1. Your Secret
Sauce
Mixing Mobile, Social
and Email Successfully
Signal
1

2. How often do the following statements cross You are no doubt devoting an for determining how to create a
your mind when you think about what it’s like increasing proportion of your comprehensive picture of your
focus—and your budget—to customers using data about
to be successful marketer today?
digital marketing. But your them that is fragmented across
business, as many do, may various databases, surveys and
be struggling with how to social media. These challenges
“It’s difficult to know my customers well enough integrate channels such as certainly make it difficult to
since I don’t have one place where I can view email, social media and SMS determine true ROI of your
my data on them (like purchase behavior, social in a coordinated way with your digital efforts.
media conversations and demographics) and my other marketing efforts. Ditto
marketing efforts (like email, mobile and social
media campaigns) together.”
“It’s much harder than it should be for me to have
Finally, you’re probably tired of hearing buzz phrases
meaningful conversations with customers and to
like “cross-channel marketing,” “conversational marketing
give them only the content that’s relevant to them.”
platforms” and “marketing automation.” These terms do
point to useful strategies and tools to help achieve them,
“There’s a lot of talk about ‘cross-channel marketing,’ but frequently the “how” is far too vague.
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.

3. Index
Our goal is to change that. social media marketing into
In the following pages, the your marketing mix in a way
buzzwords will be demystified that gives customers what they
and you’ll learn strategies want, when they want it. You’ll
and tactics for improving see how some of the nation’s
1
performance of your marketing most successful businesses
campaigns by building your have cultivated and grown a The Recipe
customer knowledge and base of passionate customers Demystifying the Buzzwords into a
translating those insights into using a strategy based on Simple Framework for Marketing Success
the type of communications listening, empathy and targeted,
your customers will be delighted personalized communications
to receive. You’ll learn how designed to inspire loyalty and 2
to weave email, mobile and repeat business.
The Ingredients
Turning Data Into Integrated Email,
Mobile and Social Campaigns
Most importantly, we promise all the “highlighter-worthy” data and
tips you can handle. Whether it be convincing your boss to support 3
a key initiative, or simply tweaking the timing of your Facebook
posts to maximize comments and likes, you will walk away from this The Taste Test
paper with at least one actionable insight that will make you more Measuring Your Results
successful today.
Let’s dig in. 4
The Presentation
Delighting Your Customers

4. 1
The Recipe
Demystifying the Buzzwords
Into a Simple Framework
for Marketing Success
“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.
7

5. They can be broken down into the following concepts: 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
• Using multiple marketing media to communicate with your channels is so important.
customers. Most commonly, the media people are referring
The reality is that some businesses still are not active in all of these
to are email marketing, mobile marketing (in particular text
message marketing) and social media. channels, or may only have a minimal footprint through a basic
website, a rarely updated Facebook page, or a minimal or nonexistent
• Using all of your customer data to determine the media, timing SMS marketing plan. But the same can’t be said for their customers.
and content you should use to reach specific customer segments
To truly reach your customers most effectively, you need to reach
and individual customers most effectively.
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—
• Adding insights about how customers respond to you
communicate with brands through multiple channels. These include
marketing to your database. This will allow you to continuously
email, website, Twitter, Facebook and SMS as well as traditional
improve the relevancy and effectiveness of your campaigns.
face-to-face and voice interactions. And each and every one of these
interactions contributes to their overall view of the brand.
• Building your base of subscribers and social fans/followers.
This can mean using media together to move customers
For this reason, it’s important that marketers not only be active and
up the commitment ladder (e.g., asking Twitter followers to
effective in each of these channels, but also that they coordinate
join your email newsletter list). Or it can mean using multiple
their communications across them. Otherwise, customers may be hit
media to increase the reach and effectiveness of promotions
with inconsistent, conflicting messaging that lessens their confidence
or offers designed to generate lots of interest (e.g., running a
sweepstakes that people can enter via text message, web form, in the brand—and in its ability to meet their needs.
Facebook page or tweet).
This may jive with your current experiences and beliefs, or
perhaps you’re not yet convinced that consumers care about
• Accomplishing all of the above from a single platform or
interacting with your brand on social networks or their mobile
product that places all your customer data and campaign
phone. We’ve got news for you: consumer expectations about
information together at your fingertips to save time and money
transparency, responsiveness and empathy have changed. And
and increase effectiveness.
the digital media that have emerged are critical both to fueling
and fulfilling these new expectations.
8 9

