Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
Six Ways that ilinkONE Version 8 Can Help Your Business
Posted by 
on Tuesday, December 21, 2010 
at 5:36 PM 
in At the interlinkONE offices, we strive on a daily basis to find solutions to problems that our customers may face. In some cases, they call us and present their situation to our team. But in other cases, we try to look ahead at what may be coming down the pipeline in the worlds of marketing and communications, and develop solutions to help our customers be ready ahead of time.
B-to-B Magazine published information on a new study titled “Insights into Action: ISBM B-to-B Marketing Trends 2012“. The study revealed some of the biggest challenges that marketers are facing. They also laid out their suggestions on what companies should strive to accomplish.
Below is the list of the 6 items that they published. Underneath each item, we included some information as to how interlinkONE and its ilinkONE Version 8 marketing software can help you accomplish that in some form. (Confession: Yes, this is a post with a sales-y focus. The majority of our posts typically seek to provide general information and help on marketing-related topics. But today, we just want to share with you some ways that our solution may be able to help your business.)
Strive to: Better understand the real needs of your customers
Before we can understand and identify solutions, we need knowledge and data. A lot of companies may hear what their customers need, but they do not take action. Oftentimes it’s because the customer’s needs may be shared in a phone call or during a conversation at a trade show or meeting. If those needs are never recorded, there’s a good chance they may be forgotten. Our ilinkONE Version 8 software has a full CRM system built into it. No matter where you are (your office, the road, home), you can easily enter “Notes” against a contact’s record. You can add a note while you are on a call with a person, or perhaps via your smartphone while at a conference.
When it’s time to review how one of your customers is doing, you can easily retrieve and review the notes from those conversations. This should help you to better understand their situation and needs, and identify the best ways to help them in the future.
Strive to: Identify and assess new opportunities for growth
Like the old saying goes…… if we don’t know what’s working, then how do we know what to invest in next? All of the modules within ilinkONE Version 8 are packed with real-time reports in the form of dashboards, charts, drilldowns, export options, and more. These reports allow you to keep your pulse on what’s working right now. But they also provide you with an easy way to identify trends in activity across your marketing, orders, fulfillment, projects, and sales modules.
Strive to: Develop closer ties with all stakeholders
If you had important news to communicate with all stakeholders from your customer list, could you do it? Could you pull a list of just the stakeholders right now?
If not, our ilinkONE Version 8 system can help you do this. On the contact record, you could add a field and title it “Role”. Then, you could assign various options – Stakeholder, Day-To-Day Contact, Operations, etc. Thus, when it’s time to pull a list of a specific group, our Contact Management search pages allow you to easily filter on those options.
Also, our contact history pages will enable you to easily see all of the interactions that you’ve had with specific stakeholders over time.
Strive to: Capitalize on new growth/emerging markets
ilinkONE Version 8 is a multi-channel marketing software application. It’s not a point solution. It does more than personalized URLs. It does more than emails. It does more than create QR Codes. Our system has been designed to truly allow you to build, manage, execute, and measure campaigns across multiple channels. It’s built in a way so that if a new channel emerges, you can utilize it through our system. Of course, we are always paying attention to trends, and when we need to make a code change, we do it. And typically, we are ahead of the competition in doing so.
Strive to: Balance short-term/long-term requirements
When you develop campaigns that utilize multiple channels and that consist of multiple touches, you certainly need to invest in this effort over a decent period of time. However, we also understand that from time to time, you are not given the gift of developing a long-term strategy , and you need to execute a one-off marketing effort quickly. Thus, our system gives you the ability to create and send emails or text messages, or build and launch landing pages, without any programing or special requirements.
Strive to: Select the right set of customers for the business
As a customer of ilinkONE Version 8, you have the ability to see a global view of your entire customer base. You can see which ones are providing business for you in various modules, and how this is affecting your bottom-line. Having this sort of visibility may allow you to determine if certain verticals or applications may be worth pursuing more heavily in the future.
If you are interested in learning more about our ilinkONE Version 8 software, please feel free to contact our sales team.
Tags Tell Me What You’ll Give Me
In today’s world, it is commonly accepted that most people are a bit more cautious before they purchase items. Sure, we are all prone to the occasional impulse buy – after all, we’re only human (“Wife = more concert tickets!?!?! Me = sorry, honey. It happened. Again.”)
But for the most part, we are all pausing and doing a bit more research before we actually put money down to acquire a product or a service.
For companies that are selling, it is vital to share as much compelling information as possible in regards to what you can provide.
I recently received a subscription renewal form from The New Yorker magazine. For a low-price of $39.95, I would receive the obvious: a one-year subscription. Now, I love that magazine. However, there are a lot of other magazines that I enjoy. I can’t buy them all. So, the question is — why should I pay for The New Yorker?
Well, I think they did a great job of trying to push me to reach for my wallet. They provided a list of additional benefits that I would receive as a subscriber, other than the obvious. Below is a picture of the list:
Image from New Yorker subscription form
If you are a service provider that is trying to sell print or other marketing-related services to your clients, this example may prove helpful. Perhaps you only sold the printed pieces in years past. But now, you are trying to sell a marketing campaign or solution.
If you simply sell it as “a postcard with a Personalized URL”, you may not be providing enough of an incentive.
For example, you could list out the following benefits:
- Direct Mail piece with multiple calls-to-action (Web, Phone, BRC)
- Hosted landing page that allows people to respond via the web
- Real-Time Access to Reporting Dashboards to see who is responding
- Ability to Instantly Route Leads to Multiple Sales Reps
- Lead Qualification based on Answers
- Automatic Fulfillment (Hardcopy and Electronic options)
- Viral Marketing plug-ins (“Tell an Associate” option)
- Integrate with Social Media (Ability to share the Response link on Facebook, Twitter, etc)
- Multi-Channel Approach (email sent out to non-responders of the direct mail piece)
These are just a few of the additional benefits that many service providers can offer their clients today. While listing those may not guarantee you sales, it certainly may help your prospects to truly visualize what they could receive by purchasing your services.
