V. Silicon Rally
There’s not much left to say about the totality with which digital technology has swept through every corner of marketing...except that it’s just getting started. Think of where we were ten years ago when the big click-wheel 20GB iPods in our pockets were jaw-droppingly state of the art.
So I suppose all we can really do is hold on tight and brace for the next tidal wave of change, right?
Well, yes and no. We do need to do that—change is coming, it’s coming fast, and there’s no way to completely prepare for whatever lies ahead. But that’s not all we can do. We can also heed the advice of the marketers who are leveraging marketing technologies the way we all should—wisely, efficiently, with foresight, and without succumbing to hype.
I’m talking about people like Rose Hamilton, who at Pet360 redefined the online user experience and in doing so ran circles around brick-and-mortar pet supply shops. Or John Costello, a seasoned veteran who combines deep experience with an ever-curious mindset and is guiding Dunkin’ Donuts towards the future of mobile apps. Or Paul Greenberg, who’s pulled off the enviable feat of boiling virality down to a repeatable science.
The theme I hope you notice across these marketers who are leading marketing’s Silicon Rally is that they’ve taken the time and deliberate care to understand the technologies and tech-fueled tactics that have made them successful. They don’t approach tech as some sort of plug-and-play, paint-by-numbers game where reaping its benefits requires little more than surfing the net all day and motor-mouthing the latest buzzwords and acronyms to anyone within earshot.
One quick and hopefully helpful aside about the element silicon, the purest .1% of which indeed makes possible the computer on which I’m typing this, the electronic device on which you’re perhaps reading this, and all the topics covered in this section: Its name is derived from the Latin silex, which means “hard stone” or “flint.” I like to remember this when the pace of technological change starts to make my head spin a little, as it reminds me there is something firm, solid, and constant underlying it all.
At its core, marketing is about communication, and from papyrus sheets to the printing press to the telegraph to the Android, technology is the great facilitator of communication. So when new tech gizmos wash over our transom, I find asking, “But will it truly help us communicate better?” is often a solid litmus test for whether it’s going to have staying power.
And let’s never forget that a communication tool is only as effective as the brains on the operating and receiving ends.
Anyway, let’s switch our smartphones to silent for a few minutes and pay close attention to eight of the most tech-savvy minds in marketing.
Securing Brotherly Love, Win or Lose
“You simply do what’s right for the fans. And it takes a lot of the complexity out of it.”
Being a CMO for a major pro sports team can be a roller-coaster ride. When the team is winning, you don’t need to pull any marketing miracles out of your hat to keep the brand strong and growing. But when the team’s fortunes change for the worse—and they inevitably will—it takes a consummate professional to keep the seats filled and the fans hopeful.
And in a city like Philadelphia, home of intensely passionate fans known for being very loud and clear when they’re not happy with their beloved teams, the stakes are high for the teams’ CMOs. So it’s impressive, to say the least, that Tim McDermott has established himself at the front of the pack of sports marketing in Philly—first with his distinguished tenure as CMO of the Eagles, and now with the 76ers. I’ve been lucky enough to interview Tim in both roles. (He also served as CMO for the Washington Capitals professional hockey team, and during his tenure there the Caps sold out all forty-one home games in a season for the first time in franchise history.)
In this interview, Tim explains how—regardless of how the guys on the field or the court or the ice are performing—teams can keep relationships strong with their fans. The lessons are invaluable for all marketers, as they explain how and why to stay the course in spite of forces beyond our control.
How have data and CRM platforms figured into your work with the 76ers?
Data is a major part of our strategy. We’re heavily invested in infrastructure, software, and human capital in order to re-engineer what we’re doing on the data science side. We’ve rolled out Salesforce across the company, which also requires retooling our processes and our staffing efforts. We’re trying to be much more a data-centric operation, using data to help us make more sophisticated and objective decisions. We’re also building a data warehouse that will allow us to do a lot more sophisticated marketing.
So this is a big transformation. How is this impacting your role at the 76ers?
The last three years of my career have seen an amazing transformation from what it means to be a marketer. It’s almost like you’re a technology officer. You need to be able to speak the language of database marketing and understand what it is that we’re building, how we build it, and what we do with it once it’s built. If you look back a few years ago, it was easier to say, “Oh, that’s the content group; that’s the digital group; that’s the Web group; that’s the marketing group.” Now “digital” strategy no longer operates in its own carved-out department.
Is marketing a sports team fundamentally different from marketing consumer packaged goods?
I think there are a lot of similarities between marketing a sports property and marketing for other companies. The reality is we’re probably doing the same things that the marketers of other retail-oriented companies are doing. We’ve got “widgets” to sell in the form of tickets. And we go through the exercise of segmentation, targeting, and positioning our products and our brand the same way that other marketers do. We build brands. We engage in all the different forms of marketing and advertising as other companies do. So we’re doing everything from market research to CRM implementations, to automated emails, to managing social digital campaigns, to direct marketing, to direct response. You name it and I think we do it.
