Marketers Need To Walk In Their Customer’s Shoes
B&T chats with Cambell Holt (pictured above), chief customer officer at financial services company Mercer– Holt’s role is to design and deliver the capabilities required to win with future consumers. A recent Mercer project, the ‘customer transformation program’, focused on delivering a personalised and contextualised consumer experience. Find out how they did this using Salesforce Marketing Cloud solutions, while generating NPS scores that are 11 times better than the industry average.
To experience cross-channel customer journey yourself, click here to sign-up.
Why did you consider customer journey as part of your business model?
At Mercer, we’re really focused on being an experiential financial services provider, rather than transactional. Many financial services, including super, have for decades delivered a customer experience that has felt very transactional. Consumers are becoming more and more conditioned to expect a much higher level of value and quality of experience than the transaction itself.
When we embarked on our own customer transformation we decided that we’d have to transform the sum of all experiences that customers would have with us over the course of our relationship. That meant redesigning and re-platforming every major customer facing platform we had, from digital platforms, insights and analytics systems, CRM, marketing automation, call centre infrastructure, and next best conversation technologies.
More importantly, we had to bring these new capabilities to bear in a meaningful way as it related to the way customers interacted with us. That’s where customer journeys come in, they’re the glue that holds all our retail and consumer capabilities as an organisation together in a way that creates maximum value for our customers and our firm.
Does campaign marketing have a role in the era of the customer? How do you see campaign marketing evolving in the new business landscape of customer centricity?
I think traditional campaign marketing features a lot less in future, even in acquisition. As more and more organisations embrace customer journeys as the benchmark for customer experience and marketing activity, they’ll be thinking less about batch and blast campaigning, or even on the distinction between acquisition and retention.
At Mercer, we’ve already transcended the traditional campaign role that marketing has held in our own business, and journeys are allowing us to leverage a much broader cross section of interactions between our organisation and our customers in pursuit of commercial objectives and creating great customer outcomes.
In the age of the customer, Marketing is CX, and CX is Marketing. Put simply I think ‘campaigning’ gets a lot more personal, and a lot more contextual (right message or intervention at the right time) than it’s ever been when you start using customer journeys. More and more real-time data points can be brought to the interactions and interventions that we can create for customers using marketing automation and customer journeys. That’s great for delivering customer value, and great for conversion.
What’s the key journeys that your organisation embark on? Why did you pick these journeys and how did you start designing them.
Key customer journeys include all the usual suspects – onboarding, cross-sell, up-sell, and retention. All our customer journeys are focused on promoting positive customer behaviours that create value for them first, and then value for our organisation. The best, most tightly defined and executed customer journey means nothing if you haven’t created a great outcome for the customer where they get value.
Outside of that we tend to focus on the customer journeys that can create the most value for our own business. We picked our onboarding journey for example because we know that we have less than three months to engage a new customer and drive them to the most important actions for themselves to ensure the best possible superannuation balance when they retire.
After that first three months their propensity to respond to traditional marketing campaigns or customer engagement activity drops to nearly zero. Traditional marketing just couldn’t physically get all the communications and tasks done with a customer within this timeframe – in a way that felt natural to our customers. Using journey’s, we’re easily and seamlessly (in terms of custom effort and bandwidth) able to get the actions completed.
What technology are you using to help build customer journeys. Any lesson learnt?
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is now deeply embedded across our business, and controls most of our customer journeys.
Lots of lessons learnt including:
- There’s a lot talk about big data and its ability to help marketing produce great insight. We’ve found that small data done fast is a much better way to get started with customer journeys. Pick just one data point that you already have on a customer and start designing a journey from that. It can be as simple as a customer having a birthday, and go from there.
- Most organisations, including ourselves, start out with relatively low levels of maturity in the marketing automation space. Make sure you’re working with the right implementation partner to help you get traction quickly and avoid some of the mistakes that implementation partners and consultants see a lot of.
- Never, ever try to automate a customer journey or campaign that you don’t fully understand or aren’t able to properly map through your business. A lot of the most expensive failures with technology enabled customer journeys and marketing automation that I’ve seen have been where people have thought that throwing automation at a business problem was the answer. If you don’t understand the issue or the challenge, don’t throw technology at it.
