1. Shifting budgets

Well, the good news is that seven in 10 B2C marketers report having stable budgets and headcounts. But for those who’ve had to shift budgeting priorities, marketers have targeted advertising more than any other area to rein in their expenditures.

2. Assessing martech

Although the majority of B2C marketers say they’re happy with the current systems they have in place to do their jobs, roughly the same number also say they’re seeking new martech solutions in 2023 to keep up or get ahead of current conditions.

And improving customer loyalty is a key motivator. On a deeper dive into our results, we found that B2C marketers at brands with loyalty programs were twice as likely to be seeking new martech solutions as B2C marketers at brands without loyalty programs.

3. Adjusting pricing

Without a doubt, inflation and post-pandemic economic uncertainty are impacting consumers, but more than half of B2C marketers have managed to avoid the discount trap.

Get ahead of economic shifts with personalized marketing

Brands today are on the edge of an unprecedented opportunity to transform how they engage with customers. Those that move swiftly and embrace personalization can dramatically improve their customer experience, increase retention, and remain powerful players in the market. By harnessing the power of an advanced customer engagement platform, your company can achieve best-in-class personalization tactics.

A good customer engagement platform needs to:

• Unite robust data management with email, SMS, and mobile app marketing — all in one platform
• Consolidate all data from anywhere in your tech stack and activate it to power your outreach
• Provide easy-to-use workflows to simplify and accelerate campaign development
• Leverage predictive analytics to let you delight customers by anticipating their needs
• Empower you to deliver the consistent, cross-channel experiences customers expect

At Cordial, we’re customer data experts who can guide you to personalization success. Get in touch to schedule a demo and find out how we can put our insights to work for you.

The post Survey highlights: How are B2C marketers faring with current economic conditions? appeared first on Cordial.

So although transaction-driven campaigns are often the stars of marketing automation, focusing on more efficient customer service can improve your net gains and ultimately promote your customer loyalty at the same time. And the key is to tap into self-service automations.

Why automate more of your customer service?

By leveraging real-time customer and business data for self-service strategies, you can unburden your customer service department and/or onsite staff from many of the manual processes and one-on-one customer interactions that otherwise may drain your resources.

For instance, let’s say you’ve encountered an unexpected supply-chain issue on a high-demand product that will cause serious delays, and it affects existing orders. To fend off a wave of customer complaints, you could set up a series of data-driven automations to notify customers of the issue, give them a choice to wait or to request a refund, offer credits on recommended products as alternatives, or suggest other actions specific to a customer’s profile.

That’s only one example, but the benefits are clear whether you’re on the brand or customer side of self-service automation.

Benefits of self-service automation for brands:

• Reduce costs by improving efficiency.
• Lower call volume to customer service.
• Save time by mitigating issues to avoid escalation.
• Collect data or feedback that could flag new issues or inform strategy.
• Focus customer service more on issues that really require a human being to address.
• Avoid customer complaints with proactive resolutions.
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Prevent customers from turning to your competitors.

Benefits of self-service automation for customers:

• Save time by resolving issues more quickly on your own.
• Avoid articulating and repeating problems to a customer service rep.
• Encounter a shorter average time on hold (ATH) if you must call customer service.
• Enjoy more convenience and satisfaction.
• Feel more empowered.

Popular methods of customer self-service automation

Although there are limitless use cases for self-service automations, these general four areas cover a lot.

Deep links

Instead of providing general calls-to-action to your main website or app, use deep links in emails and texts that go to specific relevant information about customers’ orders and actions they can take for any issues.

And let’s face it, people always can change their minds. For instance, include deep links so customers can update details about their order, whether a change in shipping address, rescheduling of service or delivery, a modification to products/services ordered, or a clear process for returns/exchanges if products delivered were not as expected.

And as one Cordial client notes, this approach can yield significant savings:

“With Cordial, we built up a series of emails that would let customers know when their delayed items were ready for delivery, and in all of our messaging we offered ‘reschedule buttons’ so they could quickly reschedule their deliveries. We believe we have saved $3 million in operating costs a year from people clicking on those messages and completing a self-service transaction.” — Sr. VP of digital transformation at a household goods retailer¹

Chatbots

With all the buzz about artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots will only get more sophisticated. But no chatbot will ever have to pass the Turing Test in order to provide significant value to your customer service. According to Tidio research, 62% of consumers would use a chatbot if it can help them instead of waiting for customer service to take their call.

And the 24/7 always-on nature of chatbots cannot be denied as a powerful tool to help customers. You can script self-service chatbots to help answer common customer questions, show appropriate calls-to-action, or provide links to other information/solutions specific to customers’ queries, order/interaction history, and data profile.

Mobile apps

Whether it’s self-check-in at a hotel or for a flight, scheduling/changing an appointment, or depositing checks, mobile apps can offer plenty of self-service conveniences to your engaged, savvy customers. Since your mobile app customers also provide you with more zero- and first-party data through their app usage, you can leverage that data to offer more personalized self-service options.

Kiosks

Of course, IRL (in real life) still matters. Although mobile apps can facilitate countless use cases, physical kiosks still have their place, especially when customers have to deal with tangible items in person. Consider self-checkout at grocery stores, in-restaurant self-ordering, or checking bags at the airport. All these still thrive on data and automation.

Learn how Cordial can impact your customer service efficiency and more

Cordial commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact study based on a composite organization of clients to examine the potential return on investment for enterprise businesses moving to Cordial. The study found Cordial not only eased the pain of managing multiple solutions but also enabled marketers to be more productive and effective in orchestrating messaging campaigns for high levels of customer engagement.

The TEI study’s quantitative findings include:

• Increased revenue from email, SMS and mobile app marketing valued at $5 million.
• Reduced costs from retiring prior solutions valued at $1.7 million.
• Improved efficiencies from automating customer service valued at $980,400.
• Cost savings preparing data for decision-making valued at $626,400.
• Reduced time producing campaigns valued at $365,800.
• Cost savings creating customer segments valued at $101,600.

Download the full study.

¹ Source: 2023 Forrester Study: The Total Economic Impact of Cordial

The post Why you should prioritize customer self-service automations appeared first on Cordial.

Experiments take the guesswork out of answering those questions by providing a low-risk opportunity to assess the effectiveness of a strategy. And regardless of whether your test proves your hypothesis or not, your results will always yield helpful insights about your customers’ preferences and better direct your next approach to campaign optimization.

