Any successful marketing automation strategy requires lots of content, especially emails. Usually, you are in too much of a hurry generating this content to worry about how it is organized. You often end up with a folder structure that looks like this:
Product Launch 2009
Monthly Newsletters
Sales Stuff
Bill’s Test Emails
Almost every organization gets into this predicament. You always have content before you have a plan so you have to put it somewhere before you are ready. By the time you are ready, it is too late, and anarchy has set in. The problem with this organization is the same one we all face: No one can find anything. This organization style has no commitment to a particular approach, so everyone is forced to remember where everything is, which is not very efficient.
Part of the problem is that organizing your content always seems like a daunting task because there are an infinite number of ways to do it. At least that is what it seems like. The good news is that there are not an infinite numbers of ways. There are only four. Every piece of content has these four attributes:
Subject (New Product, Company News, Event, Partner, Major Account, etc.) – The subject describes the purpose of the campaign for which the content is targeted. Subjects typically contain reference to both the audience (New Customers, Partners, etc.) and what it is that your organization is delivering (products, events, organizational news).
Content Type (Newsletter, Promotion, Announcement etc.) – The type describes the format of the content. Newsletter, promo, customer service survey are all examples.
Organizational Owner (Department, Role, Person, etc.) – There is a department (or maybe a person) that is ultimately responsible for the content. This department may even be outside of your organization, but you know who it is.
Delivery Date (Month, Year, etc.) – This could be the date that the content is being delivered, or maybe the date the content is being developed. Either works as long as you are consistent.
If you are organizing your content in a folder hierarchy then there are two simple rules that you must follow:
1) Every piece of content must have all four of these attributes identified in some way
2) You can only pick ONE of these attributes as your primary hierarchy
Let’s go back to my example and see what method I used. It turns out I mixed all of the attributes in my hierarchy, which of course breaks rule number two.
Product Launch 2009 (Subject/Delivery Date)
Monthly Newsletters (Content Type)
Sales Stuff (Organizational Owner)
Bill’s Test Emails (Organizational Owner/ and a bad Subject)
Now comes the tough part, how do you decide what to pick for your primary hierarchy? The answer is surprisingly simple. Follow the steps below:
1) Identify who uses your content system the most. This may not be the person setting up the content management system, and is probably not the boss. It needs to be a content producer (or department) that is most often accessing content.
2) Go ask this person two key questions:
a. When you are looking for your content, what is the first thing you look for (it will be one of the 4)?
b. When you work on more than one piece of content at a time, how are they related?
Using the answers to these questions you can develop your folder hierarchy for storing your content. The primary folders should be the answer to the first question, and the secondary order should consider how to keep related content together in order to minimize navigation between pieces of content.
When naming your content, you are probably best off coming up with a scheme that incorporates all four of these attributes in some way (example: Newsletter-May-2009). If that naming convention mirrors your normal hierarchy, it helps further establish the consistency for all of your content producers. Remember, consistency is the key.
This scheme is not meant to replace more sophisticated content classifications features that many content management systems offer. But these guidelines can help those of you that don’t have the luxury to spend a lot of time coming up with a process for classifying content, and don’t want to have to reorganize everything six months later.
I went to ExactTarget’s Connections 09 convention this week. ExactTarget did a great job. There were a lot of excellent presenters and customer stories (my favorite part). I also got to hear and share marketing automation problems and solutions with new people, which is the best reason to go to a conference.
There are lots of posts and tweets (#ET09) out there if you want to find out more, so let me just share with you my main takeaways for Marketing Automation strategists. I have four:
1) Social Media is not a conversation, it’s where the conversation takes place – This statement in Jason Baer’s excellent presentation was a nice clarification for me of where social media sits in the Marketing Automation mix. It is not a channel with many individual messages to deliver (email), it is a channel with one message to deliver, that will be read by an undetermined number of people that come and go. It’s not clear for me yet what this means to automation, but I like the way Jason framed it. More to think about here.
2) Use Social Media to help further define your Personas – I am expanding on some topics that presenter Suresh Vittal shared, but I was struck by what a great and raw input Tweets and Blogs are for further defining the Personas of your target market. Reading your market’s conversions, both as discussions (Twitter) and problem statements and needs (Blogs) is a great source of vocabulary and terminology that your customers actually use. It’s free (there are many tools out there to capture this information), and is certainly more honest and open that survey results or even face-to-face interviews. Ultimately this helps you further segment your customers and prospects (one of Suresh’s points) in ways that you had not thought of before, which is the marketing automation takeaway here.
