Oracle Responsys Interact 2014

Editor's Notes

• #3: PetRelocation service - Worldwide pet moving service My background - @PetRelocation for 8 years; second employee hired; I started in a sales and service role; recognized online marketing opportunity
• #4: Today I’m going to be talking about some of the marketing challenges PetRelocation faced, and how we were able to build out solutions that helped us to create connections, drive conversations, and really make customer experiences come alive. My hope is that you’ll gain some valuable takeaways that you can apply to your own marketing challenges to do the same.
• #5: So, one question I often get asked is “What does PetRelocation do?” Door to door service for pets moving internationally and within the US. Have grown 30% year over year over the last eight years. 70% of annual revenue directly tied to online marketing efforts
• #6: People love their pets, so we’ve spent a lot of time trying to determine how to connecting w/customers so that they will trust us with their best friends.
• #7: But first we had to determine WHAT exactly connects us to our customers. It’s easy to build a connection off of a shared emotion – in this case, love for our pets. We are lucky that we have some of the best customers out there, like Willow who moved from Illinois to Seattle…(This is my favorite part because we really do have some of the best customers!)
• #8: Or Etta who moved from Boston to the UK.
• #9: And Zimbo, a Rhodesian Ridgeback who moved with his owner who works for an NGO from the Us to Uganda…
• #10: MOR: So, How did those photos make you feel? Unconditional love – love toward your pet, or loved by your pet Happiness and joy – the smile your dog brings to your face Relaxed & Grounded – spending time outdoors, interacting with your pet on a different level Nostalgic – for the pets you’ve had or met in your life These emotions are what causes 90% of US HH to view pets as members of the family Passion drives a $60 BN pet industry in the US It’s easy to connect with pet owners over these emotions. Every company likes to say they have the best customers but we actually do have the best customers.WALK BUT the emotions that prospective clients are also dealing with are actually when they feel something related to this:
• #11: Moving is not a great experience. Who here has moved from one state to another? How about to a different country? Chances are your emotions when thinking about moving are very different than the emotions you feel when thinking about your pets.
• #12: Or remember Zimbo?Here’s what the scene looked like at the airport in Uganda - Don’t worry, Zimbo was not inside the crate.
• #13: Imagine being Zimbo’s owner, going through the emotions surrounding this type of move. Excitement Feeling like you’re on a mission But then arriving and having reality hit you that you’re a long way from home. What we realized was that there was this disconnect between the emotions people feel toward their pets and the emotions they might possibly feel about the idea of having to move around the world with their pets.
• #14: Concept in sociology known as the Cultural Iceberg. Developed in 1970s by Edward Hall What is visible is the surface culture Food, way of dress, language But the cultural iceberg theory says that 9/10ths of culture is below the surface. These are deeply-rooted beliefs, values, and behaviors, like how the culture views conflict, or how much personal space people require.
• #15: I’d like to propose the idea of a marketing iceberg. It’s the idea that the surface level emotions that your consumers have will certainly help attract them to you. For us, there is a visible surface emotion that people feel around their pets, the love that we hear in their voices, the happiness their pets bring them. And you can connect with consumers on that level, as it’s one that we all feel about our pets. However, the below the surface emotions are where the deeper connections are made. For us, those are the emotions related to the service we provide are a much stronger way to form a connection with prospective clients. This is what I call the “Marketing Iceberg.” There is an opportunity to connect more deeply with customers. Misinformation or lack of information causes added stress and/or preconceived beliefs that are inaccurate (cargo hold not safe) Dealing with a complex situation related to something they feel passionately about (their pet) Happy and excited to be moving but there was also quite a bit that they were unsure of and worried about. Think about: Misinformation or lack of information in your industry Simplifying a complex situation related to a passion, concern, or fear Building your company credibility by “pulling back the curtain” on these deeply-rooted concerns
• #16: So how do you tap beneath the marketing iceberg ? Simplifying a complex situation related to a passion, concern, or fear. For us, we’ve had success providing travel guides and checklists as free, downloadable content that we push out through email. I often hear “Well, can’t someone figure out exactly how to move their pet using this?” and that’s true, they probably could. But by empowering the consumer to do it on their own, we’re tapping into that suspicion beneath the iceberg that might exist that PetRelocation might just be in it for the sale.
• #17: Building your company credibility by “pulling back the curtain” on deeply-rooted concerns. This means not hiding behind whatever your industry tries to keep obscure. For us this might be some of the issues related to pets traveling by air being lost or dying. They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. It’s also the best way to warm someone toward wanting to hire your company. We talk a lot in our email marketing about the importance of the airlines reporting these casualties and have seen how effective it can be in helping people trust us.
• #18: Misinformation or lack of information Whenever there is misinformation, the emotions at the bottom of the iceberg can fester and grow. It helps to bring those to the surface and really help people understand what your organization may understand but they may not. For example, one of our highest-visited blog posts is a post we wrote about how to fill out a complicated US-government document required to move your pet internationally.
