Direct Marketing Magazine February 2016

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Directives: 2016 is NOT the year of mobile

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The Mobile Marketing Issue

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Enhancing experiential tactics with mobile ❱ 6

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vol. 29 • No. 2 • February 2016

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Vol. 29 | No. 2 | February 2016 EDITOR Sarah O’Connor - sarah@dmn.ca PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca

Cover Story

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ric Kosiba Jenne Barbour Geoff Linton Leigh-Ann Clarke Armen Matosyan Lee Dale Wilson Raj Candace Huntly Larry Schwartz Darrell Keezer

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Enhancing experiential marketing tactics with integrated mobile

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NFC: Changing the landscape of marketing

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Correlating marketing with mobile products

2016 is NOT the year of mobile

Engagement & Analytics ❯❯8

Customer experience is a key differentiator for competitive business

Workforce Management

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Align your consumer & employer brand strategies to attract top talent

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Is self-scheduling the future of your business?

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Would you click through?

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Strategic planning lessons from the contact centre

Marketing’s mobile shift Datapoints of view

Twitter: @DMNewsCanada

Operations & Logistics ❯❯12

Mobile trends to watch in 2016 February 2016

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When it comes to data, quality matters more than quantity DMN.ca ❰

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Directives

2016 is NOT the year of mobile

By Darrell Keezer

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f you believe that 2016 is “the year” for mobile marketing, you’re wrong. If you’re working with an agency that has recommended that you look into mobile marketing in 2016, they are wrong too. 2016 is not the year for mobile. That year has passed.

First, let’s talk about mobile marketing. Mobile marketing became important when consumers first got their hands on smartphones, which would be more like 2009, NOT 2016. If you are thinking about expanding your ads into mobile-focused campaigns, you’re five or six years late to the party. There is still time to get in there but you have some ground to cover first!

Stats have shown that roughly 1.3 million Canadians only access the internet with their mobile devices.

According to a study conducted by comScore in late 2014, users who access the internet via both a mobile phone and a computer (49%) have surpassed those who just use a computer to access the internet (47%).

This is projected to only increase, as more Canadians purchase smartphones. That means that if you are not engaging in mobile marketing, you are missing out on effectively communicating with your prospects.

If you go into any bar, board any streetcar or subway or look around a Tim Hortons, you’ll notice that the entire Canadian population is suffering from the new ADD: Attention Directed Downwards syndrome. Everyone is looking at their phones or tablets when they have a spare moment, myself included. The other day I entered a McDonald’s in a rural community around 10 a.m. and the place was filled with seniors. I counted 23 seniors in the whole restaurant and only one man was not suffering from ADD. Everyone else was on their phone or tablet.

Do you remember the last time you sat in a coffee shop and just looked at the people or world around you? It doesn’t happen anymore; our attention is directed downwards to our mobile devices in ways that most people would consider a major addiction.

One saying that I have always embraced in business is, “If you’re not in front of your customers, you can bet that your competitors are.” If you are still ❱ DMN.ca

not engaged in mobile marketing, your competitors have been having an absolute ball engaging your customers for the past six years. 2016 is the year for mobile? Not even close.

What does mobile marketing look like for your company? Well, there are a ton of ways that you can reach your customer through mobile; mobile is simply the platform that delivers media via different networks. From search engine marketing to social media marketing to email campaigns, everything needs to make the leap to mobile in order to stay in front of your audience.

Let’s talk about your website for a moment. One common issue that I come across frequently, and speak about with audiences across Canada, is the importance of having a mobile-optimized website. A website is the hub of everything marketing. It is the heart of a successful business. Good luck drumming up leads if prospects visit your website on a mobile device and your website’s user experience drops them off a cliff instead of converting leads.

A website is not just about gaining new customers, it’s about serving your current customers, employees, prospects, onlookers and media. It’s the conversion point for most businesses, whether you are asking people to become a lead for your sales team or are requesting their credit card information in order to sell them your latest product.

At our agency, we have been building mobileresponsive websites for almost a decade now and yet a lot of companies that we speak with don’t see the importance of building a mobile-responsive site.

As surprising as this may sound, I still come across businesses who don’t see the value in making their website mobile-responsive for one main reason; “We aren’t marketing on mobile, so right now we don’t need it.” I would also add that the majority of these businesses that make this statement are not growing.

They are instead either declining in market share or are simply just treading water.

We do a lot of work in the personal insurance industry in Canada, and it has recently been

discovered by The Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO) that only 38% of insurance brokers have mobile compatible websites! Imagine getting into a car accident and pulling out your phone to look up your broker’s phone number, only to be greeted by a website that doesn’t even work on your phone! You would have to go home, either by hailing a cab or driving your beat up car, just to fire up your desktop to get your broker’s phone number. This would be the experience for 38% of insurance broker customers!

Mobilegeddon has come and gone, and now customers have come to expect that all websites that they visit are optimized for mobile. So how do you make a proper mobile marketing plan? It’s actually very easy to identify the major pain points in just a few minutes.

First, gather a bunch of prospective customers, friends, or even family into the same room with no desktops or laptop computers allowed.

Ask them to perform simple actions that are extremely valuable for your business which may include the following items; 1. Find your business on Google without using your company name 2. Have someone try to contact you by phone or email through your website 3. Connect with your sales team 4. Purchase two products on your website (if you have e-commerce) During this process, record all of their questions, frustrations or dead-ends and you’ve got your hit list for 2016!

Darrell Keezer is the founder and CEO of Candybox Marketing,

a digital marketing agency specializing in social media, online marketing and lead generation. Following a traditional education in marketing, Darrell earned his digital marketing stripes through an infatuation with making projects win. His favourite candy is a Crispy Crunch chocolate bar, and he can be reached at darrell@candyboxmarketing.com or @darrellkeezer.

February 2016

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Targeting & Acquisition

Enhancing experiential marketing tactics with integrated mobile

By Candace Huntly

T

here has long been a divide between old and new, or traditional versus non-traditional, in the marketing industry. The two schools of thought constantly battle it out to decide whose approach will have a greater impact on marketing success in any given industry. Can’t we all just get along? It’s about time we sat in a circle holding hands, singing Kumbaya, because marketing has come full circle and it has accumulated a lot of stuff along the way that shouldn’t be discarded.

Brands shouldn’t approach a strategy by deciding whether to focus on old or new tactics, it’s important to take an ❱ DMN.ca

integrated approach. The lines between different marketing styles have become blurred and it is increasingly hard to find ways to implement tactics in isolation if you want to have the best possible outcome for your efforts. One thing we can all agree on is that marketing has always been about getting to know your audience’s needs and preferences so you can connect with them when and where they are most engaged. Consumers have come to expect more from brands and they need to be reached through multiple channels—an integrated approach to strategy.

Experiential and event-based marketing has been around for a while. One of the “old-school” staples, the goal is to create an experience for a brand’s audience that will

engage them through the creation of a recollection or memory that will always be positively associated with the brand. The desired outcome is generally higher brand recognition and awareness leading to increased sales and referrals.

Characterized by targeting audiences where they are through their mobile devices, mobile was born out of the tech age. “New-school” marketers are driving the industry forward with the development of enhanced technologies and applications.

Knowing that an integrated approach to marketing is more effective, there are a number of ways that using integrated mobile tactics will enhance your experiential marketing efforts. Seventy-three per

cent of people have their phone on them at all times and that number goes up to 87% if you consider just the millennial population. We are attached at the hip to our mobile devices, so why not tap into a hub that is designed to engage your target audience at the touch of a finger while you are engaging them face-to-face?

There is no reason you should be competing with mobile technology because you won’t win that war. And if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

Here are five reasons to integrate mobile into your experiential tactics.

We live in a multi-screen world We have become a multi-tasking economy. We check our emails during meetings and while we’re watching TV. February 2016

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Targeting & Acquisition

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anyhow, then give them incentive to be on their phones talking about you. It’s a chance for you to drive the conversation while creating a better experience for your attendees.

Implementation note: Have signage around your event with the event hashtag and social media handles.

We look up information about a product or person we saw on TV or in an ad.

We shop while watching a movie. We talk to friends via text and social media while we are in the bathroom. The introduction of new technologies has put information and communication channels at our finger tips, and the convenience has created short attention spans and continuous curiosity.

It only makes sense to tap into this mentality to engage consumers through the development of marketing tactics that are designed to mimic this behaviour. Integrating mobile into your experiential marketing means that you are controlling the behaviour through the power of suggestion. If you know people are going to be on their phones February 2016

Influencers are made digitally The media landscape is changing significantly, and so should your approach to generating buzz leading up to and at your event. If you consider influencers like YouTube and Instagram celebrities along with well-known bloggers you can create a hub of chatter that allows attendees to join in on popular social media sites.

Tapping influencers for your marketing efforts who are extremely active online will encourage your attendees to pick up their mobile devices at the event to share their experience. The key is finding influencers that are respected by your target audience, otherwise you won’t get the same effect.

Implementation note: Partner with bloggers and social media superstars and have them talk about your event.

Where possible, have them attend and post live to their social channels.

Build trusted relationships Mobile apps, whether developed by you or by popular social channels, create unique opportunities for brands to connect directly with consumers.