Four ways you can benefit from incorporating experiments into your strategy development:

• Build upon learnings from past experiments.
• Optimize existing methods or strategies to boost performance and inform future marketing decisions.
• Validate new ideas you want to explore.
• Prove the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

How Adore Me tested their way into a record-breaking holiday season

1. Message frequency: Build upon learnings from past experiments.

Last holiday season, Adore Me, a leading intimate apparel retailer,  tested the impact of increasing message frequency as it relates to revenue and opt-outs. In their experiment, they increased the number of emails a customer could receive each day, with the maximum number of emails being three. They tested this increased frequency for five days during the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Their experiment resulted in a significant increase in revenue while their unsubscribe rate remained steady.

As the outcome was a happy surprise, they decided to apply this experiment to a larger audience the following year. Adore Me worked with Cordial’s Deliverability team to develop a custom deliverability plan that allowed them to safely triple their daily volume this past holiday season to break through the noise. This strategy paid off for them yet again. They were able to increase orders 13% in a test group that received three emails per day — without increasing unsubscribes — versus a group that only received two emails per day.

2. Landing pages: Optimize methods to boost performance and inform future marketing decisions.

Adore Me ran an experiment on Thanksgiving to determine which website page drove more conversions when linked within an email. They tested two different landing pages: One linked customers to their bra category page, while the other linked customers to a “buy one get one free” (BOGO) sale page.

Adore Me was confident the BOGO landing page would drive more purchases; however, their results showed that the bra category page drove +30% more conversions than the BOGO page. Thanks to Cordial’s nimble platform, the Adore Me team was able to quickly update all of their Black Friday emails the next morning, directing customers to start their shopping on the highest performing page.

3. SMS vs MMS: Validate new ideas you’d like to explore.

With SMS being one of Adore Me’s top performing channels, contributing to 30% of their total CRM revenue, their team is always looking for new ways to engage their customers through this channel. The majority of their mobile messages are SMS, meaning they do not include media such as pictures or videos.

During the holiday, Adore Me’s CRM team had an idea to test MMS vs. SMS performance. They have very strong branding, which includes a lot of editorial imagery, and they wanted to measure how using this imagery in their mobile messaging would impact engagement.

At first glance, their test was a success, with the MMS message generating 4% more revenue than the SMS version. However, they noticed that their opt-out rate was significantly higher for the MMS version than the SMS. They decided that this strategy would need further testing for them to fully crack the case and determine the right formula for their customers.

4. Offers and promotions: Prove the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

This past holiday season Adore Me decided to use a dedicated, aggressive offer that was applicable to all products on their site when trying to reactivate lapsed customers. Adore Me had never created a discount specifically for this audience segment, and had instead offered their lapsed customers the same deals as a new subscriber or other active audience segments. Their discounts, across all audience segments, would typically exclude certain products that might have a tighter margin as well.

However, this year they wanted to pay their lapsed customers more attention and minimize the barrier for these customers to re-engage. Their hypothesis was that a brand new discount that their customers had never seen offered before, combined with the ability to apply that offer to every product on their site, would make more products accessible and therefore drive more conversions. And they were right! Adore Me had a 15% increase in customer reactivation and a 4% increase in revenue attributed to this lapsed audience segment compared to past years. 

By applying a “test first” methodology to their holiday season, Adore Me was able to learn what their customers responded to best and optimize their larger strategies to support those learnings. This strategy paid off big for them. Adore Me had their highest revenue-generating day ever on Black Friday. They also saw a huge increase in engagement and revenue throughout the holiday season, generating 15% more revenue YoY and 45% more revenue than the 2020 holiday season.

Their team attributes  part of their success to the sophistication and flexibility of the Cordial platform. Their team’s ability to quickly and confidently navigate the platform to test and optimize new content has afforded them significant time savings that they can use to  build  more strategic opportunities and experiments.

The post How to effectively leverage experimentation in your marketing campaigns appeared first on Cordial.

But 71% of consumers today expect personalization and 76% are frustrated when their loyalty is not rewarded. Riding the wave up with this rise of D2C now means you need one thing — hyper-personalized campaigns.

With 1:1 personalization, you can customize messages that let you build trust with your consumers and ensure consistency even when times stay unpredictable. Let’s learn how to achieve that with D2C marketing, starting with the fundamentals.

What is direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing?

D2C marketing is a solution for brands to market to their consumers directly, without any middlemen or distribution platforms. You have direct access to all your consumers through communication channels like SMS, email, social media, and push notifications.

In 2022, D2C sales by established brands in the U.S. exceeded $117 billion, with predictions to reach $161 billion by 2024. This means, by surpassing the need for a retailer and dealing directly with consumers, you not only regain control over your brand image and can curate the entire brand experience, but are also able to bring in significantly more income year-on-year.

You can also better establish a personal relationship with the people buying your products or services and better manage the time, frequency, and clarity of all your messages. More and more brands are looking to invest in this strategy today and for good reason.

5 notable benefits of D2C marketing:

1. Optimize your supply chain management.

Understand the demand for your products and services year-round and optimize your supply chain and manufacturing processes significantly.

2. Adapt quickly to market needs.

Remain flexible and adapt to dynamic market conditions, and outperform the competitors by keeping up with your consumers’ preferences.

3. Measure your success strategically.

Prioritize the metrics that signify growth for your brand and prioritize the KPIs that quantify success for you in the short term and long term.

4. Lower costs while increasing profits.

Improve profit margins by selling directly to your consumers and cutting additional costs like retailers and distributors entirely.

5. Personalized marketing campaigns.

D2C marketing equips you to collect your consumers’ feedback with detailed data like their purchase history to create personalized campaigns and lead to higher loyalty.

What is the difference between D2C and B2C marketing strategy?

While both D2C and B2C marketing strategies have similarities like direct consumer targeting, there are some key differences between the two of them. While a B2C strategy relies on pushing sales through a distribution platform, a D2C strategy gives you total control over your marketing and advertising strategy to reach every consumer directly.

For example, Daily Insight Group partnered with businesses like Tarot.com and Numerology.com to give every consumer a daily personalized horoscope and astrology reading. The brand leveraged first-party data to create a sustainable advantage and programmatically personalized its emails to improve purchases by over 300%.

5 D2C marketing strategies you can employ:

1. Offer customized subscriptions.

Have every consumer choose their subscription and customize it to their liking. It’s effective because you can retain customers and improve their lifetime value by building a predictable revenue source and knowing exactly how much inventory you need to maintain.

2. Employ social media.

Enhance your customers’ overall brand experience using social media platforms. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram can all be great for building an online community to collect a ton of direct feedback and incorporate that to refine your marketing strategy, such as connecting social to email campaigns.