What is the next big phase of your marketing strategy and why?
We’re focused on continuing to leverage marketing automation into more and more parts of our enterprise. The next big phase of our marketing and CX strategy involves bending the rest of our organisation around individual customers using journeys. Marketers have traditionally focused on the front end of a business – acquisition, getting customers in and keeping them.
But very often marketers have had little control over the experience of existing customers. Operations environments, the ‘back office’ have largely been responsible for customers’ experiences once they’ve been acquired in the financial services industry, and often these are some of the experiences most neglected by CX and marketing professionals.
Marketing automation technology and customer journeys flow all the way through our business in the next phase of our strategy and will help us to produce unique, personalised, contextualised experiences for customers from cradle to grave as it were. The other component of the next phase of our strategy is to bring data points and events that are happening quite remotely in our customers lives such as social media and digital consumption, and then using those activities in a customer’s life as data points in our own organisations customer journey’s.
We’re really excited about the potential of technologies such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Advertising Studio in this regard. We’re delivering ROI’s of up to 4000 per cent now. We’re 1400 per cent better in some cases at influencing consumer behaviour. We’re generating NPS scores that are 11 times better than the industry average.
To experience cross-channel customer journey yourself, click here to sign-up.
Latest News
Kantar: AVOD Subscribers Double In 12 Months
Study finds Aussies happy to watch ads on their streaming services. Or, are they just putting the kettle on more often?
Val Morgan Digital Exceeds All Campaign Uplift Benchmarks Via A 12-Month Brand Metrics Study
Val Morgan announces it has exceeded all its campaign benchmarks. Still can't get under an hour for the City To Surf.
Australian Retirement Trust launches monster of a campaign, by M&C Saatchi and Bohemia
Get offered a seat on the bus today? Knees creak like an old pirate's galleon? This retirement ad may be of interest.
Print Audits To Discontinue As Audited Media Association Of Australia Pivots To Support Influencer Marketing
Is it just B&T or are audits in the media industry suddenly becoming murkier than Roxy's husband's tax returns?
News Corp Australia Launches 2024 National Education Advocacy Initiative With Expanded Program
News Corp set to shine a light on the nation's schools in new series, giving illegal bikie gangs a well-earned rest.
Decoding The Consumer Maze: Urban List Report Reveals How Modern Shoppers Spiral From Discovery To Purchase
Latest report unravels a shopper's journey from the joy of discovery through to a nasty letter from a debt collector.
Cosmo Returns To Australia!
Ever get the feeling we've weirdly warped back to 1988 at the moment? Confirm it with the relaunch of Cosmo in print.
People & Culture Consultancy Human Kind Collective Launches To Plug HR Gap For Media Agencies
Does the very mention of HR have you struggling to remember last year's Christmas party? Get the sweats with this news.
‘We Want To Be A Growth Partner, Not Just A Media Buyer Or Someone That Makes Ads’ – Bohemia Boss On Agency’s Ambition
B&T's chatting with Bohemia boss Paul ‘Hutch’ Hutchison. Although we do think 'the dagger' a far superior nickname.
Initiative’s Geoff Clarke: ‘Youth Hits Targets With Enthusiasm, Experience Hits The Targets You Can’t See’
Initiative’s CCO Geoff Clarke on the value of experience in agencies. Not to mention quoting lines from Pulp Fiction.
The Iconic Teams Up With 5 Aussie Athletes For Latest Campaign
Fashion label brings in the athletes for new campaign, many of whom appear to have prepped with re-runs of Zoolander.
Seven West Media Secures New Director Of News & Current Affairs
After a tumultuous few weeks, Seven unveils director of news & current affairs. And B&T never uses tumultuous lightly.
Seven Network Expands NSW Sales Team With Two New Group Business Directors
Seven ramps up its NSW sales team. Both of whom are well versed in pronouncing Manu Feildel's croque-monsieur.
New PR Subscription Changing The Game For Aussie Start Ups
Need better PR? You can now buy it via a monthly subscription. Price does not include a fascinator or Moet piccolos.
Paul Kent At Centre Of Fresh Scandal After Alleged Street Brawl
Do you long for the fights, gouges & testicle grabs of footy's glory years? So too, it appears, does Paul Kent.