But from a more strategic perspective, I think sports teams are really media companies. We aggregate millions of impressions from the people who come to our games, watch us on TV shows, websites, Facebook, Twitter, and all the different vehicles that are out there. At the end of the day, we can aggregate communities of people through all these channels. And as a result of that, I think you’ll see us acting and executing in ways more like those of a media company.
Philadelphia sports fans are famously enthusiastic, to put it nicely. Talk to me about the role the fans play in building your brands.
If you are a sports executive or even if you’re an owner of a sports team, I think you’re really a steward of a brand. It’s a public trust. And that’s the way I tend to look at it. I think if you take that approach and you think of it as the fans being at the heart of team, then you’ll always do the right thing. You simply do what’s right for the fans. And it takes a lot of the complexity out of it. This approach makes it so that even in times that aren’t so good on the field, or on the ice, or on the court, fans are still showing up.
Can you give me a specific example of how you engaged with your fans when you were with the Eagles?
With the Eagles, we created a 35-person advisory board of passionate season ticket holders, with membership running two years. It wasn’t just a glorified focus group. The people who signed up to be part of this board signed up to be solutions providers. They told us what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong from the serious fan’s perspective. The quid pro quo was, they also had to help us come up with solutions to the problem, not just tell us what we’re doing wrong. We looked at them as an extension of our marketing department who would help us create solutions. It was truly a concept of listening, engaging, and developing trust with them.
Further reading:
Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing
Mobilizing Macy’s
“Be everywhere, do everything, and never forget to astonish the customer.”
The chance to talk to Macy’s CMO Martine Reardon about marketing is a bit like shopping at the flagship Macy’s store on Manhattan’s West 34th Street. It’s hard to know where to start! Martine’s knowledge and expertise spans so many “departments,” and the temptation to spend time browsing all of them—from leadership to brand building to customer experience to mix modeling and beyond—is strong.
But of course, she didn’t have all day to chat with me. So I did my very best to stick to a “shopping list” of prime topics facing today’s marketers—first and foremost, Web content with a focus on mobile. The Macy’s Web presence is spectacular and constantly improving, and Martine is the creative driving force behind how it continues to evolve. The range of marketing activity alone is staggering, yet thanks to a few overarching principles, it’s easy to see how Martine and her sizable team pull it all together and bring “The Magic of Macy’s” to life.
Is there a phrase that sums up your approach to marketing?
We embrace a saying from Macy’s very own Margaret Getchell (the first woman executive in retail), who said: “Be everywhere, do everything, and never forget to astonish the customer.” It’s a motto we live by here, and I think having a legacy of such pioneering executives is an inspiration to all of us. It has fostered an ambition and entrepreneurialism that is a part of our culture.
Considering that Macy’s is a symbol of tradition, how important do you feel it is to take advantage of new trends and be early adopters of technologies such as Apple Pay and Shopkick?
Our top priority at Macy’s is to serve the customer. With the customer at the center of every decision we make, it’s essential for us to quickly and effectively address their needs. This is why you’ve seen Macy’s at the forefront of testing new technologies and in some cases being early adopters of innovations that enhance our customers’ shopping experiences. Whether it’s more relevant, targeted marketing that cuts through the clutter and speaks to the needs and wants of that customer, or a technology that speeds up the check-out process, we will look to test and adopt strategies and innovations that provide customer value and support.
Of course, we’re always testing newness in our omnichannel strategy and with technology—including our recent launch with Apple Pay, rolling out Shopkick nationally, launching Macy’s My Wallet, enhancing our shopping apps, offering Macy’s Image Search, expanding buy online/pickup in store, and testing same-day delivery.
What have your experiences been with mobile marketing to date?
We’ve made sure that our mobile media strategy is grounded in a deep understanding of how our customers are engaging with their smartphone and tablet devices. Our customers at Macy’s tend to be quite mobile-centric. To that end, we’ve invested in tactics such as mobile and tablet digital display, SMS, and mobile paid search.
We’ve also evaluated mobile usage penetration in cross-device channels like digital audio and social media, and use those insights to drive a mobile-first approach to those channels. In addition, we’ve recently relaunched our Macy’s mobile app with significant improvements to the user experience and have launched a brand-new Macy’s Image Search app that leverages visual recognition technology to populate search results. We’re also continuing to explore the in-store beacons space. Looking ahead, we see a lot of white space in mobile analytics and attribution, and look forward to developments that will help us better understand the impact of mobile media investment to total omnichannel sales.
