A friend working on a very cool stealth start-up approached me the other day to talk about sign up forms and the type of questions he should be asking people when they join his soon to be popular site. In a world of Facebook Connect, I first questioned what percentage of his audience would even create their own login on his site but as we discussed further it became apparent to me that whether people signed up directly on his site or they used FB Connect he needed to collect certain pieces of information that would not be readily available through FB but were vital for the marketing of his business. So again, in a world where it is anticipated that most users will log on to the site using FB, how could he capture the three or four (note that it is important to narrow down to at most 3/4 additional questions) pieces of information that would be vital to personalize marketing communications?

While he could certainly use the Facebook profiles of his members to get some amazing social data on their likes, favorite sports teams etc, the information available would vary too much from member to member and further would take a long time to mine given the current Social CRM tools available. So without scrapping Facebook as a login option, what could he do? For me the answer was simple, use a couple of triggered welcome email messages and a clearly discernible incentive. Upon signup with Facebook Connect, a triggered email campaign would begin where the goal was to welcome the member to the site, but the ultimate goal was to get the same three or four pieces of information that would have been captured had the signup occured completely onsite.

With four pieces of information to gather and an on-site credit to offer users who gave all four pieces of information (whether they did so all at once or over the three emails the incentive was the same) a welcome campaign was designed so that three emails would be sent to the user from the trigger moment of a signup with Facebook Connect (those who signed up directly received a different campaign) and the other two sent 24 and 48 hours after respectively. The three emails were designed to both welcome and aclimatize the user with the site but also were to be excercises in info gathering and pushing the user to make thier first site transaction. A complex set of requirements.

So what did it look like in practice? A triggered mini-campaign of three emails to both welcome the user and capture four key pieces of information was launched where the information gathering exercise was tied directly to the incentive offered. While I can’t share the emails themselves, I will give you a bit more detail.

In each email a key piece of the site served as the functionality to be described but rather than use text, it was done using an embedded video. The use of the video engaged people in the email right away and the simplicity of playing the video allowed for the real estate that would have been taken up by that text to then move up the graphics and text about profile completion (answering questions) and the incentive that went along with it.

Another key part of the email design went to the database behind it and using one of 5 possible dynamic questions/phrases (i.e. not asking the user something that you already had the answer to, questions dynamically appear based on the customer profile) in each email so as to gather new information each time and not present the user with anything non relevant or already known. The email was designed in such a way that the last thing the user saw was a dynamic question that got to one of the four pieces of information that was desired. The question was always graphically rich and tied directly to the incentive available for reaching a 100% profile.

While it was expected that it would take two or more emails to get most people to complete their profile, by tying it into the incentive and making the site information part of the email be a video rather than using that real estate for text there was a tremendous amount of users who completed thier profile after just the first triggered email and nearly everyone was done after email #2.

The timelyness of a triggered campaign combined with great design and a smart database have now allowed this stealth company to have 4 tremendously key pieces of profile information about their customers that would have remained unavailable had they simple accepted the information they received through Facebook Connect as the best they could get.

What about you, any great ways to incent your users to share more info with you?

The most used triggered email message stream generally surrounds abandoned shopping carts or website signups where you give your email but do not complete a profile. If you are not using triggered messages around abandoned shopping carts and signups, you should begin to do so (see a good article on how to get going form MarketingSherpa), the emails are effective and can help you address a customer’s (or potential customer) real issue in abandoning their purchase. The problem in my mind is that the very nature of these being triggered messages pulls the real personalization and chance to connect with the consumer out of the equation. These messages generally consist of a generic message indicating that you are receiving the message because you did not complete an action on the site sending you the email. If that action was a purchase, the site might use some dynamic information about what was in your shopping cart and if above a certain dollar threshold trigger a message that offers free shipping if you complete the purchase. Sites often will offer you other ways to get in touch with them including their social media profiles and will wrap with some generic information about how you are a valued customer (maybe even telling you when you first became a customer). For sites that need to scale to large volumes of abandoned carts or signups there is perhaps no other way, however for the businesses where each purchase still matters tremendously and where you are just building your customer base I think you can do better.

If someone takes the time to come to your website and is on the verge of purchase (or sign-up) only to abandon that action you need to do two things. First you should have software that helps you evaluate when people abandon, on what step, on what page etc. Second, you should try to lend a helping hand and get them to complete their purchase. It is this second piece that I think small businesses can do better and create both a triggered email stream but also a social media reach out campaign. There is ample evidence that you want to get the email about the abandoned purchase/signup and offering to help to the customer immediately after they leave your site with the purchase unmade, and then again within 24 hours, beyond that is up to you. It is the time in-between the initial email you send and the one 23 hours later that I think as a small company you can and should be nimble enough to out maneuver your competitors by using social media to not only reach out directly to these customers but to do so in a much more personal way than the mail merge personalized triggered emails. So what can you do in those hours?

