MORE New Year’s Resolutions for Excellent CRM Marketing
Go to the gym, don't go to the gym. Eat more greens, eat fewer greens. We don't know much about that. But, if you want to build the best possible CRM Marketing strategy, start by following these NEW New Year's Resolutions
This time last year – which, amazingly enough, happened only a year ago – we asked our Director of Product Marketing, Rony Vexelman, to send us a few suggestions for “new year’s resolutions” for the digital marketer. The result was one of our most popular blog posts in recent memory; you can find it – 6 suggested resolutions – here.
This year, as the same dude is now our newly-promoted VP marketing, we asked again for “a few” suggestions. He sent us more than a dozen.
In other words, you’re going to pay the price for his new title-driven extra motivation.
Keeping up with last year, though, all these suggestions are handy and inherently actionable. You can take them as they are and build your yearly plan around them – probably ensuring better Retention Marketing performance as a result.
And, for the sake of structure – we’ll look at all the new suggestions through the prism of last year’s article. Let’s dive in.
Last year’s NYR (New Year’s Resolution) #1: I Will Use More Control Groups
Right off the bat, we’re breaking our promise – because not one of our new suggestions falls under the same category as the Control Groups resolution. Still, we mention it because using more control groups is such an essential cornerstone of improving your marketing performance – and we genuinely hope you gave it a try.
And, if you didn’t, here’s your chance – don’t say no one told you!
Okay, let’s move on.
Last year’s NYR (New Year’s Resolution) #2: I Will Measure More Than Just Opens & Clicks
When we wrote this one last year, it was even before Apple swooped in with their iOS15 privacy updates that basically render “opens” obsolete. But, if you were one of the lucky ones who read our article from last year and really did move on from measuring only “opens and clicks,” – you did not lose any sleep over Apple’s new restrictions. Because, When One Door Closes, Another Opens: and while Apple’s email privacy updates present a significant change that can make things harder for email marketing – It’s also the industry’s chance to move closer towards substantial measurements.
That’s why, in addition, this year we recommend you to:
Measure campaigns based on the incremental uplift they create
Making Customer LTV your North star metric
By focusing on “monetary uplift” and Customer Lifetime Value, you’ll never have to worry about vanity metrics and how privacy changes affect them.
Last year’s NYR (New Year’s Resolution) #3: I Will Do More (and More) Experimenting
There’s no improvement without being able to know what’s working, what’s not, and why. Of course, experimenting also comes with “being wrong,” but there’s also no progress without understanding what’s wrong and what’s right.
You know, science.
This year’s addition to the “experimentation” resolution is, admittedly, a bit self-serving for us here. But we assure you, your success is (also) on our minds. That’s why we think you should…
Find a vendor to help you and your team move up the marketing maturity curve.
Last year’s NYR (New Year’s Resolution) #4: I Will Add One More Channel to My Strategy
We at Optimove sit on a decade-worth of data that shows a strong correlation between using more channels in your marketing and getting better results. That’s why we think that this year you should, at least:
Double the number of multichannel messages and campaigns you run.
Last year’s NYR (New Year’s Resolution) #5: I Will Trust AI More
This is a trickier Resolution. But it’s one that is dear to our hearts. Optimove’s Founder and CEO, Pini Yakuel, just posted about it on Linkedin.
So, to make it easier for you to move forward with this NYR, we broke it down into more digestible pieces this time.
Here’s a list of actionable practices that will help you trust AI more and enjoy the fruits of the powerful combination of human-and-machine:
Reduce the number of splits in your blank canvas journeys by 50% to increase management and efficiency. (using AI in customer journey orchestration means you don’t need many splits as the machine helps with “moving” customers to the best-next-action)
Use AI to optimize the audience, message, channel, timing mix
Create multiple simple journeys instead of a few complex ones (and let AI move customers between them)
Give customers the control by not deciding what’s best for them with manual and rigid message journeys (in other words, let AI choose the best-next-action for your customers, based on their actions, and not pre-determined, rigid journeys)
So, in the exact same mindset, we think your decisions when it comes to creating new journeys and touchpoints should not be solely based on your creativity and gut feelings – but also data. So, on top of what we said about it last year, this time we also recommend to:
Ensure that your service, product, and insights teams all have access to the Single Customer View
Use new data sources/data points to enrich customer segmentation
Stop relying on data teams for segmentation and begin doing this yourself (with the right tech, you could do it without needing to learn new skills)
Hooking yourself and your team up directly with the sources of “truth” is a crucial step. Don’t skip it.
A NEW New Year’s Resolution, #7: I Will Catch Up With Personalization’s Industry Leading Techniques
Okay, okay – not all this year’s suggestions fall right under last year’s framework. Many, actually, fall under “Personalization.” Now, last year when we wrote the NYR article, we didn’t think CAPITAL P PERSONALIZATION should be mentioned because it’s is so “given.”
But this year, we saw that, well, we were wrong. For many marketing and business leaders, Personalization still isn’t enough of a top priority. But things are changing, and we see more and more CMOs saying that “this year, personalization is key!”
Well, it’s about time, don’t you think?
To make it easier on them to really push Personalization to the center of their strategy, here are a few actionable tips to get going:
Make over 80% of your customer segments smaller than 5% of your database
Eventually, though, there were two ADDITIONAL NYR that Rony sent us this year which we could not attach to any of the six main ones from last year. These are just two more general yet incredibly powerful things you should try to do:
Break the silos of how your team is built, and instead of separating channels and products, try a more holistic approach
Evaluate your MarTech stack to maximize its utilization – and stop paying for things you’re not using
Somehow, it’s been almost 1300 words on this blog post so far, which is already quite a lot. So, we’ll leave you with that. You got enough on your plate already.
Rony Vexelman is Optimove’s VP of Marketing. Rony leads Optimove’s marketing strategy across regions and industries. Previously, Rony was Optimove's Director of Product Marketing leading product releases, customer marketing efforts and analyst relations. Rony holds a BA in Business Administration and Sociology from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