Encouraging your attendees to use their mobile devices on- site can be a great source of user-generated content.

You can livestream that content at the event and post it online at a later time.

If you project a live Twitter stream or Instagram feed, not only does it add a great visual aspect at your event, but it also shows that it’s not just you as a

brand pumping out your messaging.

It’s third-party recognition that leads to generating dialogue directly with your target audience.

Your target audience needs to be able to interact with you so you can build relationships directly with them. To be memorable, you have to find creative ways to get your message out there repeatedly. Integrating mobile into your events will allow you to repeat your messaging in multiple ways.

This approach to your events will have a greater effect on your customer retention rates in the long term, which means that your event won’t exist in a vacuum and will be a part of your overall business strategy.

Implementation note: Have brand representatives roaming the venue, encouraging people to download the app (remember to have access to free WiFi!). Incentivize immediate download with a discount or contest entry that will have attendees checking in and interacting with the app at a later date.

We’re in an age of oversharing When you are putting together an event, whether large or small, your reach is finite, limited to the number of attendees in the room. You have to introduce other aspects to the strategy. Integrating mobile tactics to your strategy will allow you to amplify the impact of the event using instant and spontaneous communications channels that are consumer driven. We are in an age of oversharing. You can’t go on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Periscope, Instagram, etc. without seeing a picture of someone’s food, a bathroom selfie pic (that lighting though…), or an array of personal information put out there to show everyone how awesome their lives are.

Tap into this need for sharing by encouraging dialogue via mobile.

Create opportunities and moments that are too good to pass up. While it is normally difficult to track conversations if they happen face to face, mobile channels give you the opportunity to gather actionable data and follow along with the conversation as it happens. Using a unique hashtag for the event and creating a way for people to check in allows you to interact with both your attendees as well as those that wish they were there.

Implementation note: Create “inspiration areas” with highly visual aspects like a graffiti wall, on-site entertainment and other exciting and luxurious elements that will get your audience in the sharing mood.

It’s not all or nothing There are many different ways to incorporate mobile into your event and experiential marketing tactics. Here are a few ways you can incorporate mobile looking at varying levels of investment of time and resources: ❯❯ Low investment: ❯❯ Use an event hashtag and generate buzz leading up to, during and after the event by encouraging dialogue on social channels. ❯❯ Livestream the chatter at the event using a projection screen. ❯❯ Mid-level investment: ❯❯ Have a dedicated team (one or more people) interacting with people on social media during event set up, during the event and post event while tear down is happening. ❯❯ Set up a digital headquarters on site. ❯❯ Deliver geo-targeted content to attendees. ❯❯ High investment: ❯❯ Build a branded app and encourage downloads at the event. This will have to be followed up with an aggressive and creative content campaign to drive engagement on the app once it has been downloaded and not in attendees’ faces. One in four smartphone apps are never used; however, time spent in mobile apps has grown 90% since 2013. If you can manage to remain relevant to your audience, a branded app is a worthwhile investment.

Implementation note: Research, set your budget and stay focused on your overall goals for the event.

It is important that we as marketers adapt our approach to strategy to match where the industry is heading.

This doesn’t mean abandoning everything we have learned along the way, it just means embracing a more integrated approach to marketing.

Adopting an anywhere, anytime attitude to marketing will take your brand to the next level.

Candace Huntly is principal and founder of SongBird Marketing Communications.

Specializing in strategy, media and influencer relations, social media, content development and experiential marketing, Songbird works with brands to build creative and integrated marketing and PR strategies that generate buzz and overall brand awareness.

DMN.ca ❰

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Engagement & Analytics

Customer experience is a key differentiator for competitive businesses

By Wilson Raj

T

o win customer loyalty today, you must provide a compelling customer experience that merges the physical and digital worlds. Why is it important?

Multichannel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers.

But many companies have not dramatically changed their business processes and technologies to adjust to this reality.

Multichannel marketing is best understood as an operating model in which all of your channels are aligned so that you present a single face to the customer: a consistent, channelindependent way of doing business. This strategy replaces the many views of the customer with a unified view, enabling you to anticipate and proactively respond in a reliable, dependable way to customers’ ever-changing needs and higher expectations.

Embrace a true multichannel marketing strategy Because customers have more choices and more power, you’ll need new approaches and capabilities. You need to be ready, wherever your customers may want to engage with you.

Here are four multichannel strategies you can employ to make it easy for your customers to engage, buy and be loyal to you: Optimize your brand’s digital presence.

Make sure you are continuously optimizing web pages and A/B testing everything. Simply put, A/B testing compares two options in an empirical way to determine which is more effective. By testing various hypotheses, you can gather real data about customer behavior and then quickly make the changes to improve performance across digital touch ❱ DMN.ca

points. The goal of A/B testing is an improved customer experience.

Don’t underestimate the power of mobile.

You should also consider all the ways customers are reaching your site and optimize your pages accordingly. The mobile web has strengthened brands’ ability to connect and reach consumers at any time of the day. Want to connect better with your mobile customers? Here are some ideas to consider: ❯❯ Encourage shoppers to scan products via your mobile app while brick-and-mortar shopping. Your annual digital plan should focus heavily on mobile as you seek to close the gap between store, desktop and mobile. ❯❯ Another way to enhance your mobile focus is to deploy in-store touch screen shopping options to let customers self-checkout or perform simple but critical tasks like price checks and item availability. ❯❯ Some big retailers have adopted a multichannel strategy that centres on adding a “store pickup” mobile app as part of their online shopping options to enhance the brick-andmortar experience.

Leverage analytics to improve customer engagement.

Data management will allow you to create a unified platform, and analytics will enable you to create, maintain and act upon a single view of the customer across all your channels.

These technologies will help you support a continuous dialogue across the customer decision journey to: ❯❯ Create richer customer profiles based on online and store data so you can make customer-specific offers; ❯❯ Optimize each customer interaction by seeing the variables that provide a more successful outcome for you

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and your customer; and Automate your multichannel campaigns to make them more trackable and repeatable.

Optimize your content for context and strategic intent.

Your customers enter your store with all of your content (and that of your competitors) ensconced in their smartphones. And, more importantly, content from others about you in the form of reviews, tweets and other social media. You should optimize your content for context and strategic intent with a goal of enhancing the value of every customer interaction and supporting a wide range of tactics to address branding, customer experience and performance objectives. This will help your customers to eliminate the noise and focus on relevant, pertinent content that truly aids them in their buying journey.

Customer experience rules!

Customer experience is fast becoming a key differentiator for competitive businesses. In fact, Deloitte reports that 92% of organizations that view customer experience as a differentiator offer multiple contact channels. To win, organizations must

profitably shape the path to purchase and brand loyalty by embracing this new multichannel reality and gaining a detailed understanding of each customer’s journey.

To this end, successful customer experience leaders are the ones who view data, analytics and technologies as a unified digital business capability—to mirror the customer expectations of a unified relationship with the company, regardless of channels.

Wilson Raj is the global director of customer

intelligence at SAS. His responsibilities include collaborating with industry leaders, customers, alliances, sales, marketing and product teams to establish, evolve and evangelize SAS’s growth strategy for analyticsdriven marketing capabilities.

With 20 years of experience in multiple industries, Raj has built data-driven brand value, engagement and loyalty through expertise in integrating advertising, digital marketing, social media, multi-channel relationship marketing and public relations.

He has held global leadership positions in marketing at Fortune Global 500® companies such as Microsoft, Novell. Medtronic, Philips and Ameritech (now AT&T Midwest). He also served in digital strategy roles at Publicis and also at VML and Wunderman—as part of Young & Rubicam Group at WPP. February 2016

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Engagement & Analytics

Would you click through?

Advice for capturing dwindling attention spans

By Jenne Barbour

T

ime’s up, marketers! We all know the attention span of consumers today is shorter than ever and according to a study from Microsoft last year even a goldfish can focus longer than the average multi-screen user. That Vine even exists—and is thriving—is further testament to this trend. Here, consumers are granting us a mere seven seconds of video to tell our story.

According to Rosetta Consulting, consumers switch platforms up to 27 times in one hour. We can probably all relate to that multi-screen approach to mastering our professional and personal to-do lists.

Marketers have a lot to say. So how do we say it all in such a short window?

The only way to cut through this noise is to be relevant. This requires a deep knowledge of what motivates customers, what keeps them coming back, and what attracts them in the first place. To snag the attention of the coveted buyer, marketers must get a couple of things right: ❯❯ Get to the point with appealing content; ❯❯ Make a meaningful connection; ❯❯ Use good design to spark interest and make it stick.

Get the content right When it comes to delivering your message, don’t over-do it. Marketers need to use each opportunity wisely, so in the spirit of creating quick “snackable moments” we should ask ourselves, what is the point? Pretty words and messaging pillars are nice, but focus on distilling that down to get to the core of the message and deliver February 2016

it in a clear and concise manner.

Regardless of the audience we’re targeting, the content itself needs to be both brand appropriate and customer appropriate. The former should be part of your strategy from the onset, but understanding what makes your customer tick is where the real challenge lies.