We also run mobile and tablet-based digital retargeting campaigns and are testing into cross-screen retargeting in Spring 2015. This is a powerful tactic that capitalizes on connecting with customers who’ve expressed intent to purchase with us. As well, we’re launching a social shopping test in Q4 with Instagram, which will really help us better understand how to unlock the opportunity to drive sales through social media and potentially drive higher conversion directly on a mobile device.
What’s working for you these days in social media? Did you try anything new this year that you can share?
We focus on a balanced approach between great publishing, meaningful engagement, and effective paid media. What’s important is clearly defining what success metrics to apply, based on the social media tactic being evaluated. Targeted direct response campaigns serve quite a different purpose than top-funnel branded publishing, but when planned and executed holistically, provide real value for our brand.
We’re always testing, learning, and iterating in the social media space. We’re intrigued by the explosive growth of video on Facebook since the rollout of auto-play, and have run some campaigns over the last year using Facebook’s video ad product. We continue to explore how best to leverage Twitter’s natural affinity with TV, as a second-screen companion to broadcast and branded integrations. We’re working hard to grow our footprint on YouTube through targeted pre-roll, original content, and content collaborations with creators. We recently ran a very fun UGC-based campaign on YouTube as part of our Back to School efforts.
We’ve also recently begun publishing on Wanelo, with the objective of connecting with their fast-growing and incredibly valuable audience base. And we continue to focus on our Pinterest publishing and paid media strategy. We think there is an enormous runway for us to utilize Pinterest not only as a means of showcasing great social publishing, but also as a visual search engine that allows us to facilitate product discovery and drive traffic to our eCommerce site.
Further reading:
Nir Eyal, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
America Runs on Mobile
“Most great ideas flow from the consumer.”
John Costello has one of marketing’s most impressive resumes, with stints at Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, The Home Depot, and other notable brands leading up to his current role as President, Global Marketing & Innovation at Dunkin’ Brands. Dunkin’ Donuts is a brand that’s evolved successfully over the decades, while launching some of the most unforgettable marketing campaigns in America’s collective memory, including the current “America Runs on Dunkin’” advertising campaign. With John now in charge of marketing, customer engagement, R&D, and consumer product efforts, the future looks bright for Dunkin’ as mobile technology becomes a bigger presence in all our lives.
John’s insights are invaluable for any marketer who knows that earning a share of precious space on “the small screen” of mobile devices must be a top priority. So grab a cup of America’s favorite coffee and enjoy. (Be sure to also check out the interview before this one with Martine Reardon of Macy’s for more killer mobile insights.)
How important is mobile marketing to Dunkin’s overall marketing mix?
For a company like Dunkin’ Donuts, mobile and marketing go hand-in-hand. The surge in mobile usage, coupled with the busy, on-the-go Dunkin’ guest, creates a very compelling business case for us. By launching the Dunkin’ Mobile App, DD Perks® Rewards Program, and offering mobile payments, we created an entirely new level of speed and convenience that further distinguishes our brand to current and new customers throughout the country.
Aside from the Dunkin’ app, how are you leveraging mobile?
While the majority of our mobile efforts are focused on adding value for our consumers through the Dunkin’ Mobile App, we do believe that it’s critical to optimize for mobile across all of our digital touch points. With consumers increasingly reliant on their mobile devices for information, it’s important that our website, online advertising, emails, social media communications, DD Perks Rewards Program, and more all be optimized for the mobile audience.
Each month, we also host a number of fun promotions and programs for our consumers on mobile-friendly social media platforms. We recently enhanced our involvement with ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown using unique videos featuring famed NBA impersonator and social media sensation Brandon Armstrong (@BdotAdot5) celebrating excessive celebrations and the fun side of football culture. Additionally, Dunkin’ Donuts was the first company to leverage ESPN’s talent on Periscope. Fans are encouraged via posts on ESPN’s and Dunkin’ Donuts’ social channels to tweet questions and messages related to each Monday Night Football game, using #DDFieldPass.
The goal of creating the content and sharing it across social media channels allows Dunkin’ Donuts to engage with users who enjoy watching Monday Night Football while leveraging a mobile device to connect with others about the game.
We also partnered with Google’s Waze navigation app to engage with people in mobile app environments. Dunkin’ Donuts was one of the first brands to map our locations with Waze and we have used geo-targeted ads to target Waze users who are driving near Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants. To capture the excitement for the start of football season and promote our new Tailgater Breakfast Sandwich, we recently enhanced our partnership with a fun, light-hearted campaign to bring the voice of New England Patriots player Rob Gronkowski to the Waze app.
Can you comment on the results you’ve seen from these initiatives?
