billion users and Twitter is

expected to have over 250

million active users by the end

of 2012. Facebook and Twitter

are great ways for marketers to

reach new audiences and have

authentic two-way interactions

with consumers. Social

media is also a great tool for

facilitating conversations with

customers and for customer

service, and because of its

sharing capabilities that

increase the chances of your

messages going viral.

Getting someone to become

your fan or follower is also a

relatively low commitment

for consumers compared to

getting them to join your email

or SMS lists, so it’s a great way

to connect with new potential

customers. Unfortunately,

both Facebook and Twitter are

also undeniably scattershot as

marketing tools. It’s difficult to

segment and personalize your

communications effectively

using either, and it’s also likely

that even your most dedicated

fans and followers will not read

many of your messages.

The chronological layout of

Twitter timelines, coupled with

the sheer volume of tweets

many users receive, make it

almost inevitable that your

followers will miss some of

your tweets. And Facebook’s

EdgeRank algorithm can

prevent your posts from

appearing in your fans’ News

Feeds at all if you’re not creating

content that’s consistently

interesting to them.

These facts make a good case

for the need to write compelling

social media content. They

also underscore the value in

converting your social followers

51% have a Facebook account

70% are on email

83% own a cell phone

73% send and receive texts

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into SMS and email marketing

subscribers. As people with a

genuine, expressed interest in

your products and services, your

fans and followers are the perfect

targets for these efforts. And by

recruiting fans and followers to

your email and SMS lists, you

can forge deeper relationships

with them by offering them

more personalized and targeted

content than you ever could

through social media alone.

To accelerate your email and

SMS subscription lists using

social media, first focus on

attracting more fans and

followers. Publicize your

presence on Facebook and

Twitter in your stores, on

your website, and in your ads.

Facebook ads are another

cost-effective way to get more

fans. Entice people to join by

offering fans and followers

exclusive content they won’t find

anywhere else, and emphasize

giveaways and discounts. By

acquiring social followers and

then offering them deals they

appreciate, you can help them

see the value in joining your

lists.

To get them on your lists, invite

your Facebook fans or Twitter

followers to text for a special

offer. Ask that they join your

SMS or email list in return

while emphasizing their ability

to unsubscribe at any time.

Run social promotions and ask

entrants to opt in to your email

or SMS list as the price of entry.

And reach new audiences using

referral bonuses that ask all

new subscribers to refer their

friends to also join, right from

the confirmation page they get

after signing up using your Web

form. Give each friend an offer

or coupon for joining, and give

the referrer a special offer of

even greater value if they refer a

specified number of friends.

Build stronger connections through your subscription lists.

While attracting fans and followers can gain you access to a wider

array of customers, your email and SMS lists hold the key to building

deeper connections with them through greater personalization and

segmentation of your communications.

Social media is unparalleled for social interactions, but email is more

accepted as a transactional tool and is a place where people expect

to receive business messages. It is the “tried and true” digital channel

that businesses are most experienced with and use most. Compared

to SMS and social marketing, it offers marketers opportunities to

be more visual, content-rich, and nurturing. Its lack of character

limitations make it a low-cost way to deliver persuasive, more in-

depth appeals. And since opting in to your email list requires more

of a conscious decision than clicking “like” or “follow,” you can feel

confident that you are reaching people who want to receive your

marketing content.

Email has another advantage over social media in its potential for greater

bulk segmentation and personalization of communication. It additionally

offers sophisticated tracking potential when compared to social media,

where you can’t currently track who your message was delivered to, who

read it or who clicked on your links.

SMS (text) marketing does not allow for the in-depth content possible

over email or the web, but it offers simplicity, along with something

no other medium can: an unparalleled way to reach your most

dedicated customers anywhere, in real time. Eighty-three percent of

texts are read within one hour, and mobile has three to five times the

reported clickthrough rate of other media. This immediacy makes

SMS the best medium for real-time offers and alerts.

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Schedule your content in advance across channels.

As you build universal profiles

of your customers by connecting

with them over social media and

opting them in to your email

and SMS subscriber lists, you

will be able to undertake a more

integrated approach in planning

your communications. In doing

so, you will learn that each

medium demands a different

approach in terms of messaging

and optimal timing.

For instance, email open

and click rates are highest in

the early morning, and also

attractive in the mid-afternoon

and early evening. Mobile

marketing’s immediacy and

timeliness make it a great choice

for midday communications,

when email open rates are

lowest. And when posting social

media messages, it’s worth

considering that Facebook’s

high activity periods include

lunch, early morning, late

evening, and weekends, and that

Twitter has the highest activity

at lunch and at 6 p.m.

When creating your digital

communications plan, you

should also take message

frequency into account.

