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In the learning phase we will spend time and effort to understand your business and marketing needs, as well as the communication needs and desires of your prospects and customers. We'll learn how your company differentiates itself against it's competitors and the unique benefits your company's products and services.
The learning process typically includes the following steps:
Interviews with your marketing team:
Discussions with your marketing team will assist us in understanding project goals, past successes and past failures in communicating with customers and prospects. We need to gather and understand the knowledge your company has learned about its customers, prospects and business as a whole, and specifically related to marketing to the current program. A clear understanding of your objectives for this marketing effort will be critical in meeting and exceeding expectations.
Domain expert interviews:
From data analysis we can understand some of the specific behaviors of prospects and customers, from the domain experts we can gain an understanding of the "why". For relevant communication, the motivation in the prospect"s decision making process is critical in making the right recommendations and the accurately messaging the benefits of those recommendations. Additionally this "why" information will help us to address the common issues prospects and customers regularly express. These issues are almost never included in transactional data. To gather the "why" data, we'll interview what we call domain experts, often a select group of the most successful sales people, or those of your staff closest to the customer.
These staff often have customer and prospect contact on a daily basis and are the most valuable source of information about the desires, needs, concerns, values and responsive messages for each of the customer and prospect profiles.
Our suggestion is to set separate interviews with the 6 or 8 most successful sales people in your organization, additionally we may suggest doing one group session. The potential value of these interviews could be crucial in delivering relevant messaging to your customers.
Interviews with recently closed customers:
When possible, current or recently closed customers can be valuable sources of information. Where possible, interviewing customers that fit the profile of our early ideas for segmentation may produce the most valuable and actionable data. Our preference is to do these interviews on an individual basis, the often used agency approach of doing group research is usually not the most effective or efficient approach, in our experience.
Analysis of current/past customer data:
Data analysis of past customer data will help in identifying and defining the various customer and prospect segments (clusters) and in developing predictive models for recommendations and timing models.
We use data analysis to produce actionable data that will assist us in developing accurate segments and in providing the most relevant recommendations. We'll associate this audience (data) segments with relevant message segments, creative segments, offers, recommendations, etc.. Typically following the analysis we'll present and discuss the results and conclusions with the marketing team. Direct2one provides expert data analysis, however, we may rely on your existing efforts to provide analysis if it already exists.
Understanding the product:
Understanding the specific benefits all your products and services will give us critical knowledge about how the products are of value to each customer. This understanding will give us the ability to develop messaging segments as well as help in the writing of the unique benefits, offers and recommendations to each messaging segment in the implementation phase. Direct2one has experience in a wide range of industries which will assist us in quickly and effectively learning your products and their strengths for each prospect segment.
Understanding the competition:
Additionally, the learning phase includes study of the companies you compete with. We like to understand the competitor's strengths and weaknesses, this understanding will help us in building strategies and messages that will help your efforts stand out and promote your strengths. Understanding the differences between you and your competitors will help us make relevant recommendations and impactful comparisons to our unique messaging segments.
When the right information has been gathered, we"ll discuss the findings with your marketing team, give our recommendations and come to an agreement on the direction of the campaign strategy and the customer communications.
Out of the "document" step there will be a clear understanding and agreement from all parties about the program goals, the targets, the messaging segmentation, the media strategies, response definitions, roi measurement and reporting, testing strategies, etc. At the end of this step we typically produce a "statement of work" that all parties agree to and sign off on.
The documentation step defines and outlines the roles and segmentation, campaign flow, technical, data and production flow, responsibilities, the detailed timelines & task deadlines, etc. At this stage we will also produce the documentation necessary for the creative and technical teams to complete the tasks for the campaign. The documentation produced here is critical and will help the entire team to stay on course and meet the necessary requirements.
Segmentation brief: The segmentation brief is the creative and account team's road map to the campaign. The segmentation brief is related to the traditional agency creative brief, but unique in that it concentrates on defining clearly the messaging segments and the primary and secondary product values for each of the segments. The brief defines the target messaging segments, defines and explains the unique recommendations, benefits and offers if they apply. As the creative team develops concepts, messaging and design, the team will use the brief for direction.
Campaign flow diagram:
This document is a step-by-step visual representing the campaign flow. It is meant for the entire project team to understand how a prospect or customer will interact with each communication and how each communication will interact with them. It shows the basic flow of data as well as the timing and media of all potential transactional and marketing "push" and "trigger" based communications and the possible response methods. See page 11, for the pilot program flow and a detailed explanation of each communication. Technical description, flow, privacy and security documentation: This document defines the data flow for the campaign as well as any other unique aspects of the technical implementation. The style of this document is adjusted to be appropriate to the type and scale of program they describe.
Detailed timeline:
The timeline will include task assignments, meeting and review schedules, drop dates, etc.. The account team will manage the schedule and assure that the development teams are meeting the required milestones.
