Good morning, Mélange fans! Today, we’ll tell you how the broken windows theory of policing applies to customer experience, will talk about ways that social can help improve your B2B’s overall marketing efforts, will identify the three things marketers can’t live without and will highlight a few trigger campaigns that may improve your overall conversions.
Fix “broken windows” for a better customer experience
Want to create a better experience for your customers? Micah Solomon in Forbes suggests that you fight the tendency to focus all of your efforts on preventing the big, extreme CX events — those outlier that are rare—and instead focus on fixing the small irritants that, when left unattended to, can lead to consistently poor experiences.
Though the examples he gives are for B2C real world environments, it’s easy to read and adapt them for your own situation. Consider this: Which scenario is more likely at your own business—that your site will be completely down due to a bandwidth issue, or that a customer may become irritated when she contacts your team for support and isn’t certain you’ll be getting back to her in a timely manner? The latter would be an example of a “broken window” that could negatively impact that customer’s view of future interactions with your company; changing her perception of the interaction by simply providing her with an automated message acknowledging receipt of her support request and providing her with a timeframe for response would go a long way toward setting the right expectations.
It turns out that as businesses, sometimes we do need to sweat the small stuff. Read Solomon’s full post here.
Social media may not be your B2B brand’s most effective channel for generating leads and closing deals, but when used the right way it can be pretty darn good for generating brand awareness and amplifying your brand’s message. This article, published on MarTech Series, offers a handful of tips on how B2B businesses can use social media in smart ways. For example: happy and unhappy customers will turn to a brand’s social media site to share opinions (and, in the case of unhappy customers, get problems resolved.) You must listen out for these conversations and be prepared to respond in a timely manner.
The piece also advises B2B businesses to focus on doing social media “right” on one platform rather than doing a half-hearted job over four or five different platforms. A quality experience, not the quantity of channels in which a mediocre experience is available, will be imperative to your company’s success. Check out all of the B2B social tips here.
3 things marketers can’t live without
Think about your average day at work as a digital marketer—what are the three things you simply couldn’t live without? According to the 2018 Widen Connectivity Report as covered in Mediapost, most marketers said file sharing (42%), CRM (41%) and email marketing (35%.) Content management followed closely behind, with 32% of marketers saying that they would not want to work without it.
Integration is also playing a key role in how marketers are working today, with more than three-quarters (76%) saying that they used at least two or more of their work tools in combination with one another. And marketers are looking toward additional integration opportunities both now in the future, with 49% currently in the midst of a technological integration and 9% planning to tackle one next year. Read more report findings and see how your own business stacks up here.
Trigger campaign ideas to boost conversions
Most of us are familiar with the experience of browsing a site and adding something to a shopping cart, then receiving an email later on “reminding” us to complete our purchase—a classic example of a trigger marketing campaign with a “cart abandonment” trigger. But as Anthony Villegas points out in Business2Community, cart abandonment is merely one of many trigger strategies available for marketers to employ.
If you’re looking for additional ways to boost your conversions, identify other potential trigger events. For example, if you notice that a particular group of buyers loves to window shop but never actually completes the transaction, consider setting up a trigger campaign based on “time on site.” By creating a campaign that includes a time-limited offer or another incentive to make a purchase, you may be able to transform these long-time browsers into buyers. Check out the rest of Villegas’ tips here.
