7 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2012

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7 Marketing
Trends to
Watch in 2012
And Key
Tactics You’ll
Need to
Address
Them

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7 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2012—
and Key Tactics You’ll Need to Address Them
What do Usain Bolt, the Enzo Ferrari and peregrine falcons have in common with
digital marketing? All move at lightning-fast speeds, a fact that makes this a remarkably
exciting—and challenging—time to be a marketer. As the buying landscape continues to
move and change at warp speed, the savviest marketers are looking ahead to 2012 to
ensure they stay a few (giant) strides ahead of the pack.

So, what will 2012 bring? We don’t have a crystal ball, but you can count on customers
and prospects becoming more empowered by the wealth of information at their
fingertips and the discussions taking place in social forums. They’re increasingly
demanding that companies communicate with them on their terms, delivering the right
message via the right channel at the right time.

For marketers, that will mean expanding social, mobile and local initiatives to ensure
they’re where their customers are. They’ll need to tap the unparalleled power of email to
deliver highly targeted, revenue-generating content, and rely on marketing automation
more than ever to deliver more personalized content to more people via more channels.

Here’s a look at seven important trends to get in front of in 2012, along with a sampling
of key tactics you can implement to ensure your competition stays firmly positioned in
your rearview mirror.

Location, Location,
TREND #1 Location: The ultimate in
right message, right time

Nothing is more relevant and actionable to marketers than knowing
where their customers and prospects are at a specific time. And
for years, companies have flirted with the notion of location-based
marketing, only to discover that it’s not an easy task. As it turns out,
people don’t want to be followed everywhere they go—unless they
invite you to come along with them.

The merging of location-based marketing with the social networking
world has provided a permission-based model that, coupled with
an increase in smartphones and tablets, has led to an explosion
in check-in programs from Foursquare, Facebook and
Twitter—with Foursquare alone passing the 10 million user
mark in June 2011 and growing at 1 million users a month.
And every time people check in on a mobile device,
they’re spreading brand awareness and affinity
to their social followers.

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With their potential for facilitating the delivery of highly relevant messaging at the right
time, local marketing initiatives will be a key competitive differentiator in 2012. Whether
you’re a retailer looking to boost sales or a tech company trying to generate leads, it’s
time to take the mantra “think global, act local” to heart.

Key tactics for location-based marketing success in 2012:
• Integrate local initiatives with email, mobile and social to maximize reach and
revenue, e.g. using email to send a location-sensitive To-Do reminder, announcing
a check-in contest via your Facebook page or Twitter timeline, and responding via
email or Twitter when customers check in at your stores.
• Establish loyalty programs—and related rewards—based on behaviors such as
recent purchases, check-ins and social sharing of your content.
• Differentiate your brand by launching a check-in based contest or sweepstakes
where customers gain entry by checking in to your venues.
• Increase traffic to your stores or venue by delivering personalized and location-
specific offers when customers check in nearby.

Personality Plus:
TREND #2 Marketing content becomes
more human

Not so long ago, marketing was all about selling your products and services. A little
high-end steak here, a little enticing sizzle there. And regardless of whether you
were selling caviar or catering equipment, delivering your message in an impersonal,
corporate voice across the masses was just fine.

Ah, the simple times. While delivering product news, enticing sales and discounts, and
“ya gotta see this!” demos as part of your messaging mix is still important, recipient
expectations for corporate communications have shifted with the rise of social media
and accompanying corporate pages on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These days,
customers and prospects move quickly and effortlessly between your company’s social
presence and photos of their best friend’s recent vacation, so stiff corporate messaging
that sounds like it was crafted by Mr. Roboto in the legal department can create an
abrupt disconnect.

As a result, savvy marketers will be shifting more focus in 2012 to delivering helpful,
educational content with verve and personality: “Yes, we’ve got sizzling steaks, but
here are our staff’s favorite wine pairings for that steak, our guest chef’s video tips
for grilling it, and customer recommendations for the most mouth-watering sides
to enjoy with it.”

For marketers looking to get ahead, it’s time to get real, get human and add value.