• #20: At PetRelocation we are constantly answering questions It’s a messy industry with lots of technical industry-related questions We were doing this in email all of the time. This was inefficient for two reasons – 1) we repeatedly answered the same questions 2) we weren’t able to reach anyone other than that one client
• #21: So we worked with Oracle Marketing Cloud to set up a user generated Ask the Experts form This helped us generate value from Q&A content By doing so you create value even from people who don’t hire you (aka they are creating questions you can answer and potentially earn a customer off of later)
• #23: As much as they drive conversions, Conversations also drive new customers. Bruiser & Moy Moy and owner Ron Had started process on own; needed answer re: custom crates for these big guys Came across blog post with answer and downloaded a white paper Crates are common question and white paper was generated using content from Ask the Experts A salesperson reached out Ron hired us for the rest of his dog’s move to London And here is Ron with Moy Moy and Brusier, a photo he sent us after they arrived in London. Looks pretty happy, doesn’t he? Not everyone is going to connect with just our expertise. The second prong of our marketing strategy relies on connecting with customers by sharing the experience of our former customers.
• #24: As much as they drive conversions, Conversations also drive new customers. Bruiser & Moy Moy and owner Ron Had started process on own; needed answer re: custom crates for these big guys Was sent an email that answered this specific question, which sent him to a blog post with “Answer & Ask” content.
• #25: Answer & Ask content is what we call Q&A content on our blog that answers the question they were asking BUT then asks the visitor to take action to receive even more answers. This drives the conversation beyond the original answer they came to your website for – and helps you get their info for future remarketing. In the case of Ron, he downloaded our “Answers to 10 Common Pet Crate Questions.” The best part is that this white paper was generated using content from Ask the Experts
• #26: After he downloaded the WP, A salesperson reached out Ron hired us for the rest of his dog’s move to London But not everyone is going to connect with just our expertise. The second prong of our marketing strategy relies on connecting with customers by sharing the experience of our former customers.
• #27: Connect your potential customers to experiences, nut just expertise. We live in a day of review sites like YELP, TripAdvisor and most people are hesitant to make even a medium-sized purchase without first reading reviews.
• #28: We knew we were providing an incredible service, really going above and beyond for our clients. They were telling us so! But the problem was it was all happening in email and voicemails they were sending to their customer service reps. We wanted to be able to broadcast these stories more to other prospective clients, especially those who might be doing a similar move.
• #29: The backbone of how we share our customer experience process rests on a UGC form we set up with Oracle marketing – we call these our Customer Experience Stories. After each customer moves, we send a link to a form on our blog where they can share their experience with other similar pet owners. It’s an open text field and they have the opportunity to include a photo and include their Facebook identity so we can tag them on facebook when we share their experience. Used social and direct email asks to promote; also cross- promotion with other stories, featured stories on website
• #30: We began creating rich, consumer generated content this way. What we then began to realize as we analyzed our results that people who were in the opportunity stage were finding this content more engaging than normal content in the nurturing campaigns we had set up. They were opening and clicking on this content more than any other type of content. So we set up a nurturing campaign to send to opportunities who had been sent a contract but had not yet signed. We A/B tested emails sent with customer stories and emails sent without. Of the people who received emails without customer stories, 1 out of every 10 opportunities would sign a contract. However, of the opportunities that received emails with a customer story, that number shot up to 1 out of every 4 who signed a contract.
• #31: Two and a half times higher rate of turning into a customer when they received a customer story.
• #32: We also have had challenges servicing such a broad scope of variables: different destination countries, different personas, different pets. How do you serve up the most relevant customer stories?
• #33: Oracle Marketing allows you to create custom tagging to codify UCG so that it can be repurposed in a relevant way.
• #34: We were then able to start showing relevant customer experiences in email. For example, if we have someone moving to Australia with a Vizsla, we are able to show them a similar customer story in email using custom content tags.
• #35: Since starting our UCG customer experiences program, we’ve generated over 400 stories. We’ve carefully categorized them based on pet type, where they moved to/from, and which internal teams sold and serviced the move. We can directly tie revenue generated through visitors, leads, and opportunities that view these stories and have determined that each story has a value of ~$1200 in future revenue. On average, our blog content drives a 4% lead to customer conversion rate. However, for leads that see the Customer Experience, they are are 3x more likely to turn into customers once they see a customer story than those leads that do not. As a result, we’re working to integrate this with our lead form after a lead is submitted.
• #36: So what are the takeaways?
• #37: Identify iceberg: What engrained emotions, thoughts, and behaviors do your customers have that you’re not tapping into that you could be? What lies under the surface of your customers’ minds that might help you tap into their deeper, more difficult to change behaviors. This is where you create connections, not just clicks.
• #38: Identify the conversations you could be having publicly rather than just through email with your customers Use UGC to create authentic conversations Use UGC to build new pieces of content to create new conversations Use Answer & Ask Content to keep the conversations going
• #39: Find ways to make capturing experiences easier for everyone. Codify experiences to serve up relevant experiences to prospects
• #40: Thank you!