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is trying to fit their brilliant, visually stunning campaign ideas for one channel into another.

From channel to channel what’s relevant even to that one particular individual often changes, so just because it’s quality marketing for Twitter doesn’t mean newsletter subscribers will receive it the same way. Create messages that are concise but flexible enough to adapt to the multi-channel journey your customer is on and focus on meeting their expectations at each of their destinations.

Engage in a meaningful way Consumers are exposed to 5.3 trillion ad impressions per year, according to comScore’s most recent Digital Future in Focus report. Simply put, there is more noise than ever and consumers aren’t spending too long in any one place. In order to get (and hold) their attention, marketers today have to make a meaningful connection.

This is where the massive influx of data being generated today presents a major opportunity. Using the information we have on hand about any given customer (their behaviours, preferences or purchasing history, for example) marketers have the insights

to tailor messages in a way that provides value to each individual.

Marketers are doing a better job of unifying the data within their control to get a clearer picture of customers, but no system is perfect and silos within the marketing organization itself still create barriers. What the one department knows about the customer’s purchasing or clicking habits should be shared and combined with what another department knows about their engagement with social media campaigns, plus what the customer service department knows about their past complaints around return shipping fees, for example.

Uniting this data will be the key to crafting messaging that resonates.

The next phase of building a 360-degree view of an individual is to close the gap between these “owned” interactions with our brand and the customer’s interactions with channels we don’t own.

As with any communication, before pressing “send” on that next campaign ask yourself, what are we providing of value? Have we really listened to what the customer wants, or are we throwing everything we’ve got to see what sticks?

Be visual It’s not an earth-shattering concept, but consumers are attracted to visually pleasing ads and content. Marketers in general are almost forced to become more visual in their creative materials today. This means beautiful photography, clean graphic design and the works. But beyond the obvious visuals we use to convey our messages,

it’s time to start thinking about the design of language itself and how consumers are viewing the text on their screens. Even Twitter, which was created to promote digestible text-only updates, has evolved to be as visual as nearly any other social channel.

We no longer have to edit text solely based on how it tells our story, but also on how it pops on a screen or in a tweet. Now more than ever we have to be crisp, clear and descriptive in the messages we share and in the visual nature of the words themselves we’re using to engage online.

At the end of the day, there is no excuse for bad design. This isn’t to say every campaign will be an award winner, but today’s savvy consumers are exposed to so much high-quality design, that they not only notice bad design but find it inexcusable. Outdated, sloppy, generic or cheap content won’t stand a chance with multi-screen consumers.

Marketers will need to hold themselves to the same high standards as consumers do today if they’re planning to spend those precious few seconds with a buyer.

So use your data. Use those customer insights. Know what the individual wants—how, where and when.

As for creative messaging and design, spend the time to make it tight.

Meaningful. Beautiful. Unforgettable.

Nike didn’t come out and say, “Simply initiate the process.”

Instead, they gave us “Just do it.”

Jenne Barbour is the director of global

marketing strategy + evangelism for Teradata Marketing Applications.

DMN.ca ❰

Engagement & Analytics

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Marketing’s mobile shift Connecting the dots for a truer, more accurate picture

By Geoff Linton

M

arketing planning becomes challenging as the mobile landscape is always shifting. The ways in which consumers behave and consume media has changed. Today’s consumers use multiple devices throughout the day to research, connect and shop.

To add to the complexity, today’s hyper-connected consumer often uses multiple devices at once!

Marketers have to navigate the evolving multi-device world and what that means for their brand. But remember, just because someone is viewing on a mobile device doesn’t mean that they are physically in a mobile state. Different devices are used in different ways. This article covers the important insights about mobile behaviour and what to do about it.

The new consumer behaviour & challenges with mobile devices The last five years has been one of the greatest periods of change for the marketing industry. Digital marketing now represents over 30% of marketing budgets. Consumers are constantly connected via their mobile devices which allow them to access content when and where they want it. Time spent with digital media per adult user per day has increased from an average of 0.3 hours in 2008 (12% of a total of 2.7 hours across devices) to 2.8 hours per day in 2015 (51% of a total of 5.6 hours across devices). eMarketer forecasts that the number of smartphone users in North America increased 11.6% in 2015. Canadians have always been ❱ DMN.ca

early adopters in digital and lead smartphone penetration with 81%.

It is important to note that tablet penetration is much smaller at 43%.

Different segments have their preferred devices. While one third of all tablet users are Millennials and the majority of them are female, Baby Boomers are six per cent more likely to use a desktop computer. The good news for marketers is that we can track device usage and preference, so you can determine the device mix of your key segments.

So why are mobile devices getting so much traction? It is important to keep in mind that mobile devices are personal. Smartphones and tablet devices are an extension of a person and they are an intimate friend who is only an arm’s length away. The latest mobile devices are lightweight and powerful, keeping people connected to their personal network. Mobile devices are personalized (unlike a television which is unattached and less personal).

It is no wonder that mobile is used so much.

But it’s not all rosy for mobile. The glut of digital content for consumers causes more noise and competition for attention and the screen size is smaller compared to a desktop. Research indicates that attention spans are shortening. This raises the question, Are the core marketing message themes really breaking through?

Different devices for different purposes Mobile impact depends on your target audience, your relevancy and the context of the interaction.

Based on the emails that we deploy February 2016

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Engagement & Analytics

science indicate that images have a major impact on fixation and eye flow. Screen sizes vary and there are challenges with viewability. Clutter dilutes the impact and means you only get the glance… not the cognitive recognition. Design your creative carefully. g) Know the device, know the person There are discernable differences in behaviour between the device segments. Understanding the psychographic affinities provides valuable insights for messaging.

Marketers should review their content plans and challenge assumptions.

Focus on making the content more relevant and personal. on behalf of our corporate clients, smartphones generate three times more message opens than tablets (although smartphone penetration is twice that of tablet penetration). This makes sense because smartphones are in a user’s hands more often. They open email on smartphones because of habit and convenience.

Smartphones are typically used for quick and convenient communications. Consumers review incoming email messages and about 40% of smartphone users read commercial email messages in less than three seconds. Tablets are better for more involved browsing, reading and watching videos. Our tracking studies show that consumers have a higher propensity to open retail emails on tablets compared to those sent by financial or telecommunication providers. The preferred device for financial content remains the desktop because of the more involved customer experience and amount of information.

In general, desktop computers provide the best overall customer experience and the highest click through rate. The screen is bigger and all the information is displayed unlike responsive suppression on a mobile device. Research confirms that desktop has the highest CTRO%.

Mobile behaviour lessons from email Email marketing provides a rich set of data around the three Cs of digital marketing: Customer, content and context. Below are some real findings based on North American email data:

February 2016

a) Mobile devices account for the largest proportion of email opens (and growing) The proportion of email messages read on a mobile device has steadily increased from 47% in December 2012 to over 59% in December 2015.

The mobile opens increased +2% incremental from H1 to H2 2015.

The most popular mobile devices to open emails on are iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones. Tablets accounted for only 15% mobile opens and their proportion has been relatively flat for the last year.

This trend of increasing mobile opens comes as no surprise as smartphone penetration reaches new heights combined with the familiar new habit of always reaching for your phone first. b) The majority of clicks still occur on a desktop (but smartphones are closing the gap) Historically, smartphones generated fewer clicks compared to a desktop computer. Screens were small. An ecommerce research study reached a similar conclusion, identifying that 30– 40% of online shopping occurs on a mobile device but only 10% of transactions occur through that same device.

Based on data for all of 2015, almost half of email clicks (45%) occur on desktop computers, but smartphones are catching up. In November 2015, we reached the cross-over point where the number of clicks on smartphones surpassed clicks from desktop!

Marketers are thinking mobile first and designs are finally being optimized for the mobile click.

c) Mobile exclusive consumers are a minority comScore estimates that seven to 11% of consumers interact exclusively on mobile. Our email data indicates the “mobile exclusive” segment is much larger. In a typical quarter, over 40–50% of subscribers read only on a smartphone or tablet. The ratio of smartphone only versus tablet only is five to one. This may indicate that tablets are more of an accessory. d) Multi-device readers are more engaged & responsive The proportion of subscribers who open email on two or more devices is increasing each quarter. Multi-device engagers typically account for 15–25% of an email subscriber list.

The great news is that the multidevice consumers who open emails on three or more devices have a 2.5x higher open rate and 3.5x higher CTR. This makes it very important for marketers to profile their device segments and really get to know them. e) Timing & context is key for maximizing response Marketers should time their messages for when the recipient is most receptive. This would ideally be when they are in a good mood, relaxed and have sufficient time to read the email. Interrupting someone is ok if the message is relevant. One-to-one messaging involves matching the right message, in the right format, to the right person, at the right time, to the right device.

Final thoughts The surge in mobile device usage has given marketers more user data than ever and this provides the opportunity to do more accurate behavioural analysis. The volume of digital messaging through social media, email and mobile apps is causing consumers’ brains to be rewired.

Attention spans are shortening but so is the way they process information.

The key for marketers is to really know their audience and more carefully orchestrate interactions.