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Key tactics for content marketing success in 2012:
• Spend less time talking at your customers and prospects and more time
paying attention to their behaviors and listening to them via social networks,
community forums and surveys. Then, talk to them the way you would, well,
talk to another human being, employing a voice that’s distinctive, engaging and
yours—an extension of your company’s unique core values.
• Include messages in your email arsenal designed simply to inform, entertain,
surprise and provide value rather than sell. For example, a packaged goods
company might offer favorite recipes from the staff, a technology company
could author a how-to white paper that doesn’t hype its own product, and a
cruise operator can recommend travel, packing and on-shore dining tips.
• Incorporate customer voices into your messages to give your emails a more
human feel, mining social networks, call centers, blogs and community forums
for ideas. Having your customers talk about your products for you instantly
humanizes your brand in a way that even the best promotional copy can’t match.
• Introduce your audience to your team through words and pictures, including
stories and anecdotes about how your employees have interacted with
your products or in your product area. Put simply, people like to do business
with people.

SucceSS Story: King Arthur Flour
King Arthur Flour, a manufacturer of not. The result? The message incorporating
premium baking products, decided to see if customer quotes tallied a 30 percent lift
incorporating customer voices and adding in all key metrics—total orders, sales and
a more human element to its emails would orders per unique opens. Also, there were
help boost engagement and revenue. It ran fewer unsubscribes and spam complaints
an email A/B test in which one version of the and a slight increase in average order value.
email featured star ratings and testimonials Testimonials are now a key part of King
for the main products, while the other did Arthur’s email program.

TREND #3 Screensizeapalooza:
Designing for multiple devices

Smartphone sales recently surpassed PC sales, and the gap is growing1. Tablet
sales are predicted to nearly double from 64 million in 2011 to 104 million in
20122. And 25 billion mobile app downloads are expected by 20153. Welcome to
Screensizeapalooza, where people view your emails, landing pages, blogs, videos
and more on platforms of various sizes, shapes and functionality, often using
mobile devices to triage their inboxes and then reading what they’ve saved later on
their laptop or desktop computer.

The good news is that mobile devices have become more HTMl-capable, so
there are fewer restrictions on design. But that increase in capability means that
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many smartphone users are faced with the arduous task of deciphering text
and images on a small screen that often provides a less-than-rewarding visual
experience. And the need to use one’s fingertip as a mouse on touch devices can
lead to even more frustration if emails, landing pages, etc. aren’t designed with this
functionality in mind.

In 2012, as smartphones and tablets become even more widespread and the
technology becomes more advanced, user patience with emails and websites that
don’t display in a user-friendly, intuitive fashion is likely to decrease. The result will
be deleted emails, deserted Web pages and abandoned forms and shopping
carts for companies that fail to take the necessary steps to ensure customer and
prospect satisfaction.

Key tactics for mobile design success in 2012:
• Design for the fingertip as a mouse, avoiding putting hyperlinks too close to
each other and instead incorporating clickable content blocks that are at least a
fingertip’s width apart.
• Take steps to ensure your content is readable on a full range of devices, such
as using alt tags and larger fonts, making sure emails are typically less than
600 pixels wide, and including key messaging in the top-left corner. Also,
consider using style sheets that will adjust size of images and text to be
optimized for screen size.
• When testing how messages will look on mobile devices, don’t forgot to also
consider landing pages, corporate social networks, forms and other Web pages
that recipients may be clicking through to via your emails.

It’s Not Goodbye … It’s See
TREND #4 you Later: Re-engagement
and remarketing comes of age

Today’s customers and prospects are busier than ever, a fact that’s complicated by
the 5,000-plus advertising and marketing messages they’re likely receiving on a daily
basis. It’s no wonder, then, that many are tuning out marketing messages and offers
because of irrelevant content, confusing calls-to-action or external distractions.

With audience attention fragmented and patience thin, many marketers cite list churn
as their biggest challenge, with the average rate of annual churn hovering around
20 percent to 30 percent for most companies4. Also worrisome: In the average
marketing database, 30 percent to 50 percent of contacts have gone inactive4. And
even if marketers do engage contacts, challenges await: Approximately 70 percent
of conversion processes are abandoned before reaching the end5. That’s a lot of
deserted shopping carts and Web forms.

Given the high cost of winning new customers compared to maintaining current ones,
it’s clearly wise to make every effort to retain as many subscribers as possible—
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understanding that all inactive subscribers are not created equal, and some long-
dormant contacts may not be good candidates for re-engagement.

