Acquisition and long-term loyalty are two sides of the same coin. Learn how CMO masterminds flip that coin to win their marketing bet every time when they leverage marketing-automation technology.
“A user-acquisition strategy is among the most important of any marketing strategy — and I believe strongly in a customer retention strategy as well,” says Marissa Tarleton, CMO at RetailMeNot, which has nabbed a spot in the top five shopping apps in the country, with 45 million email subscribers and 19 million unique monthly visitors.
The two tactics are not just effective in their own marketing silos, Tarleton explains. Because a repeat customer is cheaper than a new customer, driving loyalty and engagement means that the more loyal users are onboard, the more spend can be targeted toward driving engagement with the product and experiences to a broader audience.
“But at the same time, the word-of-mouth opportunity with a happy customer that’s sharing regularly the success that they’ve had with our product goes a long way,” Tarleton adds. “Loyalty can translate not only into efficiencies but into significant word of mouth and social opportunities with regards to happy customers.”
Both strategies start, she says, with the need for a deep understanding of your audience and their journey, as well as the devices they’re using, so that you can really understand the most personal and relevant way to acquire them. Relevance and personalization helps acquire customers that intend to be more loyal with you over time, versus just coming in and then abandoning.
“A lot of marketers are talking about personalization, but I mean it a little more deeply,” Tarleton adds. “I mean it cross-channel, cross-device, and cross-media.” One common mistake in acquisition and personalization, Tarleton says, is that it’s not channel-specific.
“I won’t name any by name–but I’m solicited for clicks and app visits often from retailers that forget that they’ve already sent me the same message in another format or vehicle within the last seven days,” Tarleton says. “It’s fascinating how often that happens. You can quickly turn from ‘Oh, you know me!’ to, ‘Oh, you know me and you’re not integrating your data to truly be relevant and now I don’t like you.’”
And right there, you’ve blown your cross-channel opportunity. The key to getting that right, Tarleton says, is using marketing automation to deliver that customer-retention and -engagement program.
“You have to put the customer first and build marketing automation plays around them, so that it’s seamless to a customer, agnostic to where and when they’re actually interacting with your brand,” she explains.
That can’t be done without a pretty strong integrated data strategy that allows data to be exchanged across devices and across platforms.
“It’s a critical mistake that I see retailers make,” Tarleton says. “They build data in silos without an integrated strategy and that can be a nonstarter when you’re trying to do marketing automation.”
Learn more about data integration and set up, how to reduce churn, and how to harness the power of marketing automation when you register for free!
Don’t miss out!
In this VB Live event, you will:
- Harness the power of marketing automation to build a user-acquisition program that works
- Explore key strategies for efficient, highly optimized user acquisition
- Gain best practices for engaging and retaining users while reducing churn
- Learn acquisition-engagement synergy tactics including pre- and post-install segmentation, organic growth, retargeting, and reward-based acquisition
Speakers:
- Marissa Tarleton, CMO, RetailMeNot
- Jason Allen, VP, Multi-Channel at GameStop
- Stewart Rogers, Analyst, VentureBeat
Moderator:
- Wendy Schuchart, VentureBeat
This VB Live event is sponsored by IBM Marketing Cloud.