Overall, we’re very pleased with the response to our mobile initiatives. The success of these programs supports the importance of taking a 360-degree approach and thinking thoughtfully about the best platforms that will help us to engage with Dunkin’ Donuts guests. The future of mobile for us is to continue putting Dunkin’ in everyone’s hands. We see a lot of potential for mobile to be an extension of the Dunkin’ Donuts experience. The Dunkin’ Mobile App has been very popular with our guests, with over 14 million downloads, and we see a strong opportunity with mobile having more than 3 million DD Perks® members since we launched the loyalty initiative nationally in early 2014.
Are you still finding TV to be effective at driving traffic for Dunkin’ Donuts?
While traditional marketing remains very important for Dunkin’, our investments in digital, social, mobile, and loyalty marketing are increasing even more rapidly.
What will determine the future balance of your marketing mix?
All of these investments are driven by five key principles: First, most great ideas flow from the consumer. Whether it’s B2B or B2C, there’s really no substitute for truly understanding your customers’ pain points and how you can address them.
Second, building brand differentiation is the most important thing a marketer can focus on because it answers the fundamental question: Why should consumers choose your brand over all of their other choices?
Third, building a strong team both inside and outside of your organization is imperative. It’s not just about the people who report to you, but also about your peers within the organization and the key agencies and technology partners with whom you work.
Fourth, tactics matter. While developing the right strategy is important, executing that strategy to the highest standards can really make a difference.
Fifth, agility. The environment in which we compete is changing more rapidly than ever before, so it’s important to be agile and adapt your plans as needed.
The bottom line is that, while the way consumers learn about brands, consume information, and decide where to buy products has changed over the years, they are still looking for better solutions to their everyday challenges. All five of these principles flow from the core principle of understanding your consumers’ unmet needs and meeting them better than anybody else.
Further reading:
Ted Schadler, Josh Bernoff, and Julie Ask, The Mobile Mind Shift: Engineer Your Business to Win in the Mobile Moment
Email: Never Out of Style
“J.Crew is constantly working to improve the customer experience.”
While social has opened amazing new possibilities for telling a brand story and connecting with customers, email has quietly held steady as the unglamorous workhorse of effectively engaging with an audience and driving sales online. Yes, we all get too many emails. But we still open and read the ones that catch our interest. And emails are a blank canvas on which marketers can communicate more or less freely, without being forced to fit their messaging inside a social network’s decreed guidelines (like, for example, 140 characters).
As print media’s woes continue to pile up, savvy marketers are realizing that an increased focus on email in the marketing mix is not only cost-effective but also a fantastic complement to the story they’re weaving on social and elsewhere.
A data-driven marketer who has leveraged this fact very effectively is Shannon Smith, most of all when she was in charge of marketing for J.Crew. Shannon’s focus on email was a “perfect fit” for the clothing mega-brand, and she generously shares the keys to its success here. We also chatted about related matters of customer engagement and retention that every marketer should understand.
Can you describe the initiative you led at J.Crew to use email in order to engage and sell to customers?
In 2013, I led J.Crew through the transition onto the Responsys email platform. (Responsys was subsequently acquired by Oracle and integrated into their Marketing Cloud.) They are a best-in-class service platform, which enabled J.Crew with a much more robust set of capabilities around customer segmentation and targeted marketing campaigns. Our email segmentation strategy became about capturing not only customer purchase history, but also website browse and email engagement behavior (opens, clicks, etc.). In addition, we launched a series of email triggers including Abandoned Cart and “Category Browse” campaigns that drove millions of incremental dollars in email revenue.
What were some of the benefits moving to that platform?
The capabilities it provided in bringing vast amounts of customer online behavior into our segmentation allowed us to significantly improve the productivity of our email campaigns through better segmentation of our customer base. We were able to incorporate products customers are interested in (indicated by browsing and email engagement) in addition to past purchases, which is incredibly powerful.
What were some changes you drove at J.Crew to improve the customer experience?
J.Crew is constantly working to improve the customer experience, from the design and fit of the clothes, to the services offered in stores, to the website functionality. My role in this endeavor was to constantly strive to deliver more relevant, personalized marketing communications to our customers, providing them with information about the products that would be of interest to them, whether it was our women’s new arrivals, a new men’s suiting line with a different fit, or great children’s clothes. I worked towards this in our email marketing program, our catalog versioning, and our rewards program, the J.Crew credit card.
Can you discuss the evolution of the J.Crew brand while you worked there, and how you communicated that to customers?
The brand has shifted from a more traditional, basics-driven retailer (think roll-neck sweaters, barn jackets, khakis and button-downs) to a much more fashion-forward brand with runway shows during New York Fashion Week. This was largely driven by the design and merchant teams, with the evolution of the merchandise itself, and supported by the creative positioning of the marketing, including the site, catalog, and email.