To prevent people from

unsubscribing to your SMS list,

you should reserve some of your

most compelling and timely

offers for your text subscribers

and start out with one text a

week or less. Restraint is also

a plus when it comes to email:

according to one study, the

optimal frequency is one to four

emails a month.

In contrast, Facebook requires

more frequent content, since

the site’s algorithm determines

whether your fans are clicking

on your posts regularly and

removes you from their News

Feeds if they don’t — even

though they “like” you. Consider

posting every other day to

start. One analysis found that

Facebook pages updating with

this frequency had the most

likes. Twitter accounts tend to

benefit from even more regular

updates. Try tweeting at least

once a day to start, and consider

posting more often. And don’t

be afraid to repeat tweets,

since Twitter dashboards are

chronological and your followers

are likely to see only your most

recent posts.

By scheduling your content in

advance, you can make sure

that you’re selecting the right

communication frequencies for

each channel, and that you’re not

bombarding your subscribers

with too much content overall.

You can also save time and

coordinate the approvals of your

messaging more efficiently, and

also more easily test which times

of day and days of the week are

most effective in reaching your

customers across these media.

While we’ve provided some

basic guidelines for timing and

frequency, you may find that

different approaches work best in

the execution of your campaigns.

NooN 6 P.M.6 A.M.

Email FacebookMobile Twitter

Communications Timing High-use rates for each medium

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Give people a reason to stay engaged.Once you’ve got subscribers, fans and followers, retaining them is as

important as attracting new ones. And the key to both acquiring and

retaining your digital subscribers is to offer them added value that

they won’t get anywhere else in the form of exclusive news and offers.

Here are a few ways our customers have done this successfully.

Appeal to their wallets

Coupons are a great way to get people to join your lists and to keep

people engaged after they’ve become subscribers. To encourage

subscriptions, use your cross-channel platform to add a web form

as a tab on your Facebook account, or send a tweet with a link to

your form on Twitter. Offering incentives for opting in by filling out

the form is a good way to spur your lists’ growth. The fast-food chain

Culver’s, for instance, offers new subscribers a free value meal for

joining its eClub on Facebook and a free scoop of frozen custard for

joining its Text Club.

Another approach is to get people to text in to receive a coupon

or offer. Ask your Facebook fans or Twitter followers to text to join

your SMS or email list in return for a special offer. The movie and

game rental company Redbox has had success doing this by offering

customers a free rental in return for joining its email list. Using your

cross-channel platform, you can create plain text or web-based

coupons for insertion in SMS, email or social messages, and track

how many coupons were delivered through each marketing channel.

You can also make these coupons finite in number so when your

campaign has sent the total number of coupons in the group, no

additional coupons will be sent to participants. And you can export

coupon codes from your point-of-sale system to track redemption

rates. You can even choose to create public coupons that your

subscribers can share with their friends across channels.

Whatever strategy you choose, be sure to mix it up and test different

options. A couponing strategy is only successful if the coupons are

being redeemed, and certain customers may redeem one type of

offer more than another.

Declare a winner

In our experience, digital sweepstakes are one of the most effective

ways to draw people into your brand. For example, Memphis

Car Audio worked with DDC Marketing to develop an integrated

sweepstakes campaign tied the release of the movie Fast Five, with

a trip for two to the movie’s Brazil premiere as the grand prize. The

sweepstakes was promoted on multiple channels, including the web

and Facebook, and people could enter via mobile, web, or Facebook.

DDC Marketing used the Signal platform to develop, launch,

and manage the sweepstakes across the mobile, social, and web

channels. By running the sweepstakes and adding entrants to their

email list as the price of entry, the company successfully reinforced

its brand, drove in-store traffic, and added more than 93,000

subscribers to its email list.

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Get them in the game

Engaging people through polls, trivia and fun surveys can be a good

way to keep people interested. They can also help you grow your

subscriber, fan and follower base. Whether it be a prize, coupon or

simply the fun of sharing their opinion or trivia knowledge, people

get value out of participating in promotions. Given that, what better

way to give people a compelling reason to opt-in to your list or “like”

you on Facebook than to run a promotion? “Give, then get” is the

foundation of all great marketing.

These promotions can also help you grow your database of customer

insights. You can learn about your customers through the actual

poll answers and survey responses they give as well as by seeing

what prizes motivate them, what kinds of trivia they know, and what

coupons they respond to. The data from every promotion you run is

saved with that person’s profile in your Signal database. Armed with

this data, you can create more meaningful customer segments to

better target your emails, texts and social posts. Liked that coupon?