6. Need proof?
A 2012 Aberdeen study found A 2012 study by American Express found
of top-performing retail companies expanded their use
75% Social media-savvy consumers spend more when they
3x
of digital channels; get good customer service than the general population,
tell three times as many people about their positive
52% of lower-performing companies expanded.
experiences, and are more likely to ditch companies when
they don’t get good service.
A 2010 Accenture survey found
79% of smartphone users would like to download money-off
coupons to their phones;
Another consumer survey found
of consumers have a more positive impression of
57% companies they receive email from;
73% would like to receive instant money-off coupons as they
pass by an item in a store.
50%
are more likely to buy—online or offline—from companies
that send them email.
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, Once you’ve been convinced entered what many refer to as
mobile applications or voicemail. to take the initial step of being the era of “Big Data.” A 2011
present and active across all the study by the McKinsey Global
channels where your customers Institute projects that the total
A 2010 Yankee Group study found live, you still need to find out amount of data being generated
of consumers want to interact with businesses using social more about them so you can will grow by 40 percent each
70% media;
reach them with more targeted, year. The same study estimates
personalized messaging. that retailers harnessing this
-1/3
but less than one-third of companies have the strategies,
policies, and processes in place to meet that demand. data fully could increase their
Thankfully, there aren’t many operating margins by 60 percent.
marketers lacking for data these
days. In fact, we have already
10 11

7. For marketers, the problem isn’t the amount of A 2011 eConsultancy survey Humans seek novelty and will
indicated that more than half open their gates to many initial
data available, but instead finding a way to harvest
of marketers store the data brand conversations, but they
it in one place to make effective use of it in your
they gather their multi-channel are also pattern-recognizing
marketing efforts. How many of the following types marketing efforts in in separate, machines. Your initial marketing
of data look familiar to you? siloed locations. strategy will work quite well
as your customers open their
While the term may not make hearts for the first time, but
Lead source data Social media brand mentions this clear, the fundamental afterwards, they will learn to
and sentiment premise behind “cross-channel
Purchase/transaction history filter your marketing efforts out
marketing” is the ability to unify unless they remain consistently
Customer conversations with
Survey data all this data to directly inform unique, useful and engaging.
you over social media or
all of your digital marketing,
customer support touch points
Loyalty program and coupon regardless of medium. While companies understand
redemption history Marketing campaign history the value and cost-effectiveness
But accumulating and unifying of engaging with customers
(e.g., campaigns received, open
this data alone is not enough. more directly through digital
rate and click rate)
Too often, digital or direct channels, too often they are
marketing is read as “sending reaching their customers in
communications to people who disjointed and repetitive ways.
should be interested in them.” When brands don’t differentiate
While that’s a start, you must content by channel, respect
How many different databases, also consider how to get people a customer’s preference, or
interested in listening to you to
reports and tools do the data points produce new and useful content,
begin with. And after you’ve got messaging fails. In a world
you routinely work with live in? them listening, you need to keep where people receive as many
If you’re like most marketers, finding new ways to provide as 5,000 ad messages a day,
novel and wonderful content each communication must be
the answer is too many. that reinforces why they chose channel-appropriate, thoughtful
to listen in the first place. and engaging.
12 13

