You don’t need us to tell you that shooting in the dark will get you nowhere. As a business, you must have a plan, execute the plan, communicate the plan to other departments and, ultimately, be able to evaluate that plan. But, so many times, departments working in silos wonder why they’re not getting the results they need to succeed. Knowledge is power! And closed loop marketing solutions will get you just that.
Are you still working in a silo? How often do your sales team and marketing team communicate?
It’s time to break out of those old, ineffective habits and loop in the rest of the team. Let’s take a look at how closed loop marketing solutions work for brands like yours.
What is Closed Loop Marketing?
Closed loop marketing solutions enable companies to better understand customer behaviors by collecting, analyzing and leveraging data on a continuous basis, throughout the entire consumer lifecycle. When Sales and Marketing departments collaborate, both teams are able to make critical connections with data and strategically tailor their messaging.
Consider this situation.
Marketing is running two different campaigns concurrently. Campaign A is fact-based. Campaign B is emotion-based. Both campaigns are running on social media, with similar targets. Each campaign is also running in distinct print publications. Additionally, each campaign is targeting two different consumer demographics.
Sales are skyrocketing.
So.
How do you know what campaign is working and which media is performing best? Which is under-delivering?
This is where a closed loop marketing solution pays off big time.
When your sales team communicates lead sourcing and funnel information back to Marketing, Marketing is able to focus their energy on the efforts that are most strategic, driving the most sales.
This data-driven approach is an extremely effective way to target customers with relevant information in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.
The result?
Sales and marketing departments feed off of each other, generating continuous improvement, i.e. higher ROI.
Marketing Department – Armed with behavioral knowledge about the leads they generate, marketing messages become even more refined across the entire buyer’s journey.
Sales Department – When the sales team knows what type of messaging drove their prospects interest, they better know how to approach them.
How Does Closed Loop Digital Marketing Work?
First off, it takes organization and preparation.
Every marketing campaign, channel and source needs to be uniquely identified and flagged. This is done in various ways, but the most common digital method involves cookies and tracking URLs. (This is not as intimidating as it sounds, we swear.)
When customers visit your business website through one of your marketing efforts, their behavior and preferences are stored in a database (through a cookie). By tracking this valuable information and acting on it through seamless collaboration among internal departments, marketers have what they need to “close the loop.”
This, in turn, helps the marketing team better understand which marketing methods are working most efficiently, which have the fastest purchasing cycle and what messaging works to best target their customers.
Example of Closed Loop Marketing
Take a company, such as Sephora, which has multiple marketing and sales channels. To optimize their marketing messaging, they capture information from their customer’s purchasing behaviors both online and in-store.
Using a closed loop marketing solution, Sephora’s internal database identifies each customer’s preferred method of shopping.
Customers who prefer to shop online might be emailed a special online purchase opportunity for a product in their favorite line up. At the same time, a customer who likes to make in-store purchases could be mailed a coupon toward their next in-store purchase.
Closed Loop Marketing Tools
As we mentioned above, knowledge is power. But how do you obtain this knowledge easily, without crippling your marketing and sales team with an overwhelming volume of data?
Without a way to process and analyze your customer information, the data becomes stagnant. A lonely, one-way street.
Enter closed loop marketing. The most popular closed loop marketing solution is a CRM.
Incorporating your information into CRM (customer relationship management) software and CMS (content management systems) brings your customer data to life.
CRM-based closed loop marketing uses data taken from multiple sources, including a company’s website. The website serves as the central hub for customers directed by organic search, referrals, social media, paid ads, email, even offline campaigns to understand how consumers behave and engage online.
By using tools such as Google Analytics, heat maps and/or tracking URLs, for example, brands have a more accurate look into all marketing activities. This allows the team to allocate their marketing budget specifically to campaigns that generate results.
Different tools use different tokens, but here is an example of what a visit from Facebook might look like: www.yoururl.com/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
When looking at data, marketers can tell how Facebook visitors from Campaign A behaved. For example, you’ll be able to determine if they bounced immediately, clicked around to multiple pages, filled out a form, or made a purchase.
We understand all of this might sound confusing. But, don’t worry – that’s what we’re here for.
Multi-Channel Closed Loop Marketing
Consumers today have more options than ever to get what they want. With multi-channel closed loop marketing, brands are collecting all that data (regardless of where they are) across a wide range of platforms, such as in-store, mobile, website, social media, etc.
With the right tools and know-how, brands can accurately collect, measure and analyze everything from page views to ad impressions, leads and sales.
This makes for a very personalized, two-way street.
Closed Loop Marketing Cycle
The cycle looks like this:
- Market Planning — Find out what’s driving your customer’s purchasing behaviors
- Execution — Data is used to mold relevant marketing strategies.
- Feedback — Determine what worked and what didn’t
- Analytics — Refine the strategy based on that information.
- Repeat
Love Your Data: Closed Loop Marketing Reports
As the cycle continues, brands will generate a lot of data on visitors. Once all that data has been gathered, it needs to be put to good use. You’ll be able to determine what attracted the visitor to your website, what took that visitor from a prospect to a lead, to a customer. Also, what sealed the deal, and what they did next.
On an individual basis, this information is interesting, but not necessarily actionable. However, when sales and marketing look at your customer data in aggregate, patterns begin to emerge. Patterns that help you predict the best path moving forward.
Marketing can analyze this traffic intel and adjust its strategy accordingly. Some options?
- Send qualified leads to your sales team by directing prospects to a unique landing page.
- Eliminate campaigns with too high of a CPA
- Develop related, follow up messaging for future campaigns
- Shorten closing time by identifying common questions or hurdles in the sales process and address them upfront
Closed Loop Marketing Benefits
Too many businesses have no idea why their marketing efforts work (or why they don’t). Even if sales are good, there is always room for improvement. Some areas could be refined to reduce wasteful spending. Additional money could be pumped into the highest producing efforts.
Companies actively using closed loop marketing solutions, however, rely on data from their customer’s purchasing behavior patterns to beat out their competition. They employ better marketing tactics that not only attract new customers but also retain existing ones.
What are some specific benefits of closed loop marketing?
- Highlights how a company should focus their future marketing efforts and budget.
- Draws a clear picture of what happened from point A (marketing) to point B (sales).
- Zeros in on the target audience.
- Can shorten the time to purchase, from marketing to sales.
- Unveils trends to take strategic action.
- Helps companies set realistic goals for future marketing strategies and sales efforts.
By aligning all efforts internally, with your customer in mind, you get a finely-tuned strategy to implement. When done right, closed loop marketing solutions can help businesses lower costs and increase their profit all at the same time.
Industry Example: Closed Loop Marketing In Pharma
While this strategy can be used in any industry, let’s take a look at the impact of closed loop marketing in pharma.
By using data on prescriber behaviors, as well as demographics on physicians, closed loop marketing in the pharmaceutical industry enables companies to target specific doctors. This strategy is transforming the pharmaceutical industry from mass marketing efforts to one that is extremely refined and efficient.
With the ability to customize marketing messages through a multichannel approach, pharmaceutical closed loop marketing improves the chances that the target doctors will choose to act on your messaging, rather than competitors.
Closed Loop Marketing Agency
As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts with closed loop marketing. It takes a collaborative team, the ability to obtain accurate information and to know how to use that information.
Get the edge you need to get ahead of the competition. Get out of your silo and close the loop. We’ll show you how.