Here’s another just like it. Picked pizza in that last poll? Did you

know we just added pizzas to our menu? Sorry you didn’t win that

holiday sweater shopping spree, but we’re having a sale on them now

— you should check it out.

Provide updates, news and exclusive content.

Another way to keep your subscribers engaged is by giving them the

key information they want. Let them know about the opening of new

stores near them, about changes to the hours of the store they shop

in, and about new products they might be interested in. Also be sure

to offer them exclusive content they won’t find anywhere else, with

an emphasis on special deals and offers. One study found that 37

percent of Facebook users “like” fan pages just to receive coupons

and deals. Reward your email and SMS subscribers with even more

appealing offers than you give your social followers for joining and

remaining on your lists.

new

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the taSte teSt MeaSuring Your reSultS

3

Once you’ve gotten your cross-channel marketing plan

underway, it’s integral that you measure its effectiveness.

You should do this both by taking a big-picture view

of your list growth and by analyzing the detailed results

of your individual campaigns.

34 35

It’s critical to retain subscribers

and maintain valuable touch

points with your guests. To

ensure subscriber retention,

or “stickiness,” your calls to

action when asking for the

initial subscription should

clearly and honestly state the

content people will receive

when they join your list. If

your attrition rate (rate of

people unsubscribing) is over

10 percent, then you’re doing

something wrong.

In addition, you should get

comfortable with doing cohort

analyses to help track stickiness.

Simply put, cohort analysis

means dividing your subscribers

into groups to better profile your

list. For example, by dividing

your list into groups based on

length of subscriptions, you can

see if most of your customers

have been subscribers for one

to three months, three to six

months, six to nine months,

or up to a year or more. This

serves as a useful indicator of

how successful you’ve been in

retaining subscribers over the

long term.

Another metric to consider is the

depth of customer insight you

have gathered for your individual

subscribers. Have you succeeded

in developing a universal

profile of your subscribers that

includes their social, email

and SMS touch points? Have

you continued to gain more

insights into their demographics,

communication preferences,

product preferences, where they

are in the customer life cycle,

and the types of offers they

respond to? It is this information

that will enable you to better

personalize your offers and build

customer loyalty.

To analyze the success of your cross-channel marketing, first take a

look at the growth of your number of social fans and followers as well

as the growth of your email and SMS subscriber lists. While the size

of your lists is important, so is their net growth. If your lists aren’t

growing over a period of time, it means you’re not doing enough to

promote your lists and their value.

Every opt-in or new follower is a win. By reviewing the volume of

permission-based opt-ins over time, you can interpret your success

overall, and on a campaign-by-campaign basis. For example,

the Signal platform shows how easily you can track which ads or

promotions in an enrollment campaign led to new subscribers, which

is key to determining ROI — and to determining which tactics you

should focus on in future campaigns.

Evaluate the growth of your database.

36 37

SMS

For SMS marketing, the key benchmarks to consider are delivery

rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate. Open rate is not as much of an

issue given that recipients have little choice but to see their messages

upon receipt. Instead, click rate is a critical gauge of whether your

offers are working. A recent Signal review of large-scale messaging

campaigns found an average click rate of 6.16 percent for texts

containing a URL. You must also carefully monitor your unsubscribe

rate, since consumers have little patience for receiving content that

is not of value to them over SMS. A high unsubscribe rate is a clear

indication that you need to enhance your SMS offers.

Social

For social media campaigns, click rate is important, just as it is with

SMS and email. But it differs in that its other key metric is engagement.

And to truly judge the effectiveness of the social content you create,

you have to look at all of the different actions people take with it,

from retweets to likes to forwards to comments. Your cross-channel

platform allows you to get a consolidated view of your social fans and

followers and their activities in one place. You can see trending stats

for fans, likes, comments and wall posts on Facebook. You can view

trends for followers gained and lost, mentions, messages and retweets

on Twitter. And you can—and should—also track the performance of

individual campaigns by creating unique coupon codes for your social

campaigns and by creating distinct URLs for each campaign to track

the source of your clickthroughs.

Analyze the performance of your campaignsUsing the analytics capabilities of your cross-channel platform,

you can diagnose how each of your campaigns performed

by comparing the results to past campaigns and to overall

benchmarks for each digital medium.

Email

The key benchmarks to consider for emails are delivery rate, open

rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate. Recent industry averages for

North America are delivery rates of 96.3 percent, open rates of

24.8 percent and click rates of 5.2 percent. Your delivery rate is a

reflection of the accuracy of your email list. If your open rate is poor,

you might try to tweak your subject line. If people are opening your

emails but not redeeming your offers, it means you might need to

rethink your offer strategy. And if your unsubscribe rate is high, you

know that you’re not offering compelling enough content to keep your

subscribers interested — so you might want to continue experimenting

and to also include a greater proportion of your most successful offer

tactics in your communication mix.