8. The world’s best brands These companies have
recognize this and are discovered the very sticky 2
starting to move beyond “secret sauce” that delights
the multichannel “blast” customers: messages that
approach. Using digital are targeted, personal and
marketing tools such as
Signal, they can tie these
relevant to each customer’s
individual preferences. Instead
The ingredients
marketing channels together of creating the customer
and evolve from multichannel distaste that can result from a
Turning Data Into
to cross-channel marketing. steady diet of uncoordinated, Integrated Email , Mobile
Instead of uncoordinated, untargeted campaigns, these and Social Campaigns
siloed communications for communications create a
each individual channel, competitive advantage and
companies have the power whet customers’ appetites for
to originate their email, SMS repeat business.
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.
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9. Build a single database One Aberdeen Group study found that 47 percent of best-in-class
companies integrate customer data across all marketing channels,
A critical component of getting to determine what’s most versus 22 percent of average companies and 19 percent of laggards.
the most ROI out of marketing effective. Moving to a cross- The same study found that companies that integrate data captured
initiatives is to know what’s channel approach enables across all marketing channels achieve a 41 percent better company
working and what isn’t. you to simplify campaign gross margin than those that don’t.
rollout across all media and
But according to Forrester
to automatically collect data
research, about 87 percent of
from every campaign in one
marketers and 85 percent of
place. It allows you to establish
agencies misattribute credit:
a consistent workflow across
They either attribute all credit
channels to minimize the
to the last touch point or have
complexity of scheduling and
no way of attributing the credit
sending messages, and to
50% 47%
in a meaningful manner.
implement a reliable approval
Using digital marketing tools process from headquarters 40%
such as Signal, you can manage, for all digital communications.
monitor and measure all of your At the customer level, it helps 30%
customer relationships from you learn more about your 22%
a single source. You can also 19%
customers so that you can reach 20%
create and track unique offers them more effectively.
for each channel interaction
10%
Best-in-Class
Average
Laggards
16 17

10. Even those companies that Ultimately, you’ll want to import Create communications that are
don’t currently integrate their all of your customer data into
more relevant and personalized
marketing data realize the your digital marketing platform.
importance of doing so. A This should include all of your
2011 IBM survey of nearly 300 internal customer database data, Right now, according to a 2011 McKinsey survey, 38 percent of
marketers found that nearly which may contain information marketers say their companies have basic demographic information
90 percent of respondents like purchase history or loyalty on each customer, while only 18 percent say their customer data
expressed interest in an program participation, your includes detailed information such as interests or attitudes.
integrated marketing suite, website or mobile apps, and Respondents also reported that marketing decisions were most
as the industry’s need for any CRM products you use likely to rely on internal sales data that has long been available to
technology grows and adoption to manage customer loyalty marketing departments.
matures. By connecting with programs or offline marketing
your customers through efforts. If you have such an Marketing fails when companies ignore the expectations of their
social media, email, and SMS internal customer database, or customers and take these customer relationships for granted by
using one source—instead of a CRM marketing tool, be sure sending them too many untargeted messages. And today, many
maintaining separate, siloed to set up data syncing between marketers are not only sending messages that aren’t targeted, they’re
lists—you will eventually be these tools and your cross- throwing money away on messages that never even reach their
able to develop a universal channel marketing platform to intended audiences.
profile of each customer across ensure that you have consistent,
all digital channels. Using your up-to-the-minute data and According to a Forrester study, marketers will waste
cross-channel platform, you can coordinated marketing activities. nearly $144 million in 2014 on marketing messages that
also connect this information to never even get delivered.
your point-of-sale and loyalty
marketing data to get a complete Signal gives you the tools to more effectively gather insights about
view of your customers’ your customers from all of your customer touch points that you can
preferences and behaviors. then use to create more highly targeted and personalized messaging,
while also flagging bad email addresses and mobile numbers for
elimination from your lists.
18 19

11. FRI
One simple way to start personalizing your messaging is to transform Timing is another important aspect of your communications.
your customer data into segments, which can be done in many Examples would be setting up automatic communications to go to
ways. For instance, you can segment by geography to increase your customers on milestones that matter to them, such as their
the relevance of your offers, instead of sending your San Diego birthdays, or on shared milestones such as the anniversary of the
customers deals on winter coats. Or by store location, so your date they joined your subscription list. You can also time your
customers get deals appropriate to the local store they shop at. You messages to create the greatest return for your business, such as
can even segment by store attribute (e.g., stores with a pharmacy offering enticing deals during low-traffic periods. And you can
attached) to further increase the relevance of your communications. 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.
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.
20 21