It’s not easy to change a brand’s position in the eyes of the consumer, but J.Crew is fortunate in that most customers love the new styles. One thing that has been incredibly successful in shifting the brand’s image is creative collaborations with high-end designers, from Comme des Garçon to Alden Shoe Company. The direct marketing team’s role is to get the most relevant product in front of the customer, and communicate that the brand offers tremendous product breadth with a wide range of styles and price points.
Can you talk a bit about your experience with loyalty programs and what it takes to get them off the ground?
J.Crew’s loyalty program is tied to the J.Crew credit card. But at Sephora, I managed the “Beauty Insider” program for four years, growing it from launch to an active customer base of over ten million members. In terms of getting it off the ground, it was an enormous company initiative involving everyone in the marketing, operations, store, and technical organizations. It had a tremendously successful launch and grew quickly, but loyalty programs require significant effort and funding to keep them fresh, top-of-mind, engaging, and meaningful.
At Sephora, I led the launch of the VIP premium tier and new types of program benefits, including new point-level rewards. The Beauty Insider program has been invaluable in that it enabled the company to build a customer database and personalize marketing communications to their enormous base of retail customers. However, I was constantly working with our analytics team to measure the ROI of the program holistically. It’s not an easy thing to do.
I believe loyalty programs can have real value for companies, particularly when many retailers are selling the same products and competing for customers, like department stores. That said, I always caution a company considering a loyalty program to be very thoughtful and clear on the strategy for their program, how it aligns with their brand, and how they will derive value from it, because it’s going to be a big investment.
Further reading:
Peter Shankman, Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management Is Over—and Collaboration Is In
Catching Lightning in a Bottle
“As you would with a new acquaintance or friend in real life, find a common interest between you and the consumer and talk about that.”
Marketing has always been a fast-paced business, and pouncing on a sudden opportunity can make a career. But before the advent of the Internet, such opportunities came along infrequently; by the time a marketing message reached the public, the moment was often forgotten.
Now, instead of having to buy ad space in a print publication and wait for it to run, or drop a bunch of direct mail off at the post office and cross your fingers hoping it will reach its destination, marketers can take to social media and get an ultra-timely and unforgettable message out to the entire world seconds after the event happens. And the results can be massive. This is Real-Time Marketing (RTM).
The iconic RTM example is still probably Oreo throwing together a “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark” mini-campaign within minutes of the power going out during the 2013 Super Bowl. The whole world was watching as Oreo—in a single unplanned stroke that cost a relative pittance—upstaged every mega-budgeted Super Bowl TV ad with a simple graphic that racked up 10,000 retweets in barely an hour.
It’s not a fad. RTM is here to stay, and smart marketers in the social media space are now always on the lookout for the next viral explosion. One of the best is Adam Naide, Executive Director of Marketing for Social Media at Cox Communications. In this interview, Adam gives a pithy and honest look at what does and doesn’t work when it comes to RTM.
What are some wins for Cox TV in the area of RTM?
First, the Breaking Bad final season. Our objective was to drive fan growth and increase engagement on @CoxTV during the final season of the show. There was a huge volume of social conversation, specifically on Twitter, around the final season of Breaking Bad. Our team developed a real-time campaign to cover each episode of the final season with live coverage, engaging custom content, Vine videos, and an RT-to-win contest. As a result, the campaign attracted 3,145 new followers, nearly doubling the follower base on Twitter. It also led to 5,757 retweets.
Second, National Donut Day. Our objective in this case was to capitalize on real-time opportunities as they presented themselves. In summary, custom creative was produced for Cox’s Facebook page tying The Simpsons to National Donut Day. The post saw immediate lift on Facebook and was promoted to amplify impact. Seeing that #NationalDonutDay was trending on Twitter, the team quickly posted and promoted the creative on Twitter as well. As a result, the tweet saw 87 percent higher engagement than average tweets posted to @CoxTV and 67 percent greater cost efficiency than average promoted posts on the handle.
Can you give an example of a real-time program that didn’t work as well as you hoped?
Sure. We had hoped to capitalize on social buzz around the MTV Video Music Awards to engage music fans on Twitter while growing the fan base. So @CoxTV live-tweeted the awards through an existing brand influencer “Sara” who had previously covered TV and entertainment for the brand. Unfortunately, Sara entered the live-tweeting event with a preexisting personality that didn’t jibe with the VMA audience. She wasn’t a fan of the artists being featured and didn’t participate in the conversion in a relatable way. In this case, the live-tweeting event garnered just 80 new followers and 1,024 retweets,
Why do you think brands fail so often to get RTM right?
Most failures stem from assuming the public perceives the brand in the same way that the brand perceives itself.
How do you avoid this?