The media metamorphosis will continue and marketers need to adapt and shift their perceptions about mobile. Mobile isn’t just a contact point; it is an important data source and strategic tool to improve the customer experience. Connecting the data points and inferring behaviour will create a true picture of the opportunities ahead.

Geoff Linton is a founder of Inbox Marketer Corporation and a data driven marketing expert with more than 25 years of applied experience in both client and agency roles.

He has worked in many industry sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, technology, manufacturing and professional service businesses. For the past 13 years at Inbox Marketer, Geoff has guided clients in digital messaging strategy and analytics. Geoff was previously an Associate Director for Air Miles (LoyaltyOne) and he was a Marketing Professor at Conestoga College of Applied Arts & Technology.

Geoff holds both a P.Eng and MBA from Queen’s University in Canada.

f) Design matters in mobile Behavioural tracking and message DMN.ca ❰

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Mobile trends to watch in 2016 Q&A with Yahoo’s Yannis Dosios

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dwarfs the number of possible chromosomal combinations. This is a staggering comparison that illustrates just how personally an individual can shape their app experience.

Another example of the desire for personalization is emoji keyboards. The Kardashian emoji keyboard skyrocketed to a number one ranking in the app store the day it launched. People are interested in tailoring their interactions and communications, and we’re seeing that emojis are one of the latest and most popular means of doing so.

We live in a decidedly multi-device world—people increasingly use more than one mobile device at a time, consuming and engaging with a variety of content. Consumers want to make sure that their latest comment, like or share on one device is reflected on another instantaneously. This desire for a seamless cross-device experience favours apps, which allow for a seamless, continuous flow of activities across devices.

Q:

Broadcast becomes multicast: Content marketing was perhaps the biggest industry trend of 2015, and I’m wondering how much this may have been fuelled by our ever-growing mobile addiction. It seems to me that the average mobile-empowered person is watching more video, reading more articles and browsing more images than ever before. Our media consumption habits can no longer be satisfied by traditional media networks!

Do you have any insight into the sheer volume of information the average Canadian consumes through their mobile?

Mobile addiction is a big factor in this. In the second quarter of 2015, the average U.S. user spent more than one hour and 30 minutes a day consuming media inside mobile applications— in both entertainment and messaging and social applications. This was a 108% growth over the same period in the previous year.

Mobile apps are taking media consumption time away from television—during the same period, 18–24-year olds watched on average one hour and 30 minutes less time per day on television.

The traditional distribution model of single point to multipoint has been turned on its head. With content now available at anytime in mobile apps, users don’t need to wait for primetime to watch their favourite shows.

Primetime is anytime. People also increasingly are looking to their communities as sources of

By Sarah O’Connor

ice President of Yahoo’s Platform & Exchange Yannis Dosios shared his unique insights into perhaps the greatest disruptor impacting direct marketers in his presentation at FFWD Advertising and Marketing Week in Toronto, entitled “The Mobile Revolution – The Eighth Year.” Prior to joining Yahoo, Dosios launched and led the mobile publisher network of mobile analytics and advertising service and held positions as head of marketing at Smilebox (a photo and video sharing service), product manager at Microsoft’ Windows division and strategy consultant at the Monitor Group. Dosios holds a Bachelors degree in Mathematics from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University.

Following Dosios presentation we caught up with him to delve more deeply into his predictions for the mobile trends that he anticipates will make the most significant impact this year.

Appification of web and TV: To what do you attribute this trend?

What is it about the “app experience” that has us craving this type of experience across channels (i.e. on our desktop computers and TVs as well as our phones)?

In the second quarter of 2015, the average user spent three hours and 40 minutes each day on mobile devices, 35% higher than the same period a year before. Ninety per cent of that time was on mobile applications. No doubt as users spent the majority of their digital life inside mobile applications, they get more and more accustomed to the mobile app experience and seek it in their other devices, such as TV and web.

Personalization is another driving factor.

People can choose what content they want to consume and engage with it like never before in history via apps. With TV and media app sessions growing, there’s more content from more sources and people have more of a need to personalize how they consume content.

The combination of the apps you select and use says a lot about your interests and mindset.

In fact, an individual’s app fingerprint is more distinctive than their own DNA. To break it down: The average smartphone consumer uses about 20 apps per device heavily. With well over one million apps to choose from in the app store, the number of possible app combinations

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Q: A:

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Operations & Logistics content, with the added benefit of it being more likely well suited to their taste, if their friends and family have enjoyed it.

These trends hold firm in Canada as well. Our Flurry insights illustrate the staggering amount of time Canadians spend on mobile: 33% of time spent in app is spent in messaging and social—in which content lives and is shared and discussed; and 20% of time spent in app is to consume music, media and entertainment.

Q:

Phablets become dominant: How do people interact differently with a phablet versus a phone? Do they watch more video? Are they more inclined to create content of their own?

Phablets’ larger screens provide consumers with a lot richer content experiences. As viewability improves with the larger screen, we see people spend more time consuming and interacting with media. For example, consumption of news and sports content grew more than five times faster on phablets than on all mobile devices between 2014 and 2015, and consumption of music, media and entertainment content grew more than four times faster.

Phablets have also had a real impact on mobile consumption because of the large real estate they offer. Media apps, TV apps, news apps—things that are by nature better on a bigger, high-res screens—truly shine on phablets.

And it goes without saying that video reigns on phablets.

And of course, the same holds for advertising content. Advertisers can provide richer, more engaging experiences on phablets, which promises to drive better awareness and conversion. Given the rapid growth in phablets share (we expect phablets to become the number one purchased mobile device type by Q4 2016), this trend is a very promising one for effective advertising.

A:

Q:

Rise of the messaging centre: As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “the medium is the message.” I wonder if today it would be more apt to say, the device (aka the smartphone) is what matters, and any specific channel accessed through mobile will do. Tangerine just launched secure chat on their website, and TD is now offering service through Facebook messenger. Based on your knowledge of mobile usage behaviour, February 2016

do you think that it may be becoming less important whether companies are interacting through a particular service (e.g. Twitter, text/SMS, What’s App, proprietary web chat, etc.) so long as they are available to reach conveniently through a smartphone?

McLuhan was also famous for his concept of the “global village,” and I think that frame more aptly describes the consumer trends we’re seeing on mobile today. That scaled, borderless interaction empowered by the internet has truly resulted in the global village McLuhan envisioned.

As I laid out during my presentation at FFWD Advertising and Marketing week, people have almost limitless choice in terms of what content they consume and engage with via apps, and personalization reigns as the driving factor. Given that an individual’s app fingerprint is more distinctive than their personal DNA, it’s clear that consumers still carefully select which apps they download and interact with—in other words, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all messaging answer for consumers. Consumers continue to carefully select which apps they engage with and when depending on a number of factors, including what they’re trying to accomplish, who they’re trying to connect with and their frame of mind at the time.

That said, regardless of the mobile device or app being used, when it comes to customer service, the one common type of experience we see users seeking is real-time chat, providing both the customization and instant gratification that users expect.

A:

Q:

Battle Royale for local logistics: Do you think this trend will give larger corporations an edge because they have the reach to be everywhere? Are there opportunities for the “local” movement in a mobile-empowered world?

At Yahoo, we tailor our experiences—both for our users and our advertisers—around the rich data sets we’ve grown based on our user base of more than one billion globally, and over 20 years in the business. There are definite pluses to that kind of size and reach, and it really comes down to the scalability of a product.

At the same time—given the preference for personalized experiences—there’s a drive and an opportunity to shape and deliver a hyperlocal experience in our mobile

A:

An individual’s app fingerprint is more distinctive than their own DNA. The average smartphone consumer uses about 20 apps per device heavily and with well over one million apps to choose from in the app store, the number of possible app combinations dwarfs the number of possible chromosomal combinations. world. Local companies have great insights and connections with a given community, so they can provide incredibly tailored solutions for a target audience. Ritual in Toronto is a great example: Ritual acts as a concierge for urban professionals in downtown Toronto, providing access to local restaurants. Feast is another example, delivering local meals with local ingredients in downtown Toronto. The number of businesses whose local delivery is getting revolutionized by mobile is rapidly growing: car service, food delivery, product delivery, mail pickup and the list goes on.

If mobile succeeds in fuelling local business growth in local logistics, it will be yet one more powerful way that mobile will be shaping our lives and our communities toward the better.

Q: A:

Effective advertising in a mobile world: What type of advertising do you see as being the most effective in this mobileapp-powered world?

One of the fastest rising ad formats in our industry today is native display and native video ads—ads that are very well integrated into the mobile application user experience, typically showing up in the content stream of an application with the look and feel of the app as their background. Those ads perform

particularly well for all three key parties involved in advertising: they deliver more than three times the engagement versus traditional display ads for advertisers; they deliver superior eCPM and better user retention for publishers; and they are liked by users.

The rapid rise of mobile app usage, combined with the rise of native advertising, creates a major opportunity for Canadian advertisers and advertising publishers alike.