12. Reach customers across the email, Attract new audiences through social media.
mobile and social channels Social media is the fastest- both Facebook and Twitter are
growing channel and allows also undeniably scattershot as
According to a 2011 Edison Research study, more than 51 percent
you to reach an incredibly high marketing tools. It’s difficult to
of Americans ages 12 and up have Facebook accounts, up from just
volume of people. Facebook segment and personalize your
8 percent in 2008. And a 2011 Pew Internet survey found that 70
is on track to have more than communications effectively
percent of Americans are on email, while another found that 83
a billion users and Twitter is using either, and it’s also likely
percent of Americans own cell phones and 73 percent of cell phone
expected to have over 250 that even your most dedicated
owners send and receive text messages. Since your best customers
million active users by the end fans and followers will not read
are likely active on all three channels, it’s important that you
of 2012. Facebook and Twitter many of your messages.
understand their communication preferences across them all to truly
are great ways for marketers to
reach your individual customers most effectively. The chronological layout of
reach new audiences and have
authentic two-way interactions Twitter timelines, coupled with
with consumers. Social the sheer volume of tweets
media is also a great tool for many users receive, make it
facilitating conversations with almost inevitable that your
customers and for customer followers will miss some of
51% have a Facebook account your tweets. And Facebook’s
service, and because of its
sharing capabilities that EdgeRank algorithm can
increase the chances of your prevent your posts from
messages going viral. appearing in your fans’ News
70% are on email Feeds at all if you’re not creating
Getting someone to become content that’s consistently
your fan or follower is also a interesting to them.
relatively low commitment
83% own a cell phone for consumers compared to These facts make a good case
73% send and receive texts getting them to join your email for the need to write compelling
or SMS lists, so it’s a great way social media content. They
to connect with new potential also underscore the value in
customers. Unfortunately, converting your social followers
22 23

13. into SMS and email marketing then offering them deals they Build stronger connections through your subscription lists.
subscribers. As people with a appreciate, you can help them
genuine, expressed interest in see the value in joining your While attracting fans and followers can gain you access to a wider
your products and services, your lists. array of customers, your email and SMS lists hold the key to building
fans and followers are the perfect deeper connections with them through greater personalization and
targets for these efforts. And by To get them on your lists, invite segmentation of your communications.
recruiting fans and followers to your Facebook fans or Twitter
followers to text for a special Social media is unparalleled for social interactions, but email is more
your email and SMS lists, you
offer. Ask that they join your accepted as a transactional tool and is a place where people expect
can forge deeper relationships
SMS or email list in return to receive business messages. It is the “tried and true” digital channel
with them by offering them
while emphasizing their ability that businesses are most experienced with and use most. Compared
more personalized and targeted
to unsubscribe at any time. to SMS and social marketing, it offers marketers opportunities to
content than you ever could
Run social promotions and ask be more visual, content-rich, and nurturing. Its lack of character
through social media alone.
entrants to opt in to your email limitations make it a low-cost way to deliver persuasive, more in-
To accelerate your email and or SMS list as the price of entry. depth appeals. And since opting in to your email list requires more
SMS subscription lists using And reach new audiences using of a conscious decision than clicking “like” or “follow,” you can feel
social media, first focus on referral bonuses that ask all confident that you are reaching people who want to receive your
attracting more fans and new subscribers to refer their marketing content.
followers. Publicize your friends to also join, right from
Email has another advantage over social media in its potential for greater
presence on Facebook and the confirmation page they get
bulk segmentation and personalization of communication. It additionally
Twitter in your stores, on after signing up using your Web
offers sophisticated tracking potential when compared to social media,
your website, and in your ads. form. Give each friend an offer
where you can’t currently track who your message was delivered to, who
Facebook ads are another or coupon for joining, and give
read it or who clicked on your links.
cost-effective way to get more the referrer a special offer of
fans. Entice people to join by even greater value if they refer a SMS (text) marketing does not allow for the in-depth content possible
offering fans and followers specified number of friends. over email or the web, but it offers simplicity, along with something
exclusive content they won’t find no other medium can: an unparalleled way to reach your most
anywhere else, and emphasize dedicated customers anywhere, in real time. Eighty-three percent of
giveaways and discounts. By texts are read within one hour, and mobile has three to five times the
acquiring social followers and reported clickthrough rate of other media. This immediacy makes
SMS the best medium for real-time offers and alerts.
24 25

