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Squeeze More Juice out of your Online Marketing. posted on Friday, 01 February 2008

How business intelligence, marketing optimization can be realized through data aggregation, analytics and automation.

By Rick Enrico

“Web 2.0” is a familiar term now that social networks have been added to the marketing mix. The term “Marketing 2.0” is on the verge of becoming a part of a marketer’s vocabulary. For many, it may be difficult to define.

No more.

Today, the moniker is all about technology platforms that provide business intelligence, hyper segmentation and behavioral targeting, which equates to dynamic content and, most importantly, RELEVANCY. Marketing 2.0 defines the aggregation, analytics and automation of customer interaction data to drive campaign optimization.

The large majority of marketers have not yet realized the power of integration to achieve a superior return on investment and an up-lift in conversion rates. Most still manage their campaigns and customers in a “Marketing 1.0” manner, where customer data is distributed across multiple channels with the inability to effectively measure definitive customer lifetime value. As a result, campaigns are often times conducted in virtual silos, creating redundant as well as conflicting messages to the same audience. Even when behavioral targeting and personalization tactics are implemented, the lack of channel integration leaves companies susceptible to “blind spots,” where promotion programs still fail to adequately target a certain segment of its market base, assuming another campaign is responsible for that outreach.

In response, technology vendors are developing platforms that allow companies of virtually any size to integrate customer interaction data from disassociated databases to build rich profiles. This will create the backbone to deliver dynamic, highly personalized marketing campaigns that leverage the most effective channels to achieve desired response rates.

Here’s an example. A Midwest-based retailer wanted to create an e-mail campaign targeted to past purchasers in order to acquire repeat business. Doing this effectively meant knowing what they had previously purchased, and thus required integration between their Loyalty and POS databases with an e-mail marketing system – all without the need for increased staff. With that, the company leveraged an on-demand, Marketing 2.0 platform to facilitate the channel integrations and segment past purchasers who were opted in to receive commercial e-mail messages. The retailer then executed a targeted campaign with pinpoint accuracy. The result – the company witnessed a 150-percent uplift in e-mail marketing ROI from that one campaign.

What’s more, the company was able to combine POS and Web data within the Marketing 2.0 platform to empower their marketing and sales teams to better understand customer behavior and deliver only the most relevant promotion campaigns to subscribers. Subsequently, the retailer’s Website traffic increased by 40 percent within 60 days.

As companies strive to become more deeply involved in shaping customer experiences across multiple touch points, their promotion campaigns inherently become more sophisticated and complex. By using Marketing 2.0 platforms as a foundation, marketers will be able to optimize campaigns and streamline the process, enabling them to focus their resources on sales, better understanding customer behavior, defining strategies, and delivering more creative solutions.

Rick Enrico is Founder, President and CEO of Juice Media Worldwide, developer of JuiceMetrIQs™, www.juicemetriqs.com a Marketing 2.0 platform that empowers marketers with the ability to analyze, maximize, and measure cross channel customer purchase behavior across all distributed marketing channels for greater marketing success. He can be reached at ceo@juicemedia.com.

Posted by John Lincoln