3. Turn marketing into a game.

Engage and retain every consumer by turning their experience with your brand into a game. Gamification is a great way to motivate your consumers through challenges and rewards, turning your brand into a thrilling, fun experience they want to return to and engage with regularly.

4. Craft targeted content.

Transform content into a way of leveraging first-hand consumer experiences to establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry. Content marketing both educates and entertains your target audience based on what they want to learn, helping you bond your brand with their interests successfully. For example, original content recommendations can go a long way to build loyalty and trust.

5. Influence your brand image.

Collaborate with influencers to reach a larger audience and market your products or services more effectively. Influencer marketing can transform a faceless brand into a personality-driven community of consumers who both understand and support your brand’s mission.

How automated 1:1 personalization can impact D2C campaigns

One common trait among all successful D2C marketing strategies is their ability to leverage precious first-party data. There is power in knowing the products and pages your consumers have interacted with, purchased, and disliked, and 1:1 personalization is the solution. Brands like Molson Coors have turned this data into hugely successful revenue charts even at the height of a global pandemic.

All elements of your brand, from product ideation to marketing to consumer service, can benefit from accessing and analyzing consumer data on an individual level. By personalizing every step of their purchase, you can curate your consumer’s brand experience to best reflect their needs.

5 reasons why 1:1 automation is vital for D2C brands:

1. Increase revenue with better targeting.

Turn the consumer’s likes and dislikes into hyper-target media across your channels, improving conversion rates and net revenue.

2. Tailor your messaging.

Dynamically personalize every consumer’s product recommendations as they shop, increasing your consumer lifetime value significantly.

3. Identify individual pain points.

Identify potential issues and resolve them with UX improvements or personalized ads to ensure a frictionless shopping experience for every consumer.

4. Build a loyal consumer base.

Make every customer feel special, inviting them to leave positive feedback, write reviews, and build brand loyalty.

5. Plan future scaling efforts.

Reach more consumers and scale your brand with better offerings without losing the touch of personalization.

How to boost ROI with automated 1:1 campaigns for D2C

Consumer relationships are one of the most important elements for any D2C brand. A staggering 80% of Sephora’s sales come from within their Beauty Insiders loyalty program, and they have over 25 million members.

This is proof that added incentives like free samples and bonuses that are curated to fit the consumer’s purchasing patterns go a long way to boosting the brand’s performance. A tried-and-tested campaign invokes an emotional bond between the consumer and the brand and can immediately differentiate you from the competitors.

10 of the most effective campaign types for D2C brands to improve ROI:

1. Send special invitations.

Make your consumers feel valued by sending them special invitations to brand events, both online and offline. These interactions help consumers build trust with your brand and drive more sales in the long run.

2. Personalize your offers.

Turn one sale idea into thousands of personalized offers for each of your consumers by leveraging some aspect of their first-party data. Their favorite categories, purchasing patterns, and other behavior can help you understand the best approach for personalizing the offer and boosting revenue.

3. Reduce cart abandonment.

Notify consumers who have added products to their online shopping carts but haven’t completed the purchase yet. Each consumer with an abandoned cart is a high-intent buyer and a few reminders can significantly impact your conversion rate.

4. Push back-in-stock products.

Consumers if they wish to be notified if their product of choice is out of stock and send a message when you restock it. With this campaign, you also get better control over your inventory and easily ensure your consumers’ needs are always met.

5. Launch a rewards program.

Convert your current consumers into lifelong members by encouraging them to become a part of your exclusive rewards program and offering them incentives like birthday discounts and loyalty points. With automated messaging, every member also gets personalized notifications and is more likely to buy from you.

6. Share price drop alerts.

Maximize your inventory by strategically dropping specific products’ prices and notifying consumers who have browsed, wishlisted, or bought that product before. This sense of immediacy is a powerful tool to increase engagement and conversion and allows you to build a strong brand image in the consumers’ minds.

7. Celebrate their milestones.

Transform consumer-brand interactions into key milestones they get rewarded for crossing. So the frequency of purchasing, loyalty points, or the total amount spent in a year can get the consumer a bonus voucher or special discount code and solidify their relationship with your brand.

8. Make personalized recommendations.

Study your consumers’ shopping patterns to share logic-based product recommendations that they will likely buy from your brand. By showing the consumer that you know and care about their preferences, you can increase their cart value and bring in more profits while enhancing their brand confidence.

9. Reward them for referrals.

Improve your footfall massively by rewarding your consumers for every new consumer they can bring to the brand. Lucrative cash-backs and other incentives are good ways to improve engagement and push your existing consumers to promote your brand organically.

10. Win back lost consumers.

Track which consumers have recently stopped purchasing from your brand and reach out to them with personalized messages to make them feel valued and regain their trust. By attempting to make contact with past customers, you help boost sales and repeat buyers.

Examples of D2C brands winning with automated personalization

When stepping into the world of D2C, it’s a good idea to take inspiration from brands that have employed automated personalization strategies and campaigns to succeed in their industries and occupy a major chunk of the market share today.

Here are 10 D2C brands that stand out and what you can learn from each:

1. Adore Me

Adore Me is a D2C lingerie and swimwear brand that gives consumers a personalized shopping experience with 1:1 automation. Their tailored approach to marketing across all platforms is focused on the consumer’s style, which they learn using their first-party data and an online quiz about the shopper’s unique needs and preferences.

2. BarkBox

BarkBox is a subscription-based D2C brand that customizes a monthly delivery box to the consumer’s doorstep filled with treats, activities, and toys for their dog. Based on the dog’s breed, age, diet, allergies, and other needs, the brand offers several subscription options with 24/7 customer service and a happiness guarantee for their 2 million consumers.

3. Casper

Casper is a popular D2C sleep products brand that encourages consumers to take a free online sleep habits quiz and learn which pillows and other products would be best suited for them. By getting to know its consumers well, the brand can improve its offerings and ensure a seamless shopping experience from discovery to delivery at an affordable price point.

4. Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is a subscription-based D2C brand for men’s grooming products personalized and delivered at a set frequency. Along with learning about the consumers’ needs with 1:1 automation to tailor their selection of products, the brand also shares shaving tips across its channels to establish itself as an expert in the industry.

5. Glossier

Glossier is a renowned skincare and cosmetics D2C brand that rose to fame with its marketing campaigns that employed a range of automated personalization techniques to attract and retain consumers. The brand leverages first-party data to personalize ads for its consumers and targets its 1:1 messaging with recommendations based on their purchasing behavior.

