If you treat your email marketing the same way you treat your direct-mail marketing— that is, if you blast out an email message to all your members and hope for the best—you're missing out on the true potential of the medium. While basic email marketing software is fine for this “spray and pray” approach, marketing automation software takes your digital marketing to the next level.
The key to effective marketing automation is tracking. Both email marketing (EM) software and marketing automation (MA) software can track who received your email, who opened it, and who clicked on any given link, but that's typically where EM tracking ends. MA software lets you build landing pages or microsites within the MA environment so that you can track the member's behavior as they navigate around those pages.
What's more, you can create triggers within the MA software so that the system automatically responds to specific member behavior. For example, if the member opens the email, but takes no further action, the MA software can send one follow-up email. If the member clicks through to the landing page and then takes no further action, the MA software can send a different follow-up email. These triggers don't need to be immediate, either. You can set the follow-up email to go out, for example, in three days so you're not pestering the member.
At least in the credit union world, direct-mail marketing isn't going away anytime soon. Fortunately, many (but not all) MA systems offer features that integrate direct mail. One way is through the generation of personal URLs, or PURLs (pronounced like pearls). Such an MA system will generate a PURL for each mail recipient to be used as part of your mail-merge file. For example, it might generate www.xyzcreditunion.com/john_doe to be included on John Doe's postcard. As soon as Mr. Doe uses that URL, the MA system starts tracking him just as if he'd clicked a link in an email.
Some MA systems can also generate personalized QR codes to be included on direct-mail pieces. These function essentially the same as PURLs, but are particularly handy for mobile users.
A robust marketing automation system not only tracks member behavior over the course of a campaign, but over the course of multiple campaigns. Over time, you can build a unique profile of each member – their presumed likes and dislikes, the types of offers they respond to, etc. You can then use this information to further segment your members for even more precisely targeted campaigns in the future.
Marketo and Pardot are the two biggest names in marketing automation. However, neither may be the right choice for your credit union. First, these are among the most expensive MA platforms. Second, since they focus primarily on digital marketing, they may not offer everything you need to support your direct-mail efforts. For example, neither one currently generates personalized QR codes.
If you're ready to get more from your email marketing efforts, you're well-advised to take a serious look at marketing automation.
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