14. Schedule your content in advance across channels. start. One analysis found that communication frequencies for
Facebook pages updating with each channel, and that you’re not
As you build universal profiles Twitter has the highest activity this frequency had the most bombarding your subscribers
of your customers by connecting at lunch and at 6 p.m. likes. Twitter accounts tend to with too much content overall.
with them over social media and benefit from even more regular You can also save time and
opting them in to your email When creating your digital
updates. Try tweeting at least coordinate the approvals of your
and SMS subscriber lists, you communications plan, you
once a day to start, and consider messaging more efficiently, and
will be able to undertake a more should also take message
posting more often. And don’t also more easily test which times
integrated approach in planning frequency into account.
be afraid to repeat tweets, of day and days of the week are
your communications. In doing To prevent people from
since Twitter dashboards are most effective in reaching your
so, you will learn that each unsubscribing to your SMS list,
chronological and your followers customers across these media.
medium demands a different you should reserve some of your
are likely to see only your most While we’ve provided some
approach in terms of messaging most compelling and timely
recent posts. basic guidelines for timing and
and optimal timing. offers for your text subscribers
frequency, you may find that
and start out with one text a By scheduling your content in different approaches work best in
For instance, email open week or less. Restraint is also advance, you can make sure the execution of your campaigns.
and click rates are highest in a plus when it comes to email: that you’re selecting the right
the early morning, and also according to one study, the
attractive in the mid-afternoon optimal frequency is one to four
Communications Timing
and early evening. Mobile emails a month. High-use rates for each medium
marketing’s immediacy and
timeliness make it a great choice In contrast, Facebook requires
more frequent content, since Email Mobile Facebook Twitter
for midday communications,
when email open rates are the site’s algorithm determines
lowest. And when posting social whether your fans are clicking
media messages, it’s worth on your posts regularly and
considering that Facebook’s removes you from their News
high activity periods include Feeds if they don’t — even
lunch, early morning, late though they “like” you. Consider
evening, and weekends, and that posting every other day to
6 A.M. Noon 6 P.M.
26 27