6. Lume

Lume Deodorant is a D2C brand for doctor-developed, aluminum-free deodorants driving business growth with their automation strategies to create dynamic content blocks and connect thousands of data points to personalize the consumer experience. Their use of Abandon Browse campaigns and personalized recommendations based on their online quiz helps them turn visitors into loyal consumers to quadruple revenue.

7. Mixtiles

Mixtiles is a D2C brand that turns consumer photos into wall art tailored to their decor preferences. The brand uses automation to understand its consumers’ needs and increase retention with retargeted ads. Their personalized messaging aligns with the consumer’s style and makes every browsing experience feel unique to their taste, helping the brand achieve high repeat customers and boosting conversion rates.

8. Saatva

Saatva is a D2C home and lifestyle brand for home furnishings and luxury mattresses that leverages its data platform to send automated emails to every consumer and visitor and stands out from its competitors with its unique offerings. With Cordial’s platform, they’ve improved their abandoned cart consumers by 80% and crafted a sustainable marketing strategy across email, SMS, and website.

9. Thinx

Thinx is a well-known D2C feminine hygiene products brand that helps consumers understand and navigate menstruation with their range of sustainable and personalized product experiences. The brand’s social mission combined with its 1:1 automation marketing strategy helped them amass a huge following and provide innovative solutions to every consumer’s unique needs.

10. Warby Parker

Warby Parker is an online D2C eyewear brand that employs its online quiz to understand every consumer’s face shape, and style, and needs to recommend a selection of glasses that are tailored to suit them. Through their website, social media, and email communications, they also maintain a 1:1 relationship with their consumers to keep up engagement and boost consumer retention.

Is your brand leveraging your customer data?

D2C brands leveraging the power of 1:1 automation exceed their projections and supplement their revenue with millions of dollars. Understanding your consumers’ needs, likes, and preferences is the key to driving success. By maintaining seamless cross-channel experiences with personalized marketing campaigns, your consumers will engage more and organically grow your brand with every purchase.

At Cordial, we work to help you realize this power. With our solutions team, discover how to leverage your consumers’ data to drive growth. Request a demo to learn more today.

The post How to use automated 1:1 personalization in direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing  appeared first on Cordial.

There are certain words that almost always make people cringe. The word moist can describe a delicious characteristic of cake, yet it consistently ranks among the most hated words in the English language. So hated is the word moist, it inspired a group of college professors to research reasons for word aversion, our universal tendency to react badly to certain words.

Yet, speaking of word aversion, another word most people try to avoid is recession.

Who wants to bandy about the word synonymous with an extended period of economic decline? Not us, that’s for sure. That said, for the past months (or year) there has been so much talk of a looming recession, that we thought we’d take a completely different approach to the topic:

What if we could collectively gain invaluable 20/20 hindsight and share incredible lessons learned from the past recession?

Lessons from recessions

Much like facing the proverbial monsters hiding under the bed, naming your fears helps dissipate them. In the case of fear of a future recession, it’s incredibly empowering to better understand the last one and the ways to strengthen and empower your brand now to better face whatever comes next.

Hyper-growth expert and e-commerce native Emily Culp is widely considered one of the world’s most influential C-suite leaders. During her years of leading brands and consulting, she has led and advised early-stage high-growth to multi-billion dollar brands on how to build and scale global consumer-centric companies, or how to reposition brands when needed. Culp, who is a Cordial board member, walked us through some of the major issues of the 2008 recession and offered some surprising and inspiring takeaways.

Whether you were running a business during the last recession or still in college, Culp offered both insights and advice to help you through whatever comes next.

What have marketers and leaders learned since the last recession?

It’s crucial to realize that there are always choices. The most important thing for any leader to remember is the world is full of options. The key is understanding what are the resource trade-offs (in terms of human and financial capital).

Culp explained if you have this type of mindset, regardless of what happens in the economy, modern marketers and leaders have an amazing opportunity to gain marketshare if they listen to their consumers and truly leverage technology and consumer insights to inform every aspect of their business.

Just think about the fact that a CDP (customer data platform) wasn’t commonplace, and outreach channels like TikTok to gaming didn’t exist (or were not mainstream) 10 yrs ago. And while social media existed, it wasn’t optimized or used in the same targeted way we do now. It’s a far more sophisticated process that includes not only selecting your influencer, getting the user-generated content that works for your brand, but also posting it, responding, and finally monitoring the data.

Then you add into your marketing playbook the dramatic evolution of email and SMS marketing. The options are exponential with the right partner, but the plethora of data collected and how to use it in a timely way becomes critical. Hence, platforms like Cordial and Substack were created, and marketers now can create a CDP light solution that will enable them to truly understand who their consumer is and then provide them with the right product and offer in a creative way that appeals to them.

Marketers can create value for their companies right now

We believe that by preparing now for an uncertain future, marketers have the ability to strengthen their companies and customer relationships. 

Culp offered three tips to help marketers amp up value creation for their companies, along with case studies from her own experience to flesh out these concepts.

1. Be obsessed with solving consumer pain points…

Only then can you start to focus on what technology can best be utilized to address it. For example, when Culp worked with fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff, they discussed the greatest pitfalls when trying on clothing in a dressing room. They were:

• Light. What would the outfit look like in normal/outdoor light or for an evening?
• Sizing. What if a customer needed another size but didn’t want to get fully changed again to find a sales associate and ask for it?
• Time constraints. If the customer was in a rush and didn’t want to wait in line to pay for an item.

Based on these critical issues, Culp led the team to develop proprietary hardware and software to address each one of these pain points so they could better engage and service consumers. Culp said, “It worked as seen in the revenue the store drove and created a whole cohort of high-value omnichannel consumers.”

2. Invest in adequate resources in customer experience (including human and  financial capital).

Culp explained that a critical step in all of this means investing in the building of “optimal teams” including UX designers, social media managers, data analysts, etc.

Along with that, empower your business with business intelligence tools and systems to provide everything from SKU-level data to predictive analytics “that enable better personalization in the shopping journey.”

Culp said processes are equally important. “You can have great people and tools, but if you don’t have processes on how to elevate insights and quickly act on them it doesn’t drive true value for the business.”

3. Measure the right metrics.

If you’re not constantly measuring your results and improving on them, you might be wasting opportunities for growth. Culp said that she deeply believes that “companies will drive the greatest value creation if there is a clear vision for the company and the team is fully aligned on a core set of key performance indicators (KPIs) such as EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), customer lifetime value (LTV), and margin and growth.”

That doesn’t mean metrics are identical in every industry, but rather that your C-level team should agree on critical metrics and monitor accordingly.