Yahoo opened up its native advertising solution (called Gemini Native) to mobile app developers in January 2015. Since then, we have seen dramatic growth in mobile native ad requests worldwide, as well as specifically in Canada, having seen more than five billion Canadian native ad requests to date from leading mobile applications. In late January, Yahoo announced that it is opening up this large native mobile app supply to Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) via Yahoo’s Ad Exchange, called Brightroll Exchange. Canadian advertisers will be able to use this to bid on these native advertisements using either Yahoo’s own DSP, called Brightroll DSP, or through their DSP of choice.

I very much look forward to seeing the continued growth in mobile usage and advertising in the Canadian market. The growth we are seeing is staggering and we are just getting started.

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NFC: Changing the landscape of marketing Combining NFC & text messaging for impactful campaigns

By Armen Matosyan

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arketers are still learning to navigate the waters of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Its most well-known application, Smart Posters, are common in the tech and business fields, providing quick and easy access to web links. Consumer use is also gaining traction. One in three mobile phones will come with NFC by 2017 and, by then, one in four U.S. consumers will use NFC-enabled devices to pay for goods in-store according to Juniper Research.

However, not every industry has fully grasped the implications NFC holds for expanding their marketing abilities. With this feature becoming standard on mobile phones, the technology is growing in popularity.

According to NFC World SIA Study 94% of NFC users surveyed reported they like the feature. This provides an exciting opportunity for marketers. By combining this growing technology with text messaging, marketers can bring customer engagement to the next level.

What is NFC? NFC allows data to be exchanged wirelessly (without the use of internet) through electronic devices by either touching the devices together or ❱ DMN.ca

bringing the devices within close proximity of each other (usually a distance of 10 cm or less). NFC technology is easy, secure and works automatically. This ‘tap-and-go’ tool is now a common feature among businesses and the general public.

What about text messaging?

Text messaging has become marketers’ unmined treasure-trove. Consumers have adopted it. It’s inexpensive. It’s available on every mobile device. It’s personal. These traits make it the perfect communication channel for marketers. Properly implemented, text messaging can be used to create interactive, multifaceted and affordable campaigns that even the smallest shop can afford.

How can marketers use this powerful combination for direct marketing?

Powering a direct response campaign with NFC and text messaging components breathes life into dead offline campaigns and makes dull ads smart. It infuses marketing tools with the capability to engage users, create conversions and deliver maximum results. It creates a direct response marketing campaign that is living and active.

This magic happens through a

combination of creative marketing and backstage support from integral technology. Marketers must use deep insight into the needs and behaviours of their audience to create a campaign with both empathy and utility.

Without the proper steps to achieve this, the campaign will simply be another poster lacking the ability to attract or communicate.

To illustrate how this powerful combination is used in real life, we’ll follow a sample campaign by Craig Foods, Inc., a manufacturer of Tileo instant meals. The following are the five key steps the marketing department used to create an effective NFC-powered campaign for Tileo.

1. Set goals As the project’s foundation upon which everything else will be built, goals must be solid. Craig Foods’ marketing department worked to define realistic, relevant and affordable goals.

Craig Foods’ marketing department wants to: ❯❯ Get customer feedback about their new Butternut Squash & Bean Cassoulet (Goal #1) ❯❯ Increase product sales (Goal #2) ❯❯ Build a CASL-compliant mobile marketing list for future customer engagement (Goal #3)

To achieve these goals, marketers want to create a short text messaging survey (Goal #1) to be taken in-store and reward those who took the survey with instant digital discount coupons (Goal #2). The marketing department also wants to create a mobile marketing list compliant with Canadian Anti-Spam Regulations (CASL) (Goal #3) to send coupons and promotions to interested customers (Goal #2) in the future.

2. Choose the right communication channel Craig Foods marketers know from previous campaigns that postpurchase surveys yield low results. To increase feedback, they want to create a survey that takes place at the point of impact, when the customer sees the product. To increase interaction, marketers know the survey should be short, fun, in-store near the product and offer an incentive to customers.

Based on these requirements, the marketing department decides to use text and picture messaging (assisted

by NFC) as their communication channel. This provides the instant engagement they desire, without any preconditions to the customers (e.g. download an app, visit a website).

3. Create campaign content To achieve their communication February 2016

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channel goals, the marketing department decides to add an NFCenabled smart poster next to Tileo shelves that invite customers to tap and take a brief SMS survey and get a 10% off coupon.

After tapping the poster and texting, customers answer a brief SMS (Short Message Service, or text) survey (Goal #1) and get a discount coupon delivered by picture messaging to their phone. The coupon can be saved in their phone’s picture gallery and presented to the cashier at the checkout (Goal #2). The confirmation message will also contain an invitation to subscribe to their mobile marketing list for future promotions (Goal #3).

For this campaign content to be effective, the marketing team understands that it must contain: An exact offer that delivers what is promised: The ad and text message must offer something valuable to the customer. In our case, it offers a 10% discount for the Butternut Squash & Bean Cassoulet package after the customer takes the survey.

After the customer taps the NFCenabled poster and answers a short text message survey, the campaign delivers what the poster promises—a picture coupon valid for an immediate 10% product discount.

A call to action (CTA): A strong call to action is the most important part

February 2016

of the advertising message. It is here that the dead poster becomes a smart one and starts a conversation with the audience. A CTA must be strong and contain a sense of urgency. Customers must feel they will miss a great opportunity if they do not act quickly.

To add a strong CTA to the Tileo campaign, the poster lets consumers know they must tap to take advantage of this bargain by a certain date.

Content consistent with brand image: Since campaign materials consist of different components such as website, text message, multimedia messaging service (MMS) and posters, it is important to make the style and content of all media consistent.

Consistency lets the audience know Craig Foods cares about user experience and has established its own brand.

4. Test and run the campaign Always test your campaign before running it. ❯❯ Make sure the number from which people will get the message works properly. ❯❯ Carefully proof your message. ❯❯ Confirm your NFC tags work properly on your audience’s mostused mobile devices.

Run a short campaign, analyze the outcomes, make improvements and then start this cycle again. Pay close

attention to detail as you test your campaign. Ensure it works with no bugs or interruptions.

5. Track and analyze outcomes The most common mistake made by marketers is analyzing only the material outcomes of campaigns.

There is no doubt that the purpose of each campaign is to increase the overall profitability of a particular company, but it is also important to understand that there are multiple ways to reach the overall goal.

To track campaigns which involve different types of goals and channels, it is important to identify funnels and understand the importance and role of each one.

Craig Foods marketers are using a four-staged funnel, each with its own unique tracking method. The illustration, above, shows how they track each action completed between conversion funnels.

By integrating text messaging software, sales software and analytics software, it is possible to track and analyze each action consumers complete in any of the channel phases.

Abandoned channels in the funnel should be analyzed and improved.

Marketers may need to improve the MMS message if there are a significant number of people who scanned the NFC poster but did not use the

coupons. If customers completed the purchase but did not go to the website, the call to action may not be strong enough to push customers through all funnels.

Conclusion This effective five-step process enables marketers to create impactful technology-driven marketing.

Infusing campaigns with NFC and text messaging provides the speed, practicality and convenience today’s consumers demand and the user-friendliness they enjoy. By streamlining complex actions, NFC provides opportunities for new user experiences. This simple tap-and-go method continues to gain popularity and visibility, providing marketers the chance to grow with it. The powerful NFC and text combination produces interactive advertising that will set creative marketers apart from their competitors.

The sample campaign can be experienced by texting Tileo to (437) 800-2223.

Standard text messaging rates apply.

Armen Matosyan is the co-founder and chief innovation officer of TTAG Systems, a technology company that helps enterprises create custom marketing solutions with components like Voice, SMS, MMS, NFC and web. To learn more please visit http://www. ttagsystems.com.

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Correlating marketing with mobile products: Your path to conversions & engagement

By Lee Dale

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ith over two billion smartphone users projected in 2016, the mobile space is growing far more competitive, with increasingly savvy consumers expecting more from mobile experiences.

While ad spend for mobile is projected by eMarketer to reach $101.37 billion in 2016, an increase of almost 50% from 2015, alignment between marketing and mobile product experiences seems to be decreasing.

Increasing the amount of spend on mobile marketing is not nearly as important as improving the quality of engagement as users move from marketing channels to your site, app, or other mobile product. The evidence, as highlighted by Google: one in four apps are never used and 29% of smartphone users will switch to another site or app if their needs aren’t satisfied.

Let’s look at three key phases where marketing must be aligned with product to reduce abandonment and increase engagement.

1. Product discovery phase The product discovery phase is the foundation for all ongoing efforts to drive customer engagement. This is the most critical phase for aligning marketing and product, as the tone of the customer experience is set during these early customer touchpoints and product aspirations are defined by awareness-focused marketing initiatives.

To move from awareness to engagement, marketing-led product introductions must align with the realworld value of the product. As product experience and value is defined by the audience the product serves and how ❱ DMN.ca

the product is designed to meet the goals of those target users, it’s vital marketing understands and is able to frame a story reflective of the product narrative.

To accomplish this, the key task at this phase is to have marketing and product teams work together to understand the primary use cases of the product and ensure that the promise being marketed to the user is delivered by the product itself.