15. Give people a reason to stay engaged. additional coupons will be sent to participants. And you can export
coupon codes from your point-of-sale system to track redemption
Once you’ve got subscribers, fans and followers, retaining them is as
rates. You can even choose to create public coupons that your
important as attracting new ones. And the key to both acquiring and
subscribers can share with their friends across channels.
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. Whatever strategy you choose, be sure to mix it up and test different
Here are a few ways our customers have done this successfully. 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.
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 Declare a winner
subscriptions, use your cross-channel platform to add a web form In our experience, digital sweepstakes are one of the most effective
as a tab on your Facebook account, or send a tweet with a link to ways to draw people into your brand. For example, Memphis
your form on Twitter. Offering incentives for opting in by filling out Car Audio worked with DDC Marketing to develop an integrated
the form is a good way to spur your lists’ growth. The fast-food chain sweepstakes campaign tied the release of the movie Fast Five, with
Culver’s, for instance, offers new subscribers a free value meal for a trip for two to the movie’s Brazil premiere as the grand prize. The
joining its eClub on Facebook and a free scoop of frozen custard for sweepstakes was promoted on multiple channels, including the web
joining its Text Club. and Facebook, and people could enter via mobile, web, or Facebook.
DDC Marketing used the Signal platform to develop, launch,
Another approach is to get people to text in to receive a coupon
and manage the sweepstakes across the mobile, social, and web
or offer. Ask your Facebook fans or Twitter followers to text to join
channels. By running the sweepstakes and adding entrants to their
your SMS or email list in return for a special offer. The movie and
email list as the price of entry, the company successfully reinforced
game rental company Redbox has had success doing this by offering
its brand, drove in-store traffic, and added more than 93,000
customers a free rental in return for joining its email list. Using your
subscribers to its email list.
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
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16. Get them in the game Provide updates, news and exclusive content.
Engaging people through polls, trivia and fun surveys can be a good Another way to keep your subscribers engaged is by giving them the
way to keep people interested. They can also help you grow your key information they want. Let them know about the opening of new
subscriber, fan and follower base. Whether it be a prize, coupon or stores near them, about changes to the hours of the store they shop
simply the fun of sharing their opinion or trivia knowledge, people in, and about new products they might be interested in. Also be sure
get value out of participating in promotions. Given that, what better to offer them exclusive content they won’t find anywhere else, with
way to give people a compelling reason to opt-in to your list or “like” an emphasis on special deals and offers. One study found that 37
you on Facebook than to run a promotion? “Give, then get” is the percent of Facebook users “like” fan pages just to receive coupons
foundation of all great marketing. and deals. Reward your email and SMS subscribers with even more
appealing offers than you give your social followers for joining and
These promotions can also help you grow your database of customer remaining on your lists.
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
NEW
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.
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17. 3
The taste test
Measuring Your Results
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.
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18. Evaluate the growth of your database. It’s critical to retain subscribers how successful you’ve been in
and maintain valuable touch retaining subscribers over the
To analyze the success of your cross-channel marketing, first take a points with your guests. To long term.
look at the growth of your number of social fans and followers as well ensure subscriber retention,
as the growth of your email and SMS subscriber lists. While the size or “stickiness,” your calls to Another metric to consider is the
of your lists is important, so is their net growth. If your lists aren’t action when asking for the depth of customer insight you
growing over a period of time, it means you’re not doing enough to initial subscription should have gathered for your individual
promote your lists and their value. clearly and honestly state the subscribers. Have you succeeded
content people will receive in developing a universal
Every opt-in or new follower is a win. By reviewing the volume of profile of your subscribers that
when they join your list. If
permission-based opt-ins over time, you can interpret your success includes their social, email
your attrition rate (rate of
overall, and on a campaign-by-campaign basis. For example, and SMS touch points? Have
people unsubscribing) is over
the Signal platform shows how easily you can track which ads or you continued to gain more
10 percent, then you’re doing
promotions in an enrollment campaign led to new subscribers, which insights into their demographics,
something wrong.
is key to determining ROI — and to determining which tactics you communication preferences,
should focus on in future campaigns. In addition, you should get product preferences, where they
comfortable with doing cohort are in the customer life cycle,
analyses to help track stickiness. and the types of offers they
Simply put, cohort analysis respond to? It is this information
means dividing your subscribers that will enable you to better
into groups to better profile your personalize your offers and build
list. For example, by dividing customer loyalty.
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
34 35