Start with the current behavior of consumers and find ways to mimic, play off of, or join that activity. Don’t force an unwanted idea or perception on consumers. Monitor what organically bubbles to the surface in your industry or trending hashtags that are relevant to the brand. As you would with a new acquaintance or friend in real life, find a common interest between you and the consumer and talk about that.
Let’s review some of the logistical issues when dealing with RTM. Staffing?
Leveraging real-time opportunities requires full-time monitoring. Listening to social activity is the best way to find opportunities that bubble to the surface.
Client approval process?
To take advantage of real-time opportunities, a level of trust must exist between agency partners and the client. Planned opportunities are created by the agency and approved by the client, but many real-time opportunities must be created and promoted based on shared goals and strategies for the year, without client approval.
Things to avoid?
Brands should avoid forcing real-time content. Steer clear of touchy subjects and irrelevant holidays. For example, a baking brand should talk about Thanksgiving but should not talk about Veteran’s Day.
Barriers to success?
Time and resources. Joining in on trending conversations requires the ability to identify the opportunity, ideate on a response, create content, gain approval, and post. This process can be complicated on weekends or after business hours.
Metrics?
Real-time marketing is really about exposure and sentiment. Metrics like reach, impressions, retweets, and earned positive buzz are all metrics that should be assessed.
Further reading:
Brian Solis, Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
Practical, Rugged, Optimized
“Too many changes at once makes it almost impossible to isolate performance.”
Having issued its first mail order catalog in 1912, clothing company L.L.Bean knows a thing or two about customer acquisition and loyalty-building. Perhaps even more impressive than its longevity is how deftly L.L.Bean has navigated the changes to how marketing is done. Today it has a powerful online presence and vibrant eCommerce site along with its still-mighty catalog.
As a marketer, L.L.Bean’s CMO Steve Fuller is a little like L.LBean clothes—prioritizing practicality and fundamental quality over flashiness and trend-hopping. This isn’t to say he isn’t forward-thinking, as you’ll read shortly about his adoption of cutting-edge programmatic techniques. He’s also refreshingly candid about where he and the company can still improve. Everyone can learn something of value from the way Steve keeps L.L.Bean’s online presence optimized and customers engaged.
You have been at the forefront of eCommerce for a while. What have you been trying recently from a digital marketing standpoint that has worked particularly well?
In our case, it was better execution of the “basics.” Our search programs—paid, natural, etc.—have been lacking in recent years and we definitely got those programs back on track in 2014. And after testing nearly every alternative available, it appears we might have finally beaten the in-house product recommendation engine that we built way back in 2005.
Did you try some things that didn’t work as well as you’d hoped?
A few. We have a fairly robust analytics cloud in development. We like the overall direction of the project, but it’s progressing slower than we would have hoped. L.L.Bean also moved to a new chat/social media tracking platform that has been a disappointment.
If you could wave a magic wand, what is the one thing you’d like to see fixed about digital marketing and why?
I’m not sure the right word is “fixed,” but demand/investment attribution is still an undeveloped area. There are a lot of people doing interesting things, but the methodologies—and results—vary wildly. And while I understand the desire to protect proprietary research, the “black box” approach of many companies makes them a challenge to evaluate.
When bringing on new tech platforms what are some of the pitfalls to be avoided?
Expecting too much too soon. These are incredibly complex systems from both a production and analytics perspective. Implementation “sequencing” is also something to watch. Too many changes at once make it almost impossible to isolate performance.
How has programmatic marketing helped you reach your overall marketing objectives?
I want to be the first to say that we’ve got a long way to go with programmatic. We learn something each and every day. But we’re especially pleased with its ability to help bring “scale” to those programs in an efficient way—both from a presentation and an analytics perspective.
What were some of the challenges of adopting programmatic and what advice would you give to another marketer who is just getting started?
The easiest thing to overlook is the amount of production work required to do it right. Ads need to be created, they need to be trafficked, etc.
The other advice is to find a good partner. We looked at a number of possible providers and ended up with MediaMath. Not only did we like their technology platform, but they were invaluable in helping us make the operational transition. Again, you’ve got a tremendous amount of detail and process to get right in order to leverage these new tools—MediaMath helped make that happen.
Programmatic media buying continues to gain share of overall digital spending. Are you finding this to be the case at L.L.Bean and, if so, what are the real advantages of programmatic buying?
Directionally, yes. Some of it depends on how you’re defining “programmatic,” but we’ve certainly moved a large portion of our digital spending into the category. And it’s all about scale. Programmatic’s ability to facilitate scale in targeting/personalization without major investments of human capital is often overlooked as a benefit.