2. First use phase The key to succeeding in this phase is to ensure a natural segue between the product marketing and first impression of the product. The transition from marketing to product can be as instant as clicking from an ad or direct email to a website, or it could involve going from in-store to a mobile site on the commute home, or installing and launching an app after a visit to the app store.

In each case, moving from marketing channel to product should feel familiar. Where the user first lands in the product needs to correlate with the marketing that lead the prospective user to the product in the first place.

Capturing that look and feel in product begins with identity standards for logo, colours and value statements shared amongst marketing and product teams, along with considering how the introductory marketing campaign will tie in with the related product landing page.

That sets the tone for your product launch, but with both marketing and product continually iterating to drive awareness and engagement, ongoing marketing campaigns and product updates need to be coordinated to align product first use with current marketing language and visuals.

There are two first use aspects

at play: users who have had past interactions with a brand bring a bias to the table based on their experience, and users who are new frame their expectations of the product through the introductory marketing channel.

When there’s a disconnect between those experiences or expectations and the product, it’s shown that anxiety, doubt and frustration build.

This leads to abandonment. Ongoing collaborative planning between marketing and product is your path to ensuring conversions at this critical handoff point, where users are moving from a marketing channel to becoming a product user.

feedback for your mobile products.

In this phase, marketing has the opportunity to drive bottom line value by leveraging communications best practices to connect with users as they work through a site, app or other mobile product. Whether communicating with new users who are looking to get the most out of a new digital product, helping experienced users reach their goals faster or introducing an unexpected new feature, working with the product team on in-product messaging not only helps drive retention, it also helps marketers become better storytellers during the product discovery phase.

3. Engagement phase Once a user is in the product, the focus shifts to retention. Engagement tactics drive retention, which is established through an ongoing series of interactions.

For products that encourage new behaviour, self-discovery is the enemy of engagement. This is where an onboarding process becomes the most important tool for establishing an affinity to the product. Onboarding takes the user from spectator to participant by outlining product capabilities, values and goals, while encouraging interaction.

Ongoing engagement involves consistent, worthwhile communication and interaction with product users. This engagement should be aligned with the value of the product so that it is not perceived as spam. Ongoing engagement may occur across a variety of channels, including targeted email, in-app notifications, OS notifications and in-site messaging.

Opening up two-way engagement through live chat and on-site support services shows you value your customers and encourages valuable

Each phase plays a role Creating a marketing plan that is aligned with mobile products across each marketing channel results in more effective and profitable campaigns. Marketing and product teams who consider the discovery, first use and engagement phases will see these results with higher conversions and more engaged users.

You can get started now by reviewing how your current marketing initiatives compare to the first use experience with your product, then get marketing and product working together to craft an even more compelling story across each phase.

Lee Dale helps companies bring digital

products to market that make a bottom line difference, ensuring that all consumer touchpoints in a product lifecycle meet their promise for the business and its users.

As co-founder and director of product strategy at Say Yeah, Toronto’s multi-channel experience design studio, Lee delivers awardwinning digital products, each with a focus on driving real-world business value while engaging users in unexpectedly magical ways.

February 2016

Issue 1 • 2016 • presented by Direct Marketing magazine

Attract top talent By aligning your consumer & employer brand strategies

+ Is self-scheduling the future of your business?

+ Strategic planning lessons from the contact centre

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WorkForce management

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Align your consumer & employer brand strategies to attract top talent E

By Leigh-Ann Clarke

mmanuel Torres is a 20-something art director at Canadian marketing communications agency Clever Samurai and he absolutely loves it.

The amiable Torres spent, as he puts it, “two great years at Leo Burnett” but recently moved to Clever Samurai to learn more. “I loved the creative director’s work and his great vision for the company. I thought ❱ DMN.ca

it would be a great way to blaze my own path and learn from an industry-known mentor.”

Since Torres joined the agency in 2015, he has been part of a creative team that has won an international Clio Award and he was one-half of the creative duo that won Canada’s National Advertising Challenge for their consumer packaged goods work related to breast cancer awareness. For that he earned an all-expense-paid trip to France for the Cannes Lions

International Festival of Creativity.

In the highly competitive advertising agency world, attracting top talent like Torres has its challenges.

But without that top talent, the final work product is often dubious.

Torres’ “industry-known mentor” Joe Amaral, vice president and creative director at Clever Samurai, says that the key to developing a recruiting campaign to attract top talent is to “emphasize how high the bar is issue 1 2016

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WorkForce management

“If you want

to be a great company, you want

ambitious, driven overachievers. A great brand really is a representation of its greatest assets: people.”

that employer branding is expected to gain greater strategic importance. Forty per cent of respondents stated their future goals for employer branding were to secure long-term hiring needs and 31% said it would become more important for building a global reputation.

Clever Samurai Art Director Emmanuel Torres with Copywriter Alexandra DeMaria at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

First Officer Stephanie Robinson of Air Georgian, an Air Canada Express Partner.

relative to other brands in your category. If you want to be a great company, you want ambitious, driven overachievers. A great brand really is a representation of its greatest assets: people. So if you don’t have great driven talent, then where is the value?”

The employee value proposition In May 2015, Harvard Business Review published an article about the employee value proposition. The premise was that employers need to start focusing on their employer brands in the same manner that they focus on their consumer brands. Universum, an employer branding consultancy, surveyed more than 2,000 senior executives about their employer branding activities. Their sample included CEOs and heads of HR and recruiting, employer branding and marketing in 18 countries.

Findings have shown that many leaders now place primary responsibility for the employer brand with the CEO or marketing, rather than with recruiters and HR. Sixty per cent of the CEOs surveyed said this responsibility lies with the CEO (40% of marketing leaders agreed)—a strong indication Issue 1 2016

Julie Mailhot is the chief operating officer for Air Georgian, a private airline carrier who flies routes for Air Canada under the Air Canada Express banner and is a client of Clever Samurai. The airline operations expert believes that employers should “always consider using what you have in-house to help you get a message out externally. You have ambassadors internally who can help you raise awareness through word of mouth. Employees can be a part of your recruitment plan and can publicize your efforts. Who better than your own team speaking positively on your behalf and aiding in your search for qualified candidates?”

Mailhot adds: “People at Air Georgian are committed to seeing our company succeed. Many have been here for a long time because they believe in what we are building. They want to experience our growth from the smaller operation that we were to the bigger Air Canada Express partner that we are. They understand that our growth means their growth—many of our employees have ramped up quickly to new roles in different departments or more senior roles in a matter of months.”

Stephanie Robinson, who is a first officer at Air Georgian and one of a growing number of female pilots, is all about the opportunity: “When I think of Air Georgian, I think of their reputation for growth and that’s what I look for in an employer— opportunities for career advancement. The Air

Canada Express partnership provides the quickest time in the industry to advance from a first officer to a captain. They also have many direct-entry captain seats for those that are qualified. You can even be placed on a mobility list, where Air Canada will source potential pilot hires from Air Georgian.”

Andre Daryanani, who is a chief pilot at Air Georgian, echoes Robinson’s comments: “The company’s dedication to safety and commitment to its employees’ growth are just some of the many reasons it has been recognized as one of Canada’s top employers. Growth has always been the backbone of Air Georgian. Watching fellow pilots move on to Air Canada solidifies the image that by working here, you become an asset to any major airline.”

Even those industries that one might think of as a little less sexy are competing for top talent.

Accounting giant Deloitte Canada’s website highlights their top 10 reasons to join their firm.

They write: “Our people and culture are redefining what it means to be a professional services firm. It’s about creating a workplace where you can be inspired and be inspiring—a workplace where you can grow and feel a sense of belonging and camaraderie.”

The common theme for all these employers and their employees isn’t at all about the paycheque; it’s about the opportunity to learn, grow and be part of something meaningful and inspirational to them. So how does a company be inspirational?

Joe Amaral believes that it’s in the essence of your brand and who you are at the core of your organizational DNA, citing a non-profit as one of the best. “I think PBS in Virginia is a great brand that attracts some of the brightest minds and talent.

From a salary point of view they are likely not as competitive as the major networks. But their core brand values define a product that has prestige and meaning. People at PBS believe they can make a difference in the world and their culture promotes that.”

There are many studies that link happy employees to happy customers. So, it’s not surprising that many companies will be moving to align their employer and consumer brand strategies over the next few years.

As Amaral puts it, “everything we do says something about our brand. That, perhaps more than anything, is represented in the people we hire.”

And speaking of hiring, Amaral just added a new copywriter to his award-winning team—personally recruited by none other than Emmanuel Torres.

Leigh-Ann Clarke is director of sales, North America, for 360 Leads. She has been with 360 Leads since 2014, following her progressive management career at Yellow Pages Group where she led their sales efforts in digital products, print, telephone sales and neighbourhood directories.

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WorkForce management

Is self scheduling the future of your business?

