The Power of Interactive - The Future of Customer Communication

By Scott Gerschwer

"The future of journalists is to be more curators and less creators."
-- Richard Stengel, managing editor, Time

When I was a kid, we just watched TV. Nowadays, the kids watch TV while they are also online, where they can take cues from the TV program to look things up that broaden the experience. It’s kind of sad that it wasn’t around when I was a kid: Can you imagine the potential of interacting with Gilligan’s Island, Batman or I Dream of Jeanie? But my broader point is this:

Getting interactive is the key to success in a Web 2.0 world.

Enterprises are beginning to “get” what Twitter means for their brand. They are endeavoring to join the conversation that is going on---with them or without them---and are beginning to learn that they have to earn the trust of bloggers and social networkers, who tend to view corporations as being somewhere between lawyers and politicians on the Trust Scale. According to Market Research, 78% of consumers trust the opinions of other consumers, while only 14% of consumers trust advertisers. And the conversation continues –research shows that 34% of user-generated content is about a brand. The famous quote above from Richard Stengel, which caused quite a stir among journalists, may turn out to be quite prescient.

As you think about what all this means for your brand, think also about this next nail in the coffin of traditional advertising: only 18% of TV ads generate any kind of return on investment, perhaps because 90% of people who have the ability to skip a TV commercial, do just that.

Where once we had the “conveyer belt” model of communication and the “bulls eye” model of communication, the new model for customer communication is a dialogue. And, as was noted earlier, the dialogue is ongoing, regardless of your willing participation. Therefore, interactive marketing is forecast to grow by 17% in Europe this year and 32% in the U.S.

For marketers, getting interactive can create experiences that powerfully engage consumers, optimize the marketing spend, build brands and provide measurable results. Measurement is a largely a matter of building up analytics that can account for how interactive marketing does compared to other channels, including the more traditional marketing channels. Once an apples-to-apples measurement platform is accomplished, it becomes possible to establish measurement parameters that account for specific goals—brand awareness, engagement with a brand, increasing education of products and/or services, lead or revenue generation, new customer acquisition, reducing cost of service, up or cross-selling, etc.

In a sense, from a process standpoint, using interactive marketing is similar to picking up girls: attract, engage and convert. Conversion may take lots of engagement activity over a period of time, but as long as you have a system in place with which to monitor the key benchmarks you can continue to report up that you are doing really good. Getting to a stage where a prospect gives up useful information and becomes a qualified lead would be one example of this. Nurturing the relationship and having them return to your site on a regular basis helps to complete the conversion, and this metaphor.

Interactive Collateral Management (ICM)

Since a friend mentioned it to me about a month ago, I’ve been very intrigued by a particular form of interactive marketing that is separate from blogging and social networking. It’s called Interactive Collateral Management (ICM) and it is the final frontier for marketers seeking to optimize the tools they’ve long used to provide information to customers and prospects: catalogues, brochures, sales sheets, newsletters and other kinds of marketing collateral.

Essentially, what ICM does is use the power of the Internet to make brochures come to life. Employing a SaaS model, such as that provided by Zmags, the undisputed ICM market leader, means that the investment is relatively small. There is no need to utilize IT resources or host the software on your server. The barrier to entry is therefore very low and getting started is easy.

Zmags allows you to digitize a static PDF file and add hyperlinks and rich media to enhance the experience of reading the piece. For example, if you have a photo of a product, you can digitize the photo so that, when clicked, it opens up a link to more information, specs, details, other photographs, and whatever else you can think to add—which could include customer reviews, blogs and access to user groups.

Underpinning this enriched customer experience are analytics that provide the marketer visibility into the specifics of the visit, including hot spots—just as Google Analytics does on the web. The metrics this provides can provide the marketer with guidance as to what changes need to be made in terms of text or graphics on the brochure and also help guide next steps as the marketer converts the prospect into a customer. In recognition of this, Zmags was recently awarded a Red Herring 100 Europe Award, which is given to the top 100 private technology companies.

With ICM, marketers can better exploit the value of message-bearing content through deeper audience engagement. Here’s how: according to their own analysis, Zmags viewers spend 15% more time exploring interactive brochures than they do websites. As users increase the amount of time they spend online, they also increase the amount they spend while there. Therefore, marketers generally want people to spend more time online.

Tough economic conditions generally drive marketers to look for more accountability in the marketing spend. Performance-based formats becomes more important than cost per thousand impressions–indicating an increased desire for accountability, efficiency and effectiveness. Non-internet advertising revenue declined by 2.4% according to the Nielson Company. Newspaper advertising dropped off the table, by 10.7%, which has led scores of established newspapers to fold.

However, in spite of the economy, commerce conducted over the Internet grew to $214.4 billion in 2008, a 7% increase compared to the previous year; Internet advertising was up 10.6% in 2008, the fifth consecutive year of record breaking results according to online data tracking site ComScore. This trend is in line with the findings of a 2007 IBM study where two-thirds of senior marketers expected 20 percent of ad revenue to move away from impression-based sales to CPL models that allow advertisers to pay only for qualified leads as opposed to clicks or impressions.

ICM perfectly fits that trend. From retailers that have traditionally relied on  catalogs to B2B marketers that use brochures to market their products and services, Interactive Collateral Management will become the single most indispensible tool they have, the absolute apex of the Internet marketing pyramid. Don’t sleep on Interactive Collateral Management.