Likewise, considering the lofty ROI of abandonment emails, you can expect an
increased emphasis on cart, form and browse abandonment campaigns in 2012, with
the top marketers adhering to emerging best practices to maximize impact.

Key tactics for re-engagement and remarketing success in 2012:
• Engage contacts before they become inactive by automatically placing new leads
or subscribers into a multistep welcome campaign that introduces them to the
benefits of your email program; highlights your website, social media pages and
SMS offering if applicable; invites them to tell you more about themselves; and
provides links to helpful resources you offer.
• Instead of waiting until it’s too late to discover inactivity, initiate an early warning
system that uses reporting and scoring to identify inactive contacts within the first
four to eight weeks of engaging them. Move these contacts into their own email
and nurture programs designed to bring them back into the fold by inviting them
to update preferences or fill out a survey so you can serve them better; offering
a purchase incentive; creating emails promoting highly recommended items
that fit with their previous purchases, downloads or Web browsing history; and
inviting them to engage via social media channels or switch their communication
preferences to print, SMS or other channels.
• Analyze your database to determine which apparent inactives could come out
of hibernation, going back at least two years and considering online and offline
behaviors such as email opens and clicks, purchases/conversions, profile
changes, Web browsing history, print catalog requests, event attendance, etc.
Then, take inactives you classify as good candidates for re-engagement and
place them into their own messaging and campaign track.
• Employ a multimessage cart abandonment series, sending the first message
within an hour or two (or, at the latest, within 24 hours), adopting a service tone
and limiting incentives to alerting recipients that their carts will expire.
• Test browse and form abandonment campaigns to find the optimum timing and
number of messages. Again, take a service tone, and personalize with images
and details of a website category, page, product or event the contact viewed but
didn’t purchase, download or register for.

SucceSS Story: Markco Media
Markco Media, a global Web-based case, opening an email—in the last three
marketing and advertising company that months. For its re-engagement program,
operates the U.K.’s No. 1 voucher and it targeted these dormant subscribers with
deals network (myvouchercodes.co.uk), personalized content using Silverpop’s
wanted to win back inactive subscribers, dynamic content functionality. As a result of
so it decided to target customers who the campaign, it reactivated 20 percent of
hadn’t taken a specific action—in this its inactive subscribers.

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SucceSS Story: Fabric.com
To help recover lost sales from abandoned specified time period, it includes a strong
shopping carts, Fabric.com, the world’s one-click call to action for recipients to return
leading online fabric store selling customer- to their carts. Fabric.com saw immediate
measured fabric, implemented a Coremetrics positive results from the cart abandonment
LIVEmail integration with Silverpop Engage campaign. Today, its click-through rates are
and began sending a multi-email automated 350 percent higher, its average order value
cart recovery series. Sent to people who is 10 percent higher, and its conversion rates
abandoned their shopping carts within a are 50 percent higher than broadcast emails.

Actions Speak Loudest:
TREND #5 Unlocking the power
of behavior

For years, marketers have focused on explicit, self-reported contact data when
evaluating and segmenting customers and prospects—if they collected any data at all.
But in the new era of marketing, in which companies must listen to, learn from
and speak to customers and prospects on a one-to-one, personal basis, the focus
will shift to widening the scope of information being collected and building better
behavioral databases that enable marketers to “listen” to contacts and cut through
messaging clutter.

In 2012 and beyond, marketers who want to win will focus more heavily on using new
technology to collect a rich archive of data about customer demographics, preferences
and behaviors ranging from Web pages visited and blog comments recorded to
Foursquare check-ins and white papers downloaded—and dozens more.

Monitoring social behaviors will be a key part of the process, with marketers seeking to
gain a better understanding of who the key social influencers are in their databases and
how they might best communicate with them to maximize the chances of increasing
message reach.

When teamed with a sophisticated marketing technology platform, this data will enable
marketers to deliver timely, relevant content that establishes an individual dialogue
between the company and the customer/prospect that increases engagement, builds
loyalty and ultimately drives revenue.