Case study: Making on-demand contact centres a reality through intelligent agent self-scheduling empowerment

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By Larry Schwartz

ith roots dating back to the 1950s, department store “complaint department” businesses have historically viewed “customer service” as a cost of doing business and one that required cost containment wherever possible. Call centres were originally conceived as a more cost effective way of providing customer service and outsourcing/offshoring of call centres was just a further extension of this mentality.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic shift in thinking, however, and today’s modern multi-channel contact centres are increasingly becoming a critical component in many companies’ strategic effort to achieve competitive differentiation through superior customer service. As an example, within the Canadian wireless carrier industry, customer satisfaction is a leading indicator of customer turnover or “churn” which in turn is a leading indicator of business growth and ultimately stock price. The financial performance of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) tracking portfolio of companies with superior customer satisfaction scores has exceeded the S&P500 by a factor of four since the year 2000. This is why the vast majority of Canadian c-suite executives surveyed cite “improving the customer experience” as a top three strategic priority for their company. Recent industry trend data that shows decade-long growth of contact centre outsourcing and offshoring slowing or reversing is further evidence of this shift in thinking.

A happy employee makes a happy customer Many of us have heard this expression and it couldn’t be more true when looking at contact centre agents. A study by performance benchmarking firm MetricNet shows that there is a direct one-toone correlation between agent job satisfaction and customer satisfaction (a one per cent increase in ❱ DMN.ca

agent satisfaction will improve customer satisfaction by one per cent). MetricNet data also shows a one-toone correlation between agent satisfaction and agent turnover (a one per cent increase in agent satisfaction will reduce agent turnover by one per cent). So companies seeking to improve customer satisfaction and retain an experienced workforce can achieve this through improving the satisfaction of their agents.

With annual turnover rates for contact centre agents averaging 35% or more, however, it is clear that achieving high levels of agent satisfaction remains a major industry challenge. High agent turnover means new, inexperienced hires are continually being added to “the front lines” and often falling short on delivering the same quality of service that long-term, experienced agents can deliver. And this problem is getting worse—according to Dimension Data’s 2013–2014 Contact Centre Benchmark report, agent turnover rose 26% from the previous year.

Schedule-change empowerment makes a happy agent To understand what drives agent satisfaction, it is important to look at agent demographics. With an average age of 24 years old, Millennials have now become the dominant demographic within the North American contact centre workforce.

Job satisfaction drivers for Millennials are very different than the drivers for the generations that preceded them. According to a millennial generation research study funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, most Millennials consider when they work

as more important than opportunities for more pay or advancement and although they are highachievement oriented, 75% of Millennials consider work-life balance as a primary driver of their career choices. So a key to improving job satisfaction for contact centre agents is to improve their schedulechange empowerment—providing them with the ability to adjust their work hours as needed to achieve an optimal balance between their work and home lives. Increasing agent schedule-change empowerment increases agent satisfaction which increases agent retention and agent performance which increases customer satisfaction.

issue 1 2016

// 5

WorkForce management The agent schedule-change empowerment paradox So if companies know that a happy agent makes a happy customer and schedule-change empowerment makes a happy agent, why is it that the industry has been slow to respond to this need despite the growing strategic focus on improving customer satisfaction?

The key to this seeming paradox can be found by understanding the schedule-change management process. For most companies processing schedule change requests is a complex, time consuming and stressful task for workforce administrators to perform. For each change request a workforce administrator needs to assess the impact on staffing levels (i.e. will this aggravate a projected understaffing or overstaffing situation?), confirm that the request meets regulatory (e.g. work hours) and company policy (e.g. seniority) compliance guidelines, assure that their approval decisions don’t create perceptions of employee bias (e.g. why was one request approved and another denied?), communicate approval decisions in a timely manner and manually update approved schedule changes in the scheduling system. Imagine all of this could be done in 10 minutes for each request. For a 2,000 agent contact centre operation, if each agent submitted five schedule change requests a week, it would require a full time workforce of over 40 people just to process the volume of change requests.

In response to this, many companies actually employ cost-containment policies specifically designed to restrict schedule-change empowerment such as limiting the number of requests or requiring significant advanced notice for schedule change requests. So although there is a recognition that there are benefits to increasing agent schedule-change empowerment, conventional thinking would suggest that there is a corresponding business cost that must be balanced against this benefit.

Solving the paradox through intelligent empowerment technology What if there was a way to provide agents with the schedule change empowerment they really want in a way that actually improved staffing variances and reduced administrative costs, instead of increasing them? The good news for the industry is that intelligent schedule change empowerment technology can make this on-demand contact centre dream a reality.

Here is how intelligent schedule change empowerment technology works: Almost all commercial Workforce Management (WFM) systems provide workforce administrators with projected staffing variances—future time intervals when the number of currently scheduled agents will exceed or fall short of projected need. Traditionally workforce administrators analyze this staffing variance data and try to optimize staffing levels by asking some agents to take on extra hours during projected understaffed intervals or take time off during projected overstaffed intervals.

Intelligent schedule change empowerment takes the latest view of projected staffing variances and matches the staffing variances to agent current skills, schedules and work-hour compliance through Issue 1 2016

a convenient user interface (think smartphone) that displays for the agent pre-approved extra-time or time off opportunities that if requested will be instantly accepted. Projected understaffed intervals are displayed as preapproved extra hour opportunities and projected overstaffed intervals are displayed as pre-approved time-off opportunities. The available extra hour and time off opportunities are continually updated to reflect the latest projection of staffing variances ensuring that each schedule change opportunity if selected will actually help optimize staffing levels. And with this assurance there is no longer a need for workforce administrators to manually process change requests.

The result is a true win-win for agents (maximized schedule-change empowerment) and workforce administrators (less staffing variances and schedulechange process overhead).

Real world impact on agent satisfaction and intraday performance Companies who have leveraged intelligent schedule change empowerment technology to transform their contact centre agents into active workforce administration partners have reported dramatic improvements to agent satisfaction, intraday staffing performance and administrative overhead.

According to agent satisfaction survey data aggregated from several companies, the percentage of agents that were highly satisfied with their selfscheduling flexibility grew by over 450% within 45 days of deployment of the WorkFlex intelligent agent mobile app. Negative agent satisfaction scores went down from almost 80% to under 30% in the same timeframe.

And the impact on intraday performance is equally impressive. At the 2015 Society of Workforce Planning Professionals’ (SWPP) annual conference, Sutherland Global Services, a large business process outsourcer (BPO), reported that after the deployment of the WorkFlex mobile app over 95% of all schedule changes were now agent initiated through the app and automatically approved and that agents were able to cut the level of staffing variances in half all by themselves. In addition, Sutherland reported that agent utilization increased by over three hours per agent per month. With results like these, the impact of agent self-scheduling empowerment on contact centre cost-performance is clear and compelling.

With results like this, it is no wonder that Forbes magazine recently cited WorkFlex as a technology that “will make on-demand contact centres a reality.”

Taking intelligent self-service empowerment beyond the contact centre The inherent benefits of an on-demand workforce have clear applicability beyond the contact centre and the power of intelligent self-service technology may also shape the future of other industries including:

❯❯

❯❯

❯❯

Healthcare: With around 300,000 registered nurses in Canada the number of healthcare staff working in hospitals and nursing homes is roughly equivalent to the number of contact centre agents and the cost of recruiting and retaining staff is significantly higher.

Retail: For many hotels, restaurant chains and retail stores, unplanned absenteeism is common and opportunities for additional work-hours may be attractive to many employees.

Travel: Where the impact of weather can have a sudden and significant impact on staffing requirements for airlines and travel agencies that are difficult to address in a timely way.

Conclusion Any company seeking achieve competitive differentiation through superior customer service should place a strategic focus on improving agent satisfaction. The demographics of today’s contact centre workforce has made agent self-scheduling flexibility a top driver of agent satisfaction.

Intelligent agent schedule-change empowerment technology provides the means to improve agent satisfaction and realize the substantial operational cost-performance benefits of an on-demand contact centre at the same time.

Larry Schwartz is the chairman and CEO of WorkFlex Solutions (workflexsolutions.com). He has over 25 years of executive management experience in large-scale operational streamlining, enterprise-grade software and consumer products development, strategic planning, business transformation and outsourced services including billing and contact centres. Prior to his current position, Mr. Schwartz was president and EVP of Global Operations at Convergys Corporation, the world’s largest outsourced provider of billing and customer care services.

DMN.ca ❰

WorkForce management

// 6

Strategic planning lessons from the contact centre W

By Ric Kosiba

hether you manage large teams of retail associates, salespeople or other service teams with fluctuating demands and challenges, you can learn a lot from the contact centre industry. Your planning may not need to be as sophisticated, but here are best practice recommendations that can help you reduce your bottom line while delighting your customers.

Like a lot of industries, there are so many complicated problems in the contact centre industry with huge cost implications. Developing an accurate, long-term strategic operational plan is something that will reduce frustration by ensuring service delivery is consistent and appropriate based on corporate goals.

Given that hiring large numbers of employees is so expensive, you would think that understanding how many employees are needed to service your customers is straightforward, but it’s not.

Operations involve moving multiple types of communication channels (i.e. phone, email, chat) through complex networks, and often across different locations. Contact centres are people-intensive, thus have all the difficulties associated with managing large groups of individuals. Further, the demand for contact centre services is highly seasonal, like in the retail industry. Customer contact varies greatly during different times of the year, as does the nature of these interactions. And agents are seasonal too. They’ll call in sick due to weather and other seasonal events.