DiDi Taps Disney’s Tim Farmer For Head Of Brand Marketing Role
Disney's Tim Farmer shifts over to rideshare company DiDi. Taking with him his Donald Duck coffee mug & mouse ears.
As Sure As Night Becomes Day, The End Of Third-Party Cookies Has Been Delayed
The question remains: what will we see first? The end of cookies, alien invasion or Jesus's second coming?
Fast 10: Scoundrel’s Tim Bullock Explains What Shane Warne & Salt-N-Pepa Have In Common
It's a Fast 10 with Scoundrel's Tim Bullock. Make it sound even faster by sucking on helium while reading it.
Outbrain Snatches Chris Oxley From Foxtel Media
Foxtel's Chris Oxley shifts over to Outbrain, but not before having his press photo taken in the wilds of the Daintree.
oOh!media & POLY Partner With Greening Australia For OOH Awareness Campaign
Like to quell the road rage with super cute pics of fluffy marsupials? This outdoor's just the ticket.
Are Media Cares For The Carers In Its Latest Social Change Campaign
Are Media calls on the government to add super payments to carers' payments. Remains silent on AUKUS, however.
In A Fragmented World, Engagement Is King
Today, B&T TV's talking fragmentation & engagement. But not in a down-on-one-knee sense of the word.
Kyle Sandilands On Advertising: “We Want Return Business. It’s No Good Just Taking Someone’s Money”
Kyle & Jackie O finally arrive on Melbourne radio. As yet, no sign of the monotonous and bitter AFL-NRL debate.
Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm
Sydney Comedy Festival 2024 is live and ready to rumble, showing the best of international and homegrown talent at a host of venues around town. As usual, it’s hot on the heels of its big sister, the giant that is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, picking up some acts as they continue on their own […]
Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth
The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) has announced the final epic lineup of local and global marketing powerhouses for RESET for Growth 2024. Lead image: Josh Faulks, chief executive officer, AANA Back in 2000, a woman with no business experience opened her first juice bar in Adelaide. The idea was brilliantly simple: make healthy […]
Is Meta’s New AI Chatbot Too Left-Wing?
Meta's chatbot accused of being left-wing after being caught wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt & listening to Billy Bragg.
TV Ratings (23/04/2024): Why Did No One Tell Angela That Farmer Wants A Wife Is Set On A Farm?
As wonderful as this headline is, let's face it, we all know an 'Angela', don't we?
PubMatic Unveils New AI Partnership To Turn Social Posts Into Ads For Any Digital Channel
Here's some nifty tech for turning social posts into ads. Assuming said posts aren't one-star character assassinations.
Intuit Mailchimp Makes A Splash With Its First Australian Brand Campaign
Ever laugh along at a gag you didn't get so as not to appear dumb? Get ready for more feigning with this new work.
GumGum’s Rob Hall: Advertisers Can No Longer “Rely On Binary Descriptions” Of Consumers
If anyone's got their finger on adtech's pulse, it's Rob Hall. He also avoids using the good paper in the office printer
Mastercard Nabs Florencia Aimo From Marriott International
Marriott International's Florencia Aimo jumps from the hotel business to the exploitative credit card one.
Bastion Agency Appoints Cheuk Chiang As New ANZ CEO
Cheuk Chiang takes the reins over at Bastion Agency. But not the rains down in Africa.
Spotlight On Sponsors: Major Sponsorship Wins After A Disappointing Week In Sport
B&T continuing our deep dive into local sport sponsorships & that's despite not a single offer of a free ticket as yet.
Macca’s Marketing Director, Samantha McLeod On Big Mac Chant: “What Was Once Old Is Now Cool Again”
Macca's using the power of nostalgia in latest Big Mac campaign. Well, only for those who've ever eaten one sober.
World Premiere Of Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line To Open Sydney Film Festival 2024
Oil's biopic to open Sydney Film Festival. Here's hoping Molly Meldrum will take his pants down at the premiere.
Entries Are Now Open For The 2024 Brandies, IntelligenceBank’s Annual Brand Marketing Awards
The Brandies are, of course, a prestigious marketing gong and not the mystery tipple favoured by nannas everywhere.