Key tactics for behavioral database success in 2012:
• Set up a marketing database, integrated with a Web analytics system, that
enables you to connect individuals with how they interacted with your company
via the Web, email, social media, store/trade show booth, etc.
• Use new Web tracking technology to connect new contacts to actions they
took on your site before opting in or filling out a Web form. Instead of sending

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a generic email—or one with information that a new contact has no interest
in—you can increase your chances of connecting from the very first message by
immediately putting them into a messaging track designed for their interests.
• As applicable, sync up your marketing platform and CRM so you can pass data
back and forth in both directions more efficiently, better optimize content, and
improve communication between sales and marketing.
• Create scoring and segmentation systems that take your customer and
prospect behaviors into account—including social actions such as “liking” you
on Facebook, sharing your content to a social network and commenting on
blogs—and use them to establish your contacts’ levels of engagement with your
company. Then, segment and message accordingly.

SucceSS Story: cloudwords
Cloudwords, a cloud-based Translation Salesforce.com integration, Cloudwords’
Management Platform that allows its demand generation team was then able to
customers to select and interact with vendors access this information in the Contact Insight
that will translate any type of content, wanted module. “Our Demand Generation team loves
to enable its demand generation team to gain the quick view the Contact Insight module
immediate insight into prospect and customer provides, as well as the understanding of
engagement. Using Web tracking functionality, where the user has landed on our website
it captured each contact’s interactions and from which campaign,” says Cloudwords
with the company, including his or her site CEO Michael Meinhardt. “Having this
visits, Web-page views, form submittals, file information available at its fingertips allows
downloads, email sends and Share-to-Social our Demand Generation team to have
activity. Through a Silverpop Engage and relevant content for every conversation.”

Social Studies: learning
TREND #6 to be everywhere your
customers and prospects are
When, where and how we communicate has changed dramatically in the last five
years. In 2006, Facebook had 12 million users, Twitter was in its infancy and the first
iPhone had yet to be unveiled. My, how things have changed. Today, there are 800
million Facebook users, nearly 200 million Twitter accounts and more than 10 billion
Apple apps downloaded.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, with more users than ever accessing email
via mobile devices, new social networks such as Google+ emerging, and check-in
sites and location-based services such as Foursquare adding new wrinkles to the
marketing communication mix. Silverpop refers to this convergence of mobile, social,
local and email as “mocial.” And in a world gone mocial, marketers must change the
way they interact with customers and prospects to ensure that they’re where their
customers and prospects are, engaging them across channels and growing their
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To get your mocial mojo working and position your company to thrive in 2012,
marketers should look to gain a better understanding of the interplay between these
channels and leverage each to strengthen the other, thereby increasing customer
engagement, moving prospects through the buying cycle, and boosting revenue and
loyalty. By thinking strategically and holistically about all these mediums and shifting
communication patterns to match user preferences, you can connect with contacts in
exciting new ways.

Key tactics for mocial success in 2012:
• Monitor social-sharing patterns and, if applicable, aggregate social sign-in data
to see what social identities your contacts associate with your brand or company,
using this information to inform which channels and networks you target for
social-sharing initiatives.
• Grow your email database through social and mobile. For example, you could
add an email opt-in or lead-gen form on your company’s Facebook page,
capture emails via SMS or app downloads, and/or use tablets to gather info at
offline retail stores or trade show booths.
• Design campaigns around the concept of sharing, delivering your strongest
call to action at a time that makes sense rather than asking people to share
something before they consume it. For example, instead of just including
social-sharing icons in an email with a link to a white paper and banking on the
recipient sharing without having reviewed the content, also insert sharing links
within the white paper PDF itself and send an automated follow-up email inviting
downloaders to Tweet the best idea they got from your paper.
• Take steps to ensure your content is highly shareworthy and easily shareable,
delivering personalized content and mixing discounts, giveaways, breaking news
and educational info to see what resonates with your audience; including social
links such as Facebook “Like” or Twitter “Follow” buttons in appropriate emails;
and prominently featuring social-sharing links, prepopulating these links with a
message (including hashtags) that’s suitable for sharing.
• Use new marketing technology to automatically post relevant content across a
range of social network accounts at the same time an email goes out, ensuring a
consistent message delivered across channels in a timely fashion.
• Aim to integrate mocial efforts whenever possible, such as driving Twitter
followers to your blog with a teaser tweet, blogging about an exclusive SMS
promotion, and using email to grow followers and fans, increase app downloads
and explain the benefits of your local check-in program.