Okay, we’ve looked ahead to what might happen and how to potentially shore up your business now. But what skills are available to marketers now that weren’t available back then?

What skills, tactics, and tools can marketers use now that might not have been available back then?

Culp summed up these main abilities for marketers that were not available during the last recession:

Embracing agility

“Your consumers’ world is constantly shifting due to a multitude of factors, and your team should be excited and ready to adapt, test, learn, and optimize in order to engage and grow your business successfully,” Culp said. Keep in mind, though, that “this agility also needs to be carried over to budget and long-range planning.” While you’re at it, Culp said to “always have three business scenarios where it is very clear on what is fixed vs. variable.”

Exploring the phygital

The phygital (physical + digital) world is truly here. “Gen Z loves buying something for themselves in the digital world that maybe they can’t afford yet in IRL,” Culp said. Sometimes it’s because it’s fun to simply express themselves in a way that is different in one rather than the other. And then there are the practicalities of understanding how to create a combined effort. “Web3 technologies have advanced, and having an NFT with your engagement ring info is now doable,” Culp said. If something happens to the ring, you don’t need to find any documentation since “you have all the info saved in NFT and can take it with you anywhere in the world.” [Learn more about non-fungible tokens (NFTs).]

Celebrating customer uniqueness

Every consumer is truly different and special. Hence a one-size-fits-all philosophy didn’t work then and it certainly doesn’t work now. “It is important to spend the time and money to conduct consumer research and then model out which segment of consumers really drives LTV for your business,” Culp explained. Once that’s done, “you invest in the technology and resources to deliver personalized SMS, email, connected TV (CTV) messages, which in turn drive profitable growth.”

How have consumers changed since the last recession?

To boil things down, think Gen Z now vs. Millennials then.

“Gen Z grew up with technology and therefore have fully embraced physical and digital worlds blended,” Culp said. But they want to be respected. Culp said they’re not fans of social commerce because it is disruptive to their use of the channel. More than that, “they seek authentic engagement with brands.” That might involve direct brand messaging from a person and not AI.

Gen Z is more globally connected at a younger age. Culp said they’re more aware of brands that might not be native to the U.S. In other words, they love the art of exploration. In what feels a bit like a dichotomy, Culp said they’re also very focused on justice and the environment — though their purchases from fast fashion brands like Shein might not always reflect that.

What can you do right now to ensure success?

If you prefer to focus on the here and now, Culp offered two main tips that go beyond getting past trying to predict what the economy will look like.

1. Be a student of your consumer. 

Get to know everything about your targeted demographic. Read the social media comments on your accounts. If your products are sold retail, make sure to go into a store at least once a week and “and either work at the store or casually watch your consumers and talk to your retail staff.” And then take things deeper and read the customer service comments and returns and more. “The more you know about your consumer the more you will be able to truly engage them and, most importantly, retain them and turn them into advocates,” Culp said.

2. Invest in the right customer data platform (CDP). 

“Make sure you have the right omnichannel messaging platform and team behind it. The brands that will win will have amazing products but truly exceptional customer service,” Culp said. That means tailoring all offers and messages to each consumer. “That is how you will drive true value creation,” Culp said. It’s also a great tool to recession-proof your business.

The post What can marketers learn from previous recessions? appeared first on Cordial.

Here are five ways to connect with your audience beyond a one-time sale to build lasting relationships that result in returning customers.

1. Lead your conversion with your audience in mind.

When developing your community of buyers, it’s crucial to understand the difference between speaking at your audience vs. talking with them. Within your messaging, lead with open dialog that encourages people to engage with one another, the brand, or share the content with their friends and family. Doing this makes your content more of an invitation to a conversation.

A powerful way to entice your customers to share with their online community is to create loyalty referral programs. These programs incentivize current customers while allowing new ones to try out your brand’s experience with a great deal. Another impactful way of encouraging your customer dialogue is by requesting feedback.

For example: Within its email marketing campaigns, The Frye Company provides a great example of requesting feedback in a thoughtful, rewarding way.

As customers share honest feedback on product releases or recent campaigns, reward them with a coupon for their next purchase. This gesture is a form of appreciation as well. So your customers will feel appreciated for their time while your internal team collects valuable input from your customers to improve current and upcoming campaigns.

Furthermore, incorporating thoughtful conversion methods can help you identify the advocates of your brand. Advocates are customers who express loyalty by repeat purchasing and sharing your brand in personal content on social media. If they decide to use your brand’s hashtag without being paid to do so, you have found yourself an advocate who deeply loves your brand.

2. Stay respectful of your marketing power.

As marketers, we hold a great deal of responsibility for capturing and storing customers’ data. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the concerns with data usage and protection have continued to rise, and rightfully so. Through marketing efforts and advertising, we gain access to information that can put our consumers at risk if we do not handle that data with care and intentionality. A data breach that involves the personal information of your customers can lead to damage to your brand’s trust and reputation.

Beyond the obvious reasons for privacy concerns, we have an ethical obligation to be mindful and protective of the data we receive from consumers. A recent study states, “Despite 65% of consumers worrying their personal data was being used without their permission, 63% were comfortable with personalization if it was first-party data that was acquired voluntarily.” Although we must be intentional with data protection, we shouldn’t shy away from creating a personalized experience for our customers when they’ve willingly opted-in for updates or incentives. Message personalization should be thoughtful while upholding respect for privacy.

The use of AI technology through first-party data is a fantastic opportunity to personalize your customer’s journey thoughtfully and respectfully.

For example: The grocery brand Misfits Market utilizes AI for shopping recommendations for its customers, allowing them to customize or change products or set preferences as their leisure.

Being strategic with first-party data and adding creativity to your user experience will keep your customers engaged and your brand compliant.

3. Leverage segmentation and personalization based on audience behaviors.

Actively listening to your customers through audience behaviors is a powerful way to discover more about what your consumers like and to identify areas of opportunity that can maximize campaign success and high conversion rates. When building thoughtful messaging, personalization and segmentation go hand in hand. They’re very different but equally significant. Through segmentation, you can ensure the right messages for the right audiences (or safeguard those who opted out). At the same time, personalization brings a unique experience to your customer that’s special to them.

Through behavioral segmentation, you can leverage the first-party data and user journey to follow and engage the user throughout the buying experience entirely.

For example: Kroger shoppers receive digital coupons for products they shop for most frequently. This is a great way to reward repeat buyers and, in turn, reinforce their habit of monitoring digital coupon offerings.