All these factors make developing a “simple” hiring plan both difficult and more important. It’s very easy to make a planning mistake and find the operation in a state of severe understaffing, which leads to both customer and agent dissatisfaction.

Why strategic planning?

To mitigate these mistakes in any industry, long-term planning is needed. This type of planning goes by a few names: strategic planning, capacity planning and long-term planning. Whatever it’s called, the goal is to tame the seasonality of the operation. This enables you to show executives the trade-offs between resources provisioned, the customer experience and revenues expected.

While strategic planning is necessary, creating a successful plan isn’t always easy. The following are four common strategic planning challenges: 1. Metrics. Business metrics are seasonal. Volumes, sick time, vacation requests, employee attrition, sales, revenues and many other important metrics vary significantly week by week. So the planning analysts’ first step is to understand the seasonality of all these metrics so they can forecast them well.

2. Uncertainty. Even with the best forecasts, we all know that there is uncertainty and variability associated with plans. This uncertainty must be ❱ DMN.ca

quantified, understood and presented to decision makers. The best plans outline the cost and service risks of planning wrong.

3. Complexity. Contact centre operations have always been complex, but today the complexity has skyrocketed as contact centre operations have become multi-site, multi-skill and multi-channel.

The math required to evaluate staffing in these operations has become extremely complex. In the old days, simple switchboards could lean on a simple math equation—the old Erlang C workload calculation—to determine how many operators were needed to hit service standards. Today, this simplification is wildly inaccurate, therefore missing the point of the whole planning exercise.

4. Resources. Resource decisions are getting harder and harder. When should we hire? When should we offer vacation and training? What is the best way to staff for seasonal peaks: with overtime or by hiring? Determining this using a spreadsheet with an “over/under” line is impossible to do efficiently.

Forget trying to develop multi-site, multi-channel and multi-skill staff plans by hand. Spreadsheets are slow, cumbersome and easy to mess up.

The focus of any strategic plan is to develop hiring, vacation, overtime and undertime plans that ensure that the staff available is very close to the staff required to hit targeted service goals through the seasonal peaks and valleys of a modern business What happens when you do not plan well?

Now you know the importance and benefits of planning well. But what happens when you don’t plan well?

The following are three repercussions of poor planning: 1. Over/Understaffing. The obvious repercussion of poor planning is being overstaffed or understaffed during the day-of operation. If you don’t hire enough agents, you’ll be understaffed. Hire too many, and agents will be looking for things to do, burning your company’s cash. Hire at the wrong time? Again, you will likely be overstaffed or understaffed (or both at different times of the year).

Either will lead to workforce management chaos as the real-time team works to remedy the poor plan.

2. Service inconsistency. Chronic mis-staffing also leads to service inconsistency, as customers receive very different levels of service. In an era where excellent customer experience is crucial, an erratic experience will be problematic.

3. Overpaying. An inefficient plan by definition means that the contact centre operation will be paying too much to service its customers. Hiring too soon, or hiring too late and incurring unplanned overtime all come with significant and wasteful costs.

Strategic planning at its core is about making decisions.

The best strategic planning processes embed the ability to accurately perform what-if analyses for the big picture questions of executives. Systems must be accurate over the range of service levels that what-ifs might contemplate. For example, when asked for the effects of a hiring freeze the capacity planning process must be able to accurately and quickly quantify the service, costs, agent effort (occupancy), revenue and profit repercussions of the decision. Inaccurate whatifs will lead to significant decisions that are wrong.

Tools that can help Developing capacity plans is an exercise in mathematical modeling. The following are three models every strategic planner needs: 1. Predictive models to develop forecasts.

2. Descriptive models to determine the service, cost and revenue implications of any staffing scenario.

These models simulate the operation.

3. Prescriptive models to optimally develop hiring overtime, undertime and controllable shrinkage plans.

Together, all three models enable a company to accurately evaluate within minutes any what-if analyses, forecast or staff plan.

What we have experienced I have the strange bragging right to have seen more contact centre planning systems and spreadsheets than possibly any other human being on the planet.

The following are my three observations that validate strategic planning: 1. Too many companies still use an Erlang-based planning system to perform capacity planning. Almost universally, these companies have issues hitting service goals without being chronically overstaffed.

2. Companies that have developed a rigorous planning process using each of the three models universally run a tighter operation. These companies give more consistent service with slightly higher efficiencies than those without the appropriate tools.

3. Companies that have invested in these models and business processes saw a dramatic shift in cost per call—typically experiencing cost savings of 5 to10 percent.

If providing consistent customer experiences and service at a frugal cost is important to your organization, then investing in the strategic planning process is critical. Good planning always leads to a smoother and less expensive operation in any industry.

Ric Kosiba is vice president of Interactive Intelligence’s Decisions

Group. He is responsible for the development and enhancement of the contact centre capacity planning and analysis product line. issue 1 2016

// 23

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// 26

DATAPOINTS OF VIEW

When it comes to data, quality matters more than quantity

By Jan Kestle

W

The data geeks and modellers know what to do, and the marketers know the questions that need to be answered.

But it’s only corporate leadership that can tackle the barriers and resistance that stand in the way of assets being shared across an organization. ❱ DMN.ca

ith so much emphasis on analytics for business decision making these days, I often find myself reminding marketers about the importance of the quality of the data they are using—not just the quantity.

To develop data-driven insights, marketers first need to address the question of what data is valuable to their enterprise. Are you using all the data available to your organization about your customers? Are your data up-to-date? Are disparate databases linked together to give you one view of the customer? Have you filled in missing data with high-quality thirdparty data?

For many, just getting access to current and comprehensive customer data is a problem. Having the time and resources to clean, enhance and organize data to derive actionable insights in a timely manner can seem like an analyst’s pipedream.

Analysts and researchers know that the quality and coverage of data are the biggest factors driving the accuracy and effectiveness of analytics. What kind of model, which outcome to measure, what software to use—all are important considerations, but experience and testing show that the biggest determinant of good analytics is good data. And the biggest barrier to ensuring quality inputs to our decision-making process is corporate culture.

This is where the C-suite must step in. Organizations need to adopt a data-driven culture. The data geeks and modellers know what to do, and the marketers know the questions that need to be answered. But it’s only corporate leadership that can tackle the barriers and resistance that stand in the way of assets being shared across an organization.

Enterprise policies regarding data gathering, storage and access are intended to protect consumer data, but they also must ensure compliant and responsible use by those who access the data. Sharing across silos is essential to understand cross-sell and

upsell opportunities, but too often the left hand of an organization doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

Contrary to consumer mythology, there is no such thing as a “digital” customer as distinct from a “traditional” customer anymore; there never was, actually. There’s just “the customer” who researches, shops and engages with brands in many varied and complicated ways. Why do we have digital marketers and CRM managers in different divisions of an organization? Digital agencies, email providers, DM providers, media buyers—too often, these specialists work at cross purposes or, at the very least, collaborate only on small subsets of the total picture. Data integration leading to one view of the customer is essential to good analytics.

These challenges and imperatives are top of our agenda at Environics Analytics in our role as a provider of third-party data for marketing analytics. We bring together hundreds of data sources and provide over 15,000 variables about consumer lifestyle, media and shopping behaviour. Long gone are the days when third-party data meant census demographics linked to postal code.

Our team includes Masters- and Ph.D-level mathematicians, geographers, economists and statisticians. Our methods for data development include clustering, regression, microsimulation, artificial intelligence and many other techniques. We use large databases, surveys and administrative data among other sources—including both traditional and big data. Many of our source databases are not available for low levels of geography or are not complete. It’s our job to fill in the gaps and drive the data down to small areas so it can be used for micro-level marketing.

To create good quality data, our approach is to let the data speak: to know what can be modelled reliably and what can’t. We have developed a series of best practices over the years and are happy to share our methods with users in great detail. Just ask us.

We never produce an estimate for a postal code when we feel we don’t have

sufficient data or a reliable scientific method for creating it. If our experts won’t approve the methodology, we simply won’t release the variable.

With limited resources, many Canadian marketers want to focus their time on analytics—not on data gathering or data prep—so we continue to identify new sources and new methods to ensure that: ❯❯ The demographics are as comprehensive as possible, despite recent census challenges; ❯❯ Disparate media measurement sources can be used through the common lens of PRIZM, our segmentation system that uses demographic, economic and geographic models; and ❯❯ These high-quality data can be easily accessed for custom areas and easily integrated with customer and transaction data.

It’s a big job. Nearly a third of our staff of 100 employees is involved in data production—even more right now as we prepare to release our annual data update this March. We do not believe in quick-and-dirty approaches or just repeating processes from one year to the next without review and innovation.

The world of consumer marketing is changing: the talk of disruption and constant change is not just talk. So whether you’re thinking about your own data or data from third parties that enhance your data, remember the objective of predictive analytics is to simulate reality as best you can in your models and processes.

While best practices are essential, the foundation for good analytics is the highest quality data possible.

Jan Kestle is the president and founder of

Environics Analytics.

What’s your datapoint of view?

If you have opinions on the data that drives marketing and would like to share them here, please contact Editor Sarah O’Connor at sarah@dmn.ca.

February 2016

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