The grand vision among programmatic advocates is that ultimately all media will become addressable, which in turn would create the opportunity to fully customize and optimize every type of communication. Is this an appealing vision to you as a marketer? Also, given the production requirements to effectively execute programmatic buying on digital, can you imagine doing this same level of customization with video channels?
Theoretically, it’s awesome. I worry a little about the “shared experience” impact, but the ability to control investment and messaging across all channels redefines “marketing aspiration.”
And my first reaction to your second sentence was “exactly.” I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to do true video customization/personalization for video. But then again, five years ago I couldn’t have imagined that we’d be shooting our TV ads on digital SLRs, GoPros, and—in Apple’s case—iPhones. When you think about the advancement in video over the past few years, it’s truly amazing how quickly it’s progressed.
Which leads to my last point—anything is possible.
Further reading:
Craig Dempster and John Lee, The Rise of the Platform Marketer: Performance Marketing with Google, Facebook, and Twitter, Plus the Latest High-Growth Digital Advertising Platforms
Barking up the Right Online Tree
“We leverage technology and data every day to make quick enhancements that are in the best interest of our customers.”
It’s no longer news that eCommerce is a force to be reckoned with. As the Internet grows ever more important in how consumers make buying decisions and—more importantly—how they act on those decisions, our priorities as marketers need to change accordingly. For starters, it means shifting focus towards providing a seamless and engaging Web experience to prospective and returning customers alike. After all, it’s very easy for them to close that browser tab.
How to do this is less obvious. But observing what Rose Hamilton has accomplished as EVP and CMO of Pet360.com furnishes excellent clues. At first glance, Pet360 may seem like an online pet supply shop...which it is, but it’s also a lot more. Rose has crafted the site to be a one-stop destination for “pet parents” (a term any good pet owner should identify with) to find advice, community, and much more to help them better enjoy the presence of that special furry someone in their lives.
A CMO has a lot of choices in terms of where they invest their time. What have your top priorities been in the last couple of years?
As with any business, customer acquisition, retention, and loyalty are critical measures that require a strong and differentiated brand. To set ourselves apart from our competition, our focus has been on creating valuable and relevant experiences for pet parents. We know firsthand that pet parenting can be challenging and even a bit overwhelming at times. New obstacles can arise at every stage of a pet’s life, and pet parents are in constant need of support.
Most will say their vet provides answers to their pet parenting challenges; however, a vet visit takes place on average once per year and only lasts around fifteen minutes. As a result, pet parents are looking to friends, family, and various online resources for answers to their questions. The problem is that not every pet has the same needs. A Golden Retriever puppy, for example, has very different needs than a senior Yorkshire Terrier. What works for some pets will not work for all.
Pet360 is a relatively young brand. Do you find you are more nimble than your larger competition?
Absolutely. As a digital brand, we don’t have the distraction of brick and mortar operations. We leverage technology and data every day to make quick enhancements that are in the best interest of our customers.
How are you gaining competitive advantage?
We knew we would never win on price. Over the past two years, we have evolved from a pure play eCommerce business to a lifestyle brand focused on making pet parenting easier. Today, Pet360.com is the only experience (digital or offline) that truly improves pet parents’ lives by offering expert information, an active community of pet parents, and a vast assortment of products all in a highly personalized manner. By bringing all three elements (community, content, and commerce) together with a layer of personalization, we’re able to deliver a truly differentiated brand experience that builds engagement, trust, and ultimately advocacy, resulting in higher lifetime value and lower acquisition costs.
Pet lovers are famously passionate about their animals. How do you balance building emotional relationships with your customers and the need to drive transactions?
Emotional relationships come first and eventually lead to advocacy and trust longer term. Pet supplies can be a commodity, but the expert advice and connection to other pet parents set us apart. The Pet360 platform inspires engagement and emotional connection at every touch point along the pet parenting journey. By offering relevant solutions, we build trust, engagement, and frequency. As trust and emotional connection build, so will lifetime value and advocacy!
What role does social media play in what you do?
We prioritize building engagement over growing our popularity on social media. Social media enables us to engage with pet parents every day by answering questions, stimulating conversations, providing entertainment, gathering feedback, and connecting them to the people and resources they need most. Most importantly, social media is a way for us to connect 1:1 with pet parents in a very authentic way. It’s an opportunity for us to continue to build and strengthen relationships with pet parents.
How about content marketing?
Content is at the core of our brand. We invest heavily in creating valuable content for pet parents that is delivered on our site, in social media, across traditional media, through our email communications, and by our various partners. Content marketing has been, and will continue to be, an area of investment and focus for Pet360. From a business model perspective, the efficiency and effectiveness of content marketing reduces the cost to acquire a customer and enables us to leverage paid channels in unique ways.
Since your customer relationship is primarily online, is it a challenge for you as CMO to stay close to your customers? If not, how are you doing it?