4. Incorporate the 80/20 rule into your messaging.

Although we’re marketers, we’re also humans that understand what it feels like to be targeted through marketing and “persuaded” to buy something that we may or may not need (or didn’t realize that we needed it until we’re introduced to it). During our overloaded Information Era, consumers are more skeptical of brands than ever before. It’s why influencer marketing has become a 16 billion dollar industry. Word-of-mouth advertising still rules, and it’s better to be influenced than “sold to,” which means people are more likely to trust people over brands.

So how do you minimize the feeling of mistrust from consumers? Nurture a relationship with them through the 80/20 rule of marketing. Brand Muscle describes the 80/20 rule as creating 80% content that educates, entertains, or offers solutions to their problems, and letting the remaining 20% of content merit your ability to promote your business explicitly. Having the majority of your content weighing toward helping your audience cultivates an experience where your customers can connect on a deeper level beyond a mere sale.

5. Celebrate your audience with user-generated content.

The celebration of your customers is more than just a strategy. It is the most significant way to express appreciation for their patronage of your business. It helps solidify the relationship beyond transactional and gives them a reason to be excited about connecting with your brand.

The great writer Maya Angelou left us with the wisdom that people will forget what you said and may forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. This applies to consumers’ experience with brands they love, digitally or in person.

User-generated content is when you encourage fans to share branded content online that they tag or use a specific hashtag in hopes of being featured by the brand. It easily integrates into holistic marketing campaigns, including cross-channel loyalty programs encouraging people to share their experiences and feedback with the brand and other followers.

For example: Brands like Wayfair and Getaway House leverage the impact of UGC to celebrate customers while inspiring them to share and engage beyond a purchase.

The Getaway House infuses all of its user-generated content into its multi-channel marketing approach, including its loyalty club for avid travelers that love unique experiences.

So whether you’re fine-tuning your segmentations, seeking ways to personalize your customer’s experience with intentionality and mindfulness toward their privacy, or enhancing your loyalty program, consider the type of connection your brand desires to create with its customers. If you want brand advocates that share their love without being constantly reminded, take intentional care with fostering relationships at every touchpoint they will have with your brand.

See more email campaign examples:

• Article: 5 popular email drip campaign examples
• Article: Abandoned cart email examples
• Article: Browse abandonment email examples
• Article: Holiday email campaign examples
• Article: Post-purchase email examples
• Article: Recommendations email examples
• Article: Retention and win-back email examples
• Article: Welcome email examples from leading brands

The post How to nurture advocates through marketing campaigns appeared first on Cordial.

Automated 1:1 marketing personalization enables you to customize your messages and content to specific customer segments in real time. It presents growth opportunities that weren’t possible even 10 years ago. By combining the 4 Ps of marketing with automated marketing personalization, you can create more effective, targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience for a major positive impact on your bottom line.

Let’s learn how to organize today’s Martech capabilities within this classic paradigm.

4 Ps of marketing

In marketing, what are the four Ps?

• Product — The product is the offer — what a business produces or provides to satisfy customer needs. Product, as it applies here, includes both tangible and intangible items such as goods, services, experiences, activities, events, digital products, ideas, knowledge, and information.
• Place — As the distribution channels used to get a product or service to the consumer, place includes physical and digital locations, such as retail stores, websites, and marketplaces. Place also involves activities that make the product or service available for use or consumption by the end user.
• Price — As the cost of the offer, price is one of the most important elements of the marketing mix and can have a significant impact on a company’s profitability. Price is determined by the cost of production, competitors’ pricing, and the target market’s ability to pay, paired with their desire for the offer.
• Promotion — As the communication strategy that a business uses to reach the target audience, usually via advertising, promotion is how the company informs, persuades, and reminds potential customers of the offer. It helps to think of promotion as an invitation, either to an actual sales event or to the desired outcome of an offer.

Today, the 4 Ps framework gives you another way to think about automated 1:1 personalization.

1. Product

First, how does automated 1:1 personalization impact the product? Product falls into the personalization pool many times. To personalize marketing in its most fundamental form, you can either offer your market the opportunity to customize a product or you can tailor an offer.

For example, Mixtiles lets customers upload their own images and customize sizing and framing for photo products. You can also customize product options — countless products across various brands come with size, color, and or material variations, giving customers the option to make something their own, and all of this is 1:1 personalization. You can personalize product recommendations based on a shopper’s browsing or purchase history, or brand affinity (the shopper’s favorite brands). In fact, one of Cordial’s email marketing clients delivered two automated campaigns with brand affinity scoring alongside new arrivals and low-in-stock messaging to earn an additional $14.9 million in one year; these campaigns generated an average order value of $290.

In this way, you can apply personalization to recommendations, new arrivals, back-in-stock, low-in-stock, and buy-again orders, all focused on the product as it falls under the 4 Ps. In its simplest form, to apply 1:1 personalization, you could just give your customer the option to get a notification when an offer they are interested in is available.

Patagonia allows shoppers to request availability updates on their “out of stock” product pages. Those who opt-in enter into a list segment on a per-product basis. When the item becomes available again, it triggers a new email campaign and sends a message to the relevant list segment.

[Image source]

You also could target “buy again” or “replenishment” campaigns to anyone who purchases an item or anyone who writes a 4 or 5-star review (depending on the technology available). These campaigns would either ask the customer to make a repeat purchase or buy a complementary item.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to product:

• Recommendations
• Brand affinity
• Back in stock
• Low in stock
• Buy again
• Review request
• Replenishment

2. Place

Next, automated personalization: How does it affect place as it applies to the 4 Ps? Really, you just have to think about where your customers receive their products. Let’s start with the fundamentals — delivery and shipping. After that, we’ll touch on a handful of others.

Personalized delivery automation is huge with offers like DoorDash. Modern delivery services involve personalized marketing 1:1 automation at several touch points. For one, the DoorDash app makes personalized recommendations based on the user’s location and establishments that offer the fastest delivery times. These touch points are most relevant to the place, but DoorDash also uses automation to deliver “buy it again” campaigns, coupons, and featured restaurants.

Where shipping is concerned, automated personalization can complete tasks like cost and service availability estimations based on the customers’ ZIP code. For example, the costs vary across shipping types such as standard, express, or overnight, and by the carrier. Today, a customer can enter their ZIP code in most online stores and instantly see which options are available, how much it will cost, and how many days it will take to receive their order for each option.

Customers can also opt to buy online pickup in-store (BOPIS) and buy online return in-store (BORIS); these are both examples of place options in automated marketing personalization. Personalization enters these similarly to shipping: The customer enters their location or ZIP code and immediately sees where they can pick up or return an item.