3) Start your email design with Social Sharing in mind – Social Sharing is a relatively new feature from ExactTarget, but simply sticking a Social Sharing link in your email is probably not going to get the results you are hoping for, real viral marketing. People will most likely want to share a specific part of your email, not the whole thing (especially with newsletters). The better strategy (good demonstrations of these in the Email Design Competition by Smith-Harmon, Mighty Interactive and ExactTarget), is to start your design by identifying specific areas of content that might be shared, and use this as input for the organization of the content in your email.
4) Hope is not a strategy – We talk about this all of the time here at Right On Interactive, and this was a central theme that Adam Justis (Omniture), and many others, used to try to emphasize the importance of testing your ideas before you do a full-fledged launch. Many projects are simply the results of a gut feel, or opinion of someone important, but do not necessarily represent fact. The problem here, of course, is that for many of your projects, no one has allowed time or budget to do this. While this is a big problem, the takeaway is not to be afraid to start small and make mistakes. But do something! The results will be worth it.
Here is a related post from our friend Doug Karr if you are interested:
ExactTarget Connections 09: Success By Design
New case study details how leading business blogging platform provider increases customer success with automated on-boarding communications
INDIANAPOLIS, IND. – October 5, 2009 – Right On Interactive, maker of 5Buckets marketing automation software, today announced business blogging platform provider Compendium Blogware has selected its software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to develop deeper relationships with buyers throughout the customer lifecycle.
Compendium Blogware customers are companies that are looking to improve organic search results, and generate online demand. Engaging bloggers to create consistent content is essential to the long-term success of any business blogging strategy.
“We know our customers gain the greatest value from Compendium when bloggers post content on a regular basis,” says Chris Baggott, CEO and co-founder of Compendium Blogware. “With Right On Interactive, we are able to automate a sophisticated communication program that keeps content creation top of mind and encourages consistent content creation.”
“Savvy marketers like Compendium recognize that systematic communications throughout the customer lifecycle is a cornerstone to building lasting profitable relationships,” says Troy Burk, President of Right On Interactive. “5Buckets enables organizations of all sizes to acquire and retain more customers through effective customer lifecycle communications.”
Read the case study of how Compendium Blogware is using 5Buckets to navigate the on-ramp of new customer success.
About Right On Interactive
Right On Interactive is a customer lifecycle marketing automation software provider that helps organizations increase new and repeat business. Its 5Buckets “software-as-a-service” (SaaS) solution enables marketers to easily segment, schedule, and trigger relevant out-bound communications to customers and prospects through email, voice messaging, text, fax, and direct mail. In 2009, Right On Interactive was offered $1.3 million in performance-based tax credits and training grants by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. The company is also a 2009 Indianapolis Techpoint Mira Award Finalist. For more information about Right On Interactive, visit www.rightoninteractive.com.
About Compendium Blogware
Compendium Blogware is a Web-based blogging platform built for businesses and organizations. With its administrative layers and proprietary compending feature that maximizes search engine optimization, the company offers businesses a search marketing solution for lead generation, customer acquisition and humanizing their marketing. Compendium Blogware has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, BtoB Magazine and DM News. The company is also a 2008 Indianapolis Techpoint Mira Award Finalist and a 2008 recipient of Indiana Company to Watch presented by Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
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Marketing Automation: From CRM to Email
Wednesday, October 21
Join me, Wednesday, October 21st, at the 2009 Masters of Business Online Conference. I’ll be joined by 22 other marketers as we bring you actionable strategies to to grow your business.
My session will focus on how to effectively utilize customer data and technology to solve your business challenges, and automate the process.
Click here to learn more about the Masters of Business Online event.
| October 8, 2009 |
| 7:30 am | to | 7:00 pm |
The Integrated Marketing Summit was formed around the core belief that the single most important role of marketing, whether you’re on the agency side or the client-side, is to drive revenue rapidly. The complexities of the business environment, both digital and traditional, reflect the fact that customers and prospects interact with companies, products and services across an increasing number of channels. IMS is designed to explore and provide information on the practices, technologies and expertise needs to create true cross-channel, integrated marketing. The one-day Summit is presented through 3 concurrent sessions including two keynote presentations across a broad spectrum of topics, including:
- Demand Generation / Brand Awareness
- Sales & Marketing Alignment / Brand Position
- Effective Prospect & Customer Management / Brand Loyalty
- Tracking Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI)
- Case Studies on Integrated Marketing Solutions
Expert speakers from agencies, service providers and companies on the leading edge of integrated marketing share their insights and lessons learned through interactive presentations, panel discussions and case studies
While some of our programs are one speaker, one topic sessions, others are panel discussions where you are given a chance to ask questions and share your pain points with the panelist.
Click to learn more about the Integrated Marketing Summit.