38 39

When it comes to coupons,

redemption rate is the true

metric of how compelling

your offers are. If people are

opening but not redeeming

them, it’s a sign that you need

to rethink your offer strategy.

If a third or more of your offers

sent are being redeemed,

you’re doing something right.

By subsequently looking at

ticket totals when a purchase

is made with a marketing offer

redeemed, you can start to see if

you are getting true ROI out of

these offers. Compare this figure

to non-offer ticket totals. How

does it stack up? Sometimes a

small discount on an item can

be the nudge to drive store

traffic and additional purchases.

Over time, you will also get a

sense of how much it costs you

to acquire a subscriber. For

example, if you run a billboard

advertisement for $10,000

containing a call to action to get

people to join your SMS list, and

are told you would get 500,000

impressions, that’s roughly $.02

per impression. If 10 percent

of people opt in, you’ve paid

$10,000 for 50,000 subscribers,

or roughly $.20 for each

converted subscriber. Figures

like these should go into your

projections and calculations

to help you understand if your

program and its elements

are profitable. You can learn

how much it cost you to add

a subscriber using in-store

signage versus a newspaper ad

versus QSR codes on product

packaging, for instance. And

by looking at redemptions, the

average number of digital offer-

based visits each month, and

your subscribers’ average ticket

total, you can also start to put

together the average monthly

value of a subscriber.

Determine which channels yield the best results

By measuring the results of your campaign initiatives in the email,

SMS and social channels, you can learn which content works best

on each channel for each person. You’ll be able to see what kinds

of deals each likes, and whether they respond more favorably to an

afternoon tweet, an early-morning email, or a midday text.

Using this information, you will be able to continually improve your

marketing communications to make your messages more targeted

and personalized for each of your customers. In the process of

your campaigns, you can also test which individual elements of

a communication work better by using A/B testing. For instance,

you can test the relative strengths of two email subject lines by

sending each version to a portion of a target audience with separate

redemption codes and tracking which gets the best results. You can

do the same for different channels by attaching a different code to

each campaign element to learn whether your email, social or SMS

communications were most effective in spurring responses. And you

can see whether different segments of your audience respond better

to certain approaches. For example, you may find that social coupons

are more effective with younger customers and that email works

better with your older customers.

vs vs

40

Monitor the conversation.While tracking your campaigns is integral, it’s also essential to have

a big-picture understanding of how people are talking about your

business or brand. Whether your goal is to collect all of your praise

or to support customers having issues, you can use your cross-

channel platform to track sentiment and recent messages. You can

also scan popular content filters and easily categorize content so

that you can act quickly to resolve problems related to conversations

about your brand on social media.

the preSentation delighting Your cuStoMerS

4

42 43

Transitioning to a cross-channel

approach takes time, effort and

determination. And if you’re not

there yet, you can take comfort

in the fact that you’re not alone.

According to one Aberdeen

study, just 54 percent of best-

in-class companies do business-

actionable analysis of mobile

marketing campaign results and

over 60 percent of the best-in-

class aren’t yet using customer

behavior information to target

and segment their messaging

through the mobile channel.

But it’s also clear that times are

changing — and that those who

don’t change with them will be

left behind. A 2011 McKinsey

global survey of marketers

found that the most important

digital-related challenge for

marketers and business leaders

is that “the ability to generate

and leverage deep customer

insights is becoming a necessity

to compete effectively.”

A cross-channel approach

helps you efficiently collect

and act upon extensive

customer insight. It enables

you to more effectively manage

your marketing resources

and better understand where

you’re money’s working and

where it isn’t. It crashes down

the silos that separate your

digital marketing channels

and gives you the ability

to truly create a coherent,

streamlined and consistent

brand presence across channels.

Most importantly, it allows

you to communicate with your

customers in a more targeted,

more personal way. In a world

where mass marketing is losing

its effectiveness, cross-channel

marketing gives you the ability

to engage customers on their

terms with the content and

offers they want. It’s the “secret

sauce” that keeps them coming

back for more.

About Signal

Signal develops and provides marketing solutions

designed to help companies acquire, retain and develop

customer relationships via mobile, social, web and email.

The company’s easy-to-use software-as-a-service cross-

channel campaign management platform (Signal) enables

marketers to rapidly develop, execute, and analyze

campaigns using multiple channels, all feeding a common

customer database embracing the concept of a universal

profile. Used by many leading brands, retailers, online

services, agencies, and broadcast media, Signal processes

millions of customer interactions each month.

www.signalhq.com

hello@signalhq.com

877–450–0075