First build a list of all the consumers who abandoned during the last 24 hours (if you need to, prioritize by potential purchase size) and determine who you and your team will reach out to. The number of people will depend on the value of the purchase they abandoned and your own cost/benefit of time spent on the next steps, but if you want to grow your business as one that thinks customer service first and is socially adept then I recommend this for at least a few of the top abandoned purchases.

If you are not already using a CRM system and specifically one that allows you to import social media profiles that’s your first stop but for the sake of this article let’s assume you are using CRM and can integrate data from social networks on your customers and prospects.

My first piece of advice is to begin asking your customers for their social media profiles as part of the checkout process, if they are willing to give you their email addresses the probably will not hesitate to save you the trouble of finding them on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Just make the appropriate choice for your business – I recommend LinkedIn & Twitter for B2B and Twitter for B2C, they’ll find you on Facebook, it’s creepy to ask for friendship as a company. This one little change will save you having to take the next step of finding the consumer on the social network appropriate for you.

When a potential customer or site user abandons their cart/signup but gives you their email address (and any other details that are relevant) you have enough to use a service like Rapportive, Xobni, Gist to try to connect that email address and data to social media profiles across a variety of networks. None of these services gets it perfect, but if the email address you have (for the customer) is the one they use on social sites your chance of a match is high.

Once you have the potential consumer’s social media profile it is time to mine it for any information that you can find about the particular purchase they were about to make with you. Did they ask about your product on Twitter? Have they written on the wall on your Facebook page? Asked for recommendations on your products via LinkedIn? Depending on your market you might find exactly how they researched the product and may be able to leverage that information to supply them with anything you think is missing that would make their decision easier. Even more telling, you might just find out exactly why they abandoned their purchase at your site. Did they Tweet about your exhorbinant shipping costs? Great! A perfect opportunity to connect with them in a transparent way and either explain the need for the cost or find a way to lower the cost (be wary about what you make policy in an open forum) and help them become a customer.

You would be shocked at the number of reasons people abandon purchases. Last night I did so because the hockey game went into overtime and you know who could have known that? Anyone company who was looking for why I abandoned my purchase in the late evening because I Tweeted I had to sign off the computer because hockey was getting too intense. Now if the company I was purchasing from wanted to really let me know they cared about winning my business and that I was not just an order number they could easily have keyed off my Tweet and sent me something cleaver and invited me back to the site post game. So what that I was only buying $75 worth golf balls (don’t ask about my short game)? I am obviously a customer who purchases online regularly and as the purchase was my first with the site I could easily have been swayed to complete it by a coupon or really even a personal touch. If the company wanted to blow my mind they would include something related to hockey (even a Go Canucks Go on the invoice would suffice) when they shipped to me.

Gary Vanerchuck calls this the “Thank You Economy” and has his own amazing example of how he used social to reward a loyal wine buyer with Chicago Bears gear rather than a traditional thank you. While Gary did his giving post-purchase, there is no reason you cannot use the same strategy on a smaller scale pre-purchase for those who have recently abandoned a cart.

It may seem like what I am suggesting is daunting when you read it, but these are people who want to buy from you, they’ve already proven that. All you need to do is show them that you’re willing to go the extra mile to make them feel like they are purchasing from a friend and not just a company that seems to send them coupons each time leave a shopping cart mid -purchase.

Some of the best ideas are the ones that at the heart are really quite simple but it is in the execution that the winners and losers are separated. The “coming soon” page has been a staple of Internet business from the very beginnings of websites. As the Internet got more mature so did these pages, initially showing countdown clocks to launch dates and eventually including email signups and social media links. So if the idea was so simple, why then were so many companies struggling to be able to use their coming soon page to help build momentum and hype before launch? Sure many companies promised that if you signed up and tweeted a specific line you would get an advanced place in their beta launch list, but really nobody had come up with a way to make this all automated and effectively simple. Enter Launchrock.

Launchrock executes everything you want in a coming soon page to perfection. It allows you to customize the page with a your own logo and just enough information to tease what your company is going to be about. It allows you to include both an email signup and social media links. Best of all they have built in mechanisms to help you build the momentum and buzz you want for your startup before you’ve even gone live. By letting you set incentives such as inviting 3 friends to get early access to the site, Launchrock has taken the best of what has been built in disparate places and brought it together in an extremely simple and yet beautifully executed online application.