Actually, the digital space makes it easy for us to stay close to our customers. Every action they take online is measurable. We also monitor a variety of channels to keep a pulse on what our customers are saying, including our branded community, site behavior, surveys, call center reports, ratings and reviews, and social media. As a customer-centric brand, our customers guide our decisions at every turn. We’re constantly reacting to consumer feedback and trends as we work to solve unmet pet parent needs.
Further reading:
Peter Shankman, Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans
Secrets of a Viral Hitmaker
“Good ideas are wonderful, but they’re a dime a dozen. It all comes down to execution”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A rabbi, a priest, and a content marketer walk into a bar. The bartender asks: “Well gents, what’ll it be?”
The rabbi glances around the crowded room lamenting, “I see you are serving some of my tribe here, would you mind sending them to temple on Friday night?”
The priest says, “Yes, and if you would send the lost sheep of my flock here to church on Sunday, that would be most kind.”
Then the content marketer jumps onto the bar and shouts at the top of his lungs, “Drinks on me, everyone; our ‘Ten Paths to Sobriety’ video just went viral!”
Now that we’ve established that the comedy world dodged a bullet when I chose marketing as a career, please meet a young man who does know funny: Paul Greenberg, who at the time of this interview was CEO of CollegeHumor Media (owned by IAC). Paul’s expertise goes beyond just getting laughs—he also knows, perhaps better than anyone else in the game, how to parlay quality Web content into the sort of profitable online traffic most marketers can only dream about.
Today, Paul is CEO of Nylon magazine. This snapshot of his successful tenure at CollegeHumor is timeless advice for any marketer who dreams of viral success online.
When did you join CollegeHumor, and how have things changed since you’ve been in charge?
I joined two and a half years ago. Since then, we’ve seen forty percent growth year over year in traffic. We’re now the eighth largest YouTube channel with over 4.5 million subscribers, we have 15 million monthly unique visitors which again is way up over from where we were a couple of years ago, and we do 100 million video streams per month.
It sounds like CollegeHumor is a lot more than a website.
Definitely. We’re a multi-platform, multimedia studio. We create an enormous amount of content and we publish it on our website, but also on YouTube, game consoles, and connected TVs. We’re working on traditional long-form television shows and are close to deals with several major cable networks. We’re also publishing books, videos, and have made one full-length movie, Coffee Town.
At what point do you realize you’ve got a viral hit on your hands?
Once it starts to get to the half-million views level, we start to really pay attention. And we don’t just look at views. We’re very social media-oriented and huge on data analysis—we want to know the ratio between likes/shares and views. Is something getting shared a lot but not watched a lot? Do we need to give it a little push somewhere? Is it getting watched a lot on our site but not shared very much? Is there something that doesn’t make it go viral?
Do you have any way of predicting a video’s viral success? And if you see early signs of a hit, do you do more to fuel the fire?
Yes, absolutely. Creatively, we have something called the “Sieve,” which is our secret formula for viral videos. As you might imagine, we keep that very tightly protected, but as the evidence suggests, it works pretty well. How directly and thoroughly a video meets the “checkpoints” of the Sieve can be a good indicator of how it’s going to do. Then when the numbers start coming in and they’re good, we might say: “Alright, we’ve got to keep this on our homepage, or we need to make sure we post it again to Facebook,” or something like that.
It sounds like rapid experimentation adjustments are important to your process.
Exactly. You can’t be afraid to fail, you have to be willing to put yourself out there every day with something new. And they’re not all going to be gems, but you get enough hits so that your audience starts to realize, “Wow, these guys have something interesting going on and I’ll go along with them when something is not as great, but I know when I come back there’s going to be something for me.”
If you’re putting out fifty videos per month, how many have to be big hits for you to be happy?
Two or three big hits, I would say. Which is not as easy as it sounds!
What are your thoughts on video length?
We try to keep it under two or two-and-a-half minutes. Anything longer and people really just glaze.
Is one type of video more likely to go viral than another?
Often the ones that go really viral are new sketches. Because it is a new idea, it gets introduced, people latch onto it, they love it, and they send it around.
Are series any different from a virality standpoint?
With a series you are less apt to get into the Zeitgeist really quickly, and so you build an audience over time. So in a series we’ll often see episodes further down the chain do better than the original ones. Or better yet, we’ll see people catching up via “binge-watching.”
How about a few secrets to your success?
Never stop working, ever. Be as aggressive as possible, have a desire to win, and work your absolute hardest—because there is always somebody who is going to work harder than you. Good ideas are wonderful, but they’re a dime a dozen. It all comes down to execution—doing it right and doing it well, consistently.
Further reading:
Jonah Berger, Contagious: Why Things Catch On