MarketingProfs B2B: Case Study on Email, CRM & Social Media
I chose to do a small liveblogging at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and picked this session: Why email CRM and social media have become the tools of modern B2B marketing where a case study was presented by Genworth Financial.
Joel Book from Exact Butt introduced the case study: Making brand advocates is as vital as making brand awareness. [I would say more vital. An advocate proactively shares the brand experience]. Amusing, Google “brand tattoos” to see some serious brand advocate endeavor.
How are marketers by digital media to engage?
- email + crm
- email + social
Email and CRM help to automate interaction. Automation is the key because marketing staff and budgets are not increasing. In order to continue deliver personal and timely messages to customers, you need to automate.
Social participation brings customers together and provides an opportunity to include a call to action to join a newsletter.
Brands are aligning themselves with a specific cause, to add to their brand image.
Genworth Financial case study:
Genworth sells their insurance products through brokers, not frankly to consumers.
Reduced marketing resources along with the expectation to have successful marketing campaigns let them to grasp that more is not always better. It’s more vital to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. Genworth understood the need to personalize communications and to offer in multiple mediums.
They started their email efforts with a business unit and have now expanded to 20 businesses. In 2006 100k emails were being sent and now 3.79 million emails are delivered as part of their program.
Personalized messages are critical to their email marketing. Email newsletters are personalized for the customer and according to the Genworth sales person. Open rates are 7-10% higher when the email comes from the sales person.
Email has realized cost savings as an alternative to print direct mail. Most new product introductions are launched only via email. Emails were highly personalized and customized, which is very expensive to do in print. $3 million in print and direct mail cost savings were realized in 2009 for one of their marketing efforts.
Augmented productivity is attributed to email and Genworth is able to use dynamic content and salesforce.com integration to make 700 highly customized emails every Friday.
Email – high ROI. Example: A co-branded campaign delivered highly personalized emails with Genworth customer logo, contact info and was spread on behalf of Genworth customers (insurance brokers) ensuing in a 12% increase in sales ($ millions) with only a $420 spend.
Efficiency of data integration and dynamic content. Customers used to hear 1-5 emails for each product. Now they only hear 1 with all info consolidated. Genworth used to have 4 FT employees and now only need one to manage email. This is as result of integration with salesforce.com and by exacttarget.com.
Timeframe to get completely complex including installation and testing: 1-2 months.
Making self give email templates for sales teams helps them become more efficient.
Enhanced reporting and metrics are available with data integration based on salesforce.com custom objects. Ex: what type of customers open and click the most. What’s working and what’s not.
Email Integration with Social Media has been tentative because of working in a regulated industry. But, the need to better engage with customers motivated them to go forward, albeit, tentatively.
One example is an email newsletter and blog. The blog is hosted on Active Rain (a real estate community). The newsletter gives a snippet of information and then links to a longer form of content on the writer’s blog. On the blog, readers can make comments and question questions. A loop is made by including a call to action on the blog to subscribe to the e-newsletter for people that get to the blog via other means.
A Facebook fan page was used as a destination for a national brand publicity campaign designed to recognize caregivers. Genworth used online publicity, PPC, SEO, social publicity and Genworth producer and consumer web sites to promote. They now have over 7,000 fans. Most successful was Facebook publicity.
Email was used to drive traffic to Facbook and inspire participation and engagement. More awareness and education for products are expected to increase sales.
It’s essential to deliver content in the formats and mediums that your customers want. Integrating data with dynamic content in a combined Email, CRM and Social Media effort can help marketers become more efficient, effective and profitable.
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