19. Analyze the performance of your campaigns
Using the analytics capabilities of your cross-channel platform, SMS
you can diagnose how each of your campaigns performed For SMS marketing, the key benchmarks to consider are delivery
by comparing the results to past campaigns and to overall rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate. Open rate is not as much of an
benchmarks for each digital medium. 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.
Email
The key benchmarks to consider for emails are delivery rate, open Social
rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate. Recent industry averages for
For social media campaigns, click rate is important, just as it is with
North America are delivery rates of 96.3 percent, open rates of
SMS and email. But it differs in that its other key metric is engagement.
24.8 percent and click rates of 5.2 percent. Your delivery rate is a
And to truly judge the effectiveness of the social content you create,
reflection of the accuracy of your email list. If your open rate is poor,
you have to look at all of the different actions people take with it,
you might try to tweak your subject line. If people are opening your
from retweets to likes to forwards to comments. Your cross-channel
emails but not redeeming your offers, it means you might need to
platform allows you to get a consolidated view of your social fans and
rethink your offer strategy. And if your unsubscribe rate is high, you
followers and their activities in one place. You can see trending stats
know that you’re not offering compelling enough content to keep your
for fans, likes, comments and wall posts on Facebook. You can view
subscribers interested — so you might want to continue experimenting
trends for followers gained and lost, mentions, messages and retweets
and to also include a greater proportion of your most successful offer
on Twitter. And you can—and should—also track the performance of
tactics in your communication mix.
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.
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20. Determine which channels yield the best results When it comes to coupons, containing a call to action to get
redemption rate is the true people to join your SMS list, and
metric of how compelling are told you would get 500,000
your offers are. If people are impressions, that’s roughly $.02
opening but not redeeming per impression. If 10 percent
vs vs
them, it’s a sign that you need of people opt in, you’ve paid
to rethink your offer strategy. $10,000 for 50,000 subscribers,
If a third or more of your offers or roughly $.20 for each
By measuring the results of your campaign initiatives in the email, sent are being redeemed, converted subscriber. Figures
SMS and social channels, you can learn which content works best you’re doing something right. like these should go into your
on each channel for each person. You’ll be able to see what kinds By subsequently looking at projections and calculations
of deals each likes, and whether they respond more favorably to an ticket totals when a purchase to help you understand if your
afternoon tweet, an early-morning email, or a midday text. is made with a marketing offer program and its elements
redeemed, you can start to see if are profitable. You can learn
Using this information, you will be able to continually improve your you are getting true ROI out of how much it cost you to add
marketing communications to make your messages more targeted these offers. Compare this figure a subscriber using in-store
and personalized for each of your customers. In the process of to non-offer ticket totals. How signage versus a newspaper ad
your campaigns, you can also test which individual elements of does it stack up? Sometimes a versus QSR codes on product
a communication work better by using A/B testing. For instance, small discount on an item can packaging, for instance. And
you can test the relative strengths of two email subject lines by be the nudge to drive store by looking at redemptions, the
sending each version to a portion of a target audience with separate traffic and additional purchases. average number of digital offer-
redemption codes and tracking which gets the best results. You can based visits each month, and
do the same for different channels by attaching a different code to Over time, you will also get a your subscribers’ average ticket
each campaign element to learn whether your email, social or SMS sense of how much it costs you total, you can also start to put
communications were most effective in spurring responses. And you to acquire a subscriber. For together the average monthly
can see whether different segments of your audience respond better example, if you run a billboard value of a subscriber.
to certain approaches. For example, you may find that social coupons advertisement for $10,000
are more effective with younger customers and that email works
better with your older customers.
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21. Monitor the conversation.
While tracking your campaigns is integral, it’s also essential to have
4
a big-picture understanding of how people are talking about your
business or brand. Whether your goal is to collect all of your praise
The presentation
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 Delighting Your Customers
about your brand on social media.
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22. Transitioning to a cross-channel A cross-channel approach
approach takes time, effort and helps you efficiently collect
determination. And if you’re not and act upon extensive
there yet, you can take comfort customer insight. It enables
in the fact that you’re not alone. you to more effectively manage
According to one Aberdeen your marketing resources
and better understand where
About Signal
study, just 54 percent of best-
in-class companies do business- you’re money’s working and
actionable analysis of mobile where it isn’t. It crashes down Signal develops and provides marketing solutions
marketing campaign results and the silos that separate your designed to help companies acquire, retain and develop
over 60 percent of the best-in- digital marketing channels customer relationships via mobile, social, web and email.
class aren’t yet using customer and gives you the ability The company’s easy-to-use software-as-a-service cross-
behavior information to target to truly create a coherent,
channel campaign management platform (Signal) enables
and segment their messaging streamlined and consistent
marketers to rapidly develop, execute, and analyze
through the mobile channel. brand presence across channels.
Most importantly, it allows campaigns using multiple channels, all feeding a common
But it’s also clear that times are you to communicate with your customer database embracing the concept of a universal
changing — and that those who customers in a more targeted, profile. Used by many leading brands, retailers, online
don’t change with them will be more personal way. In a world services, agencies, and broadcast media, Signal processes
left behind. A 2011 McKinsey where mass marketing is losing
global survey of marketers millions of customer interactions each month.
its effectiveness, cross-channel
found that the most important marketing gives you the ability
digital-related challenge for to engage customers on their
marketers and business leaders www.signalhq.com
terms with the content and
is that “the ability to generate offers they want. It’s the “secret
and leverage deep customer sauce” that keeps them coming hello@signalhq.com
insights is becoming a necessity back for more.
to compete effectively.”
877–450–0075
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