Brands like Uber fully personalize the travel experience. Primarily, they offer instant price estimates for a ride from one place to another, based on the user’s current location, travel time, and size of vehicle needed for the commute. The options shown to users are also based on which drivers are available in the area in real time.

Using similar technology, geolocation campaigns can target people in a certain location to receive an offer. Some retailers have used in-app coupons that are triggered when an app user enters one of their stores. Local businesses use geolocation targeting to send ads to people in their region, city, or neighborhood all the time.

You can also personalize weather-based and localized campaigns based on location. This is an inherent feature with iOS and Android smart devices (iPhones seem to believe all new owners are in Cupertino before they configure their permissions). You might employ this type of tech when you want to update customers about poor road conditions, inclement weather, or other hazardous conditions in their area.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to place:

• BOPIS – buy online pickup in store
• BORIS – buy online return in store
• Delivery 
• Shipping – Delivery dates/costs based on zip code and rate 
• Travel – customer journey steps during travel
• Geolocation 
• Weather-based campaigns
• Localized campaigns

3. Price

Then, what is the outcome of automated personalization on price? As a rule, you won’t use personalization to change your actual pricing strategy, but you can use it to enhance your audience’s perceived value of an offer based on price changes and available discounts.

Price drop alerts are one example of how this works. Millions of consumers use apps like Honey exclusively for this feature, so there’s no doubt price drops are a factor in purchase decisions. If you can integrate price drop alerts into your marketing strategy, you’ll be one step closer to higher earnings.

Personalization can also strengthen your marketing through limited-time, personal, and upsell offers. If you deliver these types of campaigns with an air of exclusivity and base them on previous purchases and behaviors, they will have more impact. For instance, New York Times’ free, personalized subscribers are twice as likely to become paying subscribers.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to price:

• Price drop alerts
• Limited time offers
• Personal offers
• Coupon codes
• Upsell campaigns

4. Promotion

Finally, how is promotion influenced by automated personalization? Email and social media are two of the best channels for promotion. So, let’s talk about how successful brands use them for this purpose.

Welcome messages come in all flavors but are best served with a dash of personalization. Of course, if you know the target’s name or location, you can include these details in your communications — but today’s automation can go far beyond that. Amplify your welcome experience by tapping into whatever behaviors you’ve already learned from the customer, whether recommendations based on browsing history or, if they’ve made a first purchase, a personalized offer to incentivize their second purchase.

Customer loyalty and referral programs are other types of promotion that are more successful when personalized for the referrer. Enhance the personalization aspect of your programs with unique referral codes for each customer, different rewards based on the referrer’s purchase history, and discounts or cash bonuses to use toward their favorite products or brands.

Next, you must personalize milestones and personal event markers for them to be effective. So, step one is to track and understand your customers’ behavior. With the information you gather, you can get creative and implement milestone marketing beyond simple happy birthday messages (or you could play on that as Reddit does with their users’ “cake day”).

At long last, consider your win-back campaigns — do they include enough personalization? A tailored approach is crucial when you want to re-engage a customer who hasn’t taken action in a while. Always present offers that are likely to be relevant and appealing if you want to win someone back.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to promotion:

• Welcome
• Customer loyalty
• Milestones
• Personal event markers
• Referral program
• Win-back

Takeaway

Recently, automated personalization has improved customer experience in major ways, which has had a positive impact on ROI for many brands. Modern technology makes it possible to implement marketing tactics that were inconceivable even a decade ago. Meanwhile, the 4 Ps framework has been around at least since the 1950s. When united, automated personalization and the 4 Ps are an unstoppable force that you can leverage to power your marketing results.

To see how you can use Cordial to level up your personalized 1:1 messaging campaigns, schedule a demo today.  

The post How to apply 1:1 personalization to the 4 Ps of marketing appeared first on Cordial.

What are SMS long codes?

Long codes, which are standard 10-digit phone numbers, can make messages feel like they are coming from a person rather than a bot. However, this level of personalization comes with a price tag along with reduced throughput. 

• Timing: Messages sent from a long code can be processed at a rate of only one message per second. In addition, you cannot send MMS messages via a long code. 
• Best use: Long codes work best when your business strategy is focused on customer service, communicating one-to-one with your customers, or if you prefer to have a consistent phone number displayed to recipients across channels. 

What are SMS short codes?

We recommend short codes, which are short 5- or 6-digit telephone numbers, as the preferred method of sending marketing messages to your subscribers. 

They have greater message throughput than long codes and take about 8-12 weeks to acquire (before your brand can start sending from that code). So they take a greater time to secure the send codes up front, however this effort is sure to payoff in the long run due to the higher throughput and ability to send various message types. 

When you register a short code, a random 5- or 6-digit number is assigned to your business that you can then use to begin sending. Remember, it takes anywhere from 8-12 weeks to register your short code. If you want to start sending SMS messages, start planning a few months in advance. 

• Timing: Messages sent from a short code can be processed at rates of 100 to 400+  messages per second or more.
• Best use: Short codes work best when you’re sending high-volume marketing messages to larger segments of your audience.

Dedicated or vanity short codes

If you would like to choose your short code, you can acquire a vanity short code — aka a dedicated short code — that is a number that might be easier for your audience to remember, such as 12345. Dedicated short codes can only be used by one business. For example, Chipotle uses the dedicated short code 888222, which means that no other business can send SMS messages from that number. 

Most large organizations have a dedicated short code, but keep in mind that vanity codes generally cost twice as much as a normal short code and take about the same amount of time to acquire as a short code. 

When choosing a vanity code, you can use the U.S. Short Code Directory as a resource. There, you can find which codes are being used by which companies and which codes are available for purchase or registration. 

Shared short codes

Another type of SMS short code is called a shared short code, which is used by multiple businesses. Sounds confusing, but to keep everything segmented each company is assigned a unique keyword. For example, if two businesses are sharing the same short code, one might be assigned the keyword “PIZZA” and the other might be assigned “BOOKS.”

Shared short codes are less expensive and easier to acquire, but are less customized, which may be less attractive to some businesses. Remember that it’s important to identify your SMS strategy before submitting your short code submission to the carriers. If your messages deviate from what is in your application, the carrier can block you from sending SMS.

Maximize conversions with your SMS marketing platform

Nowadays, most consumers have their phones at hand day and night. When smartphone users hear their phone beep, they tend to check for messages within minutes instead of days or hours. SMS marketing offers businesses a powerful and cost-effective way to reach consumers rapidly.

Even better, a platform like Cordial can your brand lift customer engagement with real-time personalization more than 250% by sending personal, relevant, and intelligent messages across email, SMS, and mobile apps.
Learn more about best SMS practices in our SMS Marketing Guide.