SucceSS Story: GGP
General Growth Properties (GGP), owner of our subscribers shared a recent $10 off
of 185 regional shopping centers in 43 coupon email on social networks such as
states, wanted to increase the reach of its Twitter, MySpace and Facebook,” says Jeff
promotions. Using Silverpop’s Share-to-Social Cloud, Director, Customer Relationship and
feature to place icons in emails encouraging Mobile Marketing, at GGP. “With Facebook
people to share its content, GGP experienced alone, we’ve been able to extend our reach
a massive uptick in consumer awareness to at least 500,000 people we may not have
about its events and promotions. ”Thousands reached otherwise.”
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Dynamic Dynamo: Email
TREND #7 as cutting-edge, personalized
messaging machine
While many new and exciting communication channels have emerged in recent years,
email has continued to thrive as the foundation on which marketers can successfully
engage contacts, nurture leads, and boost loyalty and revenue, with three-fourths of
adults citing it as their preferred method for commercial communication6.

But given the cluttered communication landscape, generic batch-and-blast emailing
alone isn’t going to cut it. Whether you’re reaching out to consumers shopping for
holiday gifts or IT departments looking to sign six-figure, multiyear contracts, you’re
trying to connect with decision makers with unique characteristics that should be
marketed to as individuals.

To succeed in 2012 and beyond, marketers need to tap the full potential of email as a
dynamic content platform and deliver individualized, automated messages based on
robust behavioral databases and advanced analytics. Ironically, the key to being more
personal in the information age is in becoming more automated.

The most successful marketers in the year ahead will recognize that email has evolved
into more than a standalone channel and take advantage of integrations with multiple
technologies (Web analytics, personalization and recommendation engines, ecommerce
platforms, product review technologies, SFA and CRM solutions, etc.) to build
multidimensional messages on the fly by pulling in data and content from all of these
technologies. And they’ll use marketing automation to create trigger-based, behavior-
driven email programs to keep people engaged.

Key tactics for dynamic email success in 2012:
• Build dynamic content into your messages, automatically replacing entire sections
based on each recipient’s unique behaviors, interests and needs.
• Populate messages with peer reviews, customer testimonials and comments from
social communities unique to each recipient’s interests and/or past buying history.
• Create “if-then” messaging tracks within your email and nurture campaigns,
sending contacts down different content paths depending on their behaviors.

SucceSS Story: Air New Zealand
Using Silverpop Engage, Air New Zealand each message showcasing a photo of a flight
sends personalized pre-flight emails to crew member who will be on the recipient’s
passengers utilizing Silverpop’s dynamic specific flight. The pre-flight emails have an
content functionality. Its pre-flight email average unique open rate of 69 percent and
includes imagery tailored around the upcoming an average unique click rate of 38 percent—
destination, such as shots of local cultural well above industry averages. In addition,
events or popular delicacies, a weather passenger reaction has been incredibly
update, and flight details along with the positive, from thousands of active Facebook
ability to share information with friends via comments to some customers even printing
Facebook and Twitter. Air New Zealand’s out the emails to show the featured flight crew
brand personality also shines through, with member while on board.
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Conclusion
Whether your marketing programs have been adapting to recent changes as
quickly as a gazelle or a slowly as a sloth, 2012 brings new opportunities for
ambitious marketers to engage their customers and prospects. And if you’re feeling
overwhelmed by all the possibilities, don’t despair—just pick a few key areas and
get started. By looking ahead and planning carefully, you’ll be well-positioned
to integrate mobile, social and local programs with email, taking advantage of
technological breakthroughs to deliver amazingly relevant content via the channels
your contacts prefer.

In 2012, marketers will have the ability to access more customer and prospect
behaviors than ever, enabling you to “listen” to the online and offline signals they’re
passing along and build databases packed with increasingly complex contact
profiles. And by tapping the power of marketing automation, you can take this data
and scale personalization across hundreds, thousands, even millions of contacts
within just a few seconds of hitting
“send.” Now that’s the kind
of speed that will have
you lapping the
competition.

Footnotes
1-International Data Corporation, “Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker,” Feb. ’11
2-Gartner, “Competitive Landscape: Media Tablets,” Sept. ’11
3-Juniper Research, “Mobile App Stores: Business Models, Strategies & Market Segmentation
2010-2015,” July ’10
4-Fresh Address, “Re-engaging Your Active Subscribers,” May ’10
5-See Why, “The 5 Best Techniques for Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts with Email
and Social Media,” June ’10
6-Merkle, “View from the Digital Inbox,” Jan. ’11

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7 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2012

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