Still in beta, you can sign up to get your own invite and of course if you share with your friends you will get that invite even faster. I highly encourage you to check it out.

A really great example from the NBA’s Phoenix Suns (via Eloqua’s All About Revenue blog) on how using unique and deep personalization in your email marketing can drive incredible results. The Suns like any other business are looking to drive revenue from email marketing and similar to many other businesses know that their best chance at success is with previous customers, in this case former season ticket holders.  In order to make a truly personal and unique connection to their former consumers the Suns marketing team took a look at all the information available to them about these previous customers in their CRM system and tried to mine it for the most personal connection they could make. With that goal in mind they landed on a piece of information available to them about every former season ticket holder that was also completely personal to the particular customer, the date of their first season ticket purchase. 

The team then used this date to create a highly personalized email campaign in conjunction with several different microsites that covered different eras of the team’s history. By playing on the emotional connection that each fan has with the team and the fact that each team has marquee players at different times the entire campaign seemed like one-to-one marketing. If you first bought tickets in the 2004 you would be treated to an email that spoke of Steve Nash’s free agent signing and MVP win and their incredible 62-20 regular season. The links in that email would have taken you to a microsite with images and messages that related to the Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire years when the Suns went deep in the playoffs several times. Each former ticket holder was sent a series of emails and taken to a site with images and messages the era when they first bought their tickets. Considering how passionate sports fans are, the highly personal email and reconnection made between team and fan had incredible results.

The campaign resulted in a 45% open rate, a 34% click-through rate and more than $200,000 in renewed ticket sales. Andrea Lechner-Becker said the Sun’s objective was to make a campaign that was “as customized and therefore personalized as ever” and they certainly hit the mark.

This campaign and the fantastic results show that the ability to form a deep connection with your customers can be found by simply looking at your customer data in new ways and using that in creative ways to form or reform a bond with your consumers or prospects.

What is the best marketing email you have received recently? Please share via comments and continue the conversation on Twitter #bestemail

QR Codes are everywhere from business cards to movie posters. I encourage those who sell physical products where you have the opportunity to include a label and where there is any sort of authentic backstory or marketing spin on the product to think about using a QR Code on the product labeling and integrating it with a social media campaign, email marketing and a dedicated website. There are an endless range of products with which you can tell a positive story and make a further connection between consumer and brand post purchase. From organic food to clothing you have an opportunity to engage your customers when they are considering their purchase, but even more post purchase. Check out how the Detroit Red Wings engaged consumers of programs at a home hockey game.Using a shoe company as an example, the amount of marketing support that goes into hyping a shoe product pre-purchase is amazing. However once a consumer purchases the shoes the connection to the brand is certainly felt in wearing the product, but the connection to the hype and the ability to make the customer feel warm and fuzzy about their purchase is lost. Why not include a little toe tag on the shoe that has a QR Code and informs the consumer that purchasing the shoe is just the beginning, they are about to enter the “insert shoe company family“. The shoe company could then use the QR Code to link to both a social site (Facebook) where there was an exclusive group for shoe owners only. Within the group the company could offer new videos, product information, create local events and best of all cross-sell and upsell products. Taking the idea of an integrated marketing campaign further, by using the date the QR Code was activated as a guide, the company could trigger an email marketing program that culminated with a coupon to get the next pair of shoes after “x” months. This would allow for the company to keep consumers connected to the brand for the months after purchase and give them an opportunity to become a repeat customer by giving them a feeling of exclusivity with the VIP coupon. You could even combine this with my advice to Non Profits regarding “Sponsored Stories.”

If your product is even more unique and you make it yourself or the backstory is genuine and compelling, you can and should find a way to use QR Codes to drive customers and potential customers to those stories. With websites being so cost effective to create and consumers rewarding brands who give them a reason to feel connected, you have the right ingredients to create brand experiences for your customers post purchase. I would highly recommend you check out some of the amazing way companies and individuals have used Moo cards to create labels and tags that are attached to products. With a little creativity and some technical savvy you could create a stand out product tag that also linked to your Facebook campaign which was of course integrated to your microsite and email marketing.

Using technology to help you connect your customers post purchase will make your level of repeat customer and therefore lifetime value of each customer that much more attractive. For more information on creating your own QR Codes here is a good start. Here are five unique uses for QR codes from Mashable

Your comments and thoughts are always appreciated…So are Retweets and Facebook likes or shares.

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