The post What’s the difference between SMS long codes and short codes? appeared first on Cordial.

New SMS/MMS features

Manage multiple short codes to efficiently scale your communications.

There are times when brands want to track distinct types of SMS messages to differentiate engagement from promotional vs. transactional campaigns. Or, they need to send campaigns internationally and factor in different opt-in requirements by country. To support these evolving marketer needs, Cordial now lets you add and manage multiple short codes from your single Cordial account. Each short code contains unique inputs such as program descriptions, keywords, and compliance messages. Now you can keep tabs on your distinct messaging campaigns and have a holistic way to manage them all from a single account. Plus, creating SMS/MMS messaging tied to these short codes just got easier with a character counter now built-in to the Cordial interface.

Remove invalid numbers to increase send-time efficiency and engagement.

SMS list hygiene is just as important as email list hygiene. By removing old or unengaged subscribers from your marketing list, you can improve delivery time, save money, and see better engagement metrics. When messages are sent to numbers that continually fail, it puts an unnecessary strain on the mobile carrier’s system and impacts their ability to deliver those messages in a timely manner.

Similar to email, Cordial will now flag phone numbers that continually fail over seven consecutive sends as “invalid” and automatically suppress those invalid numbers from message sends. This automatic suppression lets mobile carriers process and deliver your message faster and also saves you money by reducing the overall number of messages sent. Cleaner sending lists also lead to an increase in engagement and revenue since you will only be sending to customers who can actually receive your messages.

New reporting features

Attribute revenue to WebView mobile apps.

For marketing teams, WebView mobile apps have a lot of benefits. They’re more cost effective, easier to develop and maintain, and take up less space on a user’s device. Overall, WebView apps are making it more accessible for brands to extend into the mobile app space. Cordial recently expanded our attribution capabilities to support any mobile app instance — native or WebView — so all clients can properly track and attribute revenue to their campaigns.

Identify key message insights needed to optimize customer journeys.

It is important for marketers to understand what messaging is influencing their customer’s journey — knowing what’s performing well and where there’s opportunity for optimization. Cordial is continuing to enhance our message reports to make it easier for clients to quickly identify key insights and areas of opportunity. In our Message Report dashboard, you can now select a specific orchestration journey from a drop-down menu to view the performance of each message within that journey flow. This added flexibility is meant to save you time and resources, eliminating the need to export and query reports in a third-party tool. If needed, you can still easily export these message reports via the UI or an API depending on your preference.

Special callout: As part of Podium, Cordial’s orchestration builder, you can also begin to delay sending messages until a specified time, helping you reach customers at the best possible moment. Then on the back-end via Message Reports see what’s working and adjust accordingly.

Quickly identify and troubleshoot erroneous in-platform activity.

Cordial clients rely on our platform to process significant amounts of data and messaging every day. It’s not uncommon for errors to happen or issues to arise that you need to investigate. We created new UI dashboards to help you get the data you need to make important business decisions faster.

The new Account Monitoring dashboard lets you see errors related to jobs such as data imports, JS listener calls, data transformations, and campaign deployments. Having this added layer of monitoring available in the UI empowers you to start investigating a resolution quickly without needing to rely on our Support team. As you dig into this data, we’ve included a table of common errors in our Knowledge Base to give you insight into what it means as well as suggested solutions.

In addition to troubleshooting errors related to specific jobs, you may need to review activity of specific users on your team and actions they’ve completed within the platform. You may need to investigate why a message didn’t send, audit data exports, enforce security protocols, or review content changes. The new User Activities dashboard lets you filter by a specific user, type of activity, or date.

If you’d like to learn more about these new features or have any questions, contact your Client Success Manager. New to Cordial? Schedule a personalized business assessment today to learn more.

The post 5 new Cordial SMS and reporting features appeared first on Cordial.

Some marketers enjoy good results and don’t seek to understand SMS platform features that optimize conversions. While high response rates are important, they don’t guarantee conversions or engagement: If text recipients don’t find these messages valuable and timely, they won’t convert into customers. In time, they may tune out the messages, even consider them spam, and either ignore them or unsubscribe.

SMS marketing may seem like marketing on easy mode, but it’s important to use available tools to send each recipient the right message at the best time. Even businesses that currently find SMS marketing profitable can always find ways to improve their messaging and bottom line.

How does SMS marketing work to maximize engagement and conversions?

This Cordial SMS overview video clearly explains many helpful features that keep prospects engaged with timely, targeted, and valuable messages. Plus, marketers find the user interface intuitive, so they can create sophisticated, multi-layered marketing campaigns without needing assistance from IT.

Highlights for users include:

• The internal editor simplifies creating, scheduling, previewing, and testing messages.
• Users can add personalized messages to a multi-step, multi-layer, triggered campaign via Podium, a visual layering tool.

The SMS marketing platform allows relevant, instant communication with customers and prospects. Instead of sending general messages randomly, the SMS marketing platform makes it possible to customize and personalize messages for real-time situations.

For instance, the software can send personalized SMS marketing messages when recipients initially enroll in a website account or a loyalty program, when they fail to respond to other marketing channels, or at the exact moment they’re browsing products on a website. Options like sending a unique discount code will help engage an audience and incentivize purchases. Since recipients can use the code immediately, it offers them value and an additional reason to buy.

SMS messaging can also help deliver customer service. For example, customers will appreciate a prompt text with tracking information for shipping after they’ve made a purchase. Suppose a prospective customer abandons a shopping cart without following through on the sale. In that case, a text message could provide a direct line to customer service or offer a shipping discount to overcome objections the customer may have had.

The platform enables marketers to deliver custom experiences at the perfect time to motivate a purchase. While businesses may choose to send general texts to promote an event, like a holiday sale or new release, SMS messages based on consumer behavior ensure value and relevance, focusing on the customer’s needs rather than those of the company. 

Maximize conversions with your SMS marketing platform.

Nowadays, most consumers have their phones at hand day and night. When smartphone users hear their phone beep, they tend to check for messages within minutes instead of days or hours. SMS marketing offers businesses a powerful and cost-effective way to reach consumers rapidly.

Even better, a platform like Cordial will make it easy for marketers to ensure the software hits the “Send” button at the perfect time and with the best message. The intelligence behind this platform makes it almost as good as sending a full-time salesperson to accompany customers during their buying journey, ensuring a good experience.

Lift customer engagement with real-time personalization more than 250% by sending personal, relevant, and intelligent messages across email, SMS, and mobile apps. Request a demo today.

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