Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Multi-channel marketing communications - all in one!
Shortcuts for Building Multi-Channel Marketing Campaigns
Posted by 
on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 
at 8:31 AM 
in I’ve recently been able to spend time on the road, training new @interlinkONE customers on how to best use our marketing software.
I’ve worked here for almost 11 years now — thus, there are quite a number of features in the software that I’ve become very familiar with. I’ve also taken some of the granted. However, training new customers about these features certainly helps to re-kindle my excitement about the tools we’ve built over the years.
Here’s one of them:
We encourage all of customers to develop multi-channel marketing campaigns. For example, it certainly takes more than one direct mail piece to promote (and fill up the seats) a seminar. With our solution, we encourage clients to consider using a combination of direct mail, email, social media, banner ads, print advertisements, and other channels to promote their efforts.
If you do set up a multi-channel campaign in our system, you will have multiple legs in our Campaign Management view. You do have the ability to enter unique questions and answers for each leg — for example, you could ask people that visited your landing page via social media sites different questions than what you ask people that responded via the direct mail postcard.
However, if your multiple legs will have a number of questions in common, we have a shortcut.
- Via Campaign Management, click to edit the actual Campaign.
- Click the “Add New Questions” button
- Enter the common questions and answers that will be used in your multiple channels/legs.
- Then, as you build out the Response mechanisms for each channel, you’ll be able to click one button to bring the Campaign-level questions into each channel’s form.
This feature will absolutely save your crucial minutes as you develop your multi-channel campaigns. Rather than spending your time doing repetitive data-entry, you’ll be able to start planning your next campaign 
Tags Three Webinars for Customers in March
Over the next few weeks, we will be hosting a series of Webinars/Lunch & Learns that will help demonstrate some of the new features in interlinkONE’s marketing software.
We hope that you will be able to take some time to join us. We truly believe these sessions will help you to take advantage of the new enhancements in our product.
If you can’t make it to one of the sessions, we will be recording the webinars and posting links to them in the Marketing Resource Center. (Please note: The Marketing Resource Center is available to interlinkONE customers only.)
Below is the schedule for our March 2010 webinars. If you are an interlinkONE customer, please click on a specific event to register:
- Marketing
Wednesday, March 10th, 2PM-3PM ESTWe will cover enhancements for building landing pages, emails, and more. - CRM/ Sales
Wednesday, March 17th, 2PM-3PM ESTWe will present new features within our Contact Management solutions. - Orders & Warehouse Management
Wednesday, March 24th, 2PM-3PM EST We will walk through some of the new reports and online ordering options.
Tips for Using Our Software – On Twitter
We are certainly big believers that social media can assist people with their marketing efforts.
Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., are helping people to find and communicate with prospects. They help people promote events. They help people “listen” to what is going on in their industry.
Social media sites can also help companies with customer service initiatives.
At interlinkONE, we have recently launched a special Twitter profile that is devoted to providing customer service. The account is http://Twitter.com/ilinkService.
The account will primarily be used to provide quick tips and tricks to help people get the most out of our marketing software.
For example, here are a few of our recent tweets:
Recent Tweets from ilinkService
We truly hope that by posting tips on Twitter, you’ll be able to find help when you need it. But we also hope that these tweets expose you to capabilities in our system that you may not have been aware of previously.
Of course, we still provide customer support through the phone, email, our ilinkProjects tool, videos, our Marketing Resource Center, webinars, and other methods.
Twitter.com/ilinkService is just one more channel to help.
5 Customer Service Tips For Your Business
I recently wrote about some marriage tips to use for marketing strategy and those bullet points only scratched the surface of some of the similarities between marriage and relationships that businesses build with their prospects.
I am sure you’ve read articles before about how marketing is like wooing your dream date. It’s all about trying to reach the target market (aka dream man / woman) and getting them to fall in love with you. But what happens after the wooing? After the big deal?
Surely it’s not over. You want a long term relationship. You want things to work for the long haul. And, as anyone who has been married or in a long term relationship can tell you, it takes certain things to make it work.
So what does this have to do with customer service? A whole lot. Because we can learn a lot from those gurus who tell us how to foster and nurture our relationships. Because most of us are in it for the long haul with our clients (or we certainly hope to be). So here are five typical marriage improvement tips that should be used in your long-term customer service efforts:
Communicate – Strong communication skills are vital to a long lasting relationship. You can’t possibly know what is going on with your client if you don’t talk (or email). Make sure you stay in contact with your clients. Let them know you are thinking of them. Send them some resource materials. Mention that article you found online that you thought would be of interest. Whatever you do, stay in touch and let them know that you are available and interested. You want that virtual door to remain open so that your client can feel completely comfortable coming to you.
Show the love – Everyone likes to feel appreciated. How do you show your clients that they are truly appreciated? Do you provide them with special discounts? Do you send them notes or tokens of appreciation from time to time? It’s important to show that you care for your clients and are grateful for the business.
Be faithful – Yes, we are usually the ones who want our clients to be faithful, right? We don’t want them falling for the next best thing that just happens to be a few bucks cheaper, a little shinier…But the same goes for us. We must be faithful. Faithful to our marketing messages, with which we must stay consistent and reliable. And we must be faithful to our clients in providing them top notch service that they can depend on.
Be supportive – If you don’t provide support to your clients, you will see them leave. One by one. Because everyone wants support. No one likes to feel like they are not listened to, or that they have no one to lean on. Once the sale is made, now you must provide the support necessary to show that you really care and that yes, you are there for your clients. 110% there.
Have fun – Don’t forget to have fun with your clients. As you get to know them, understand their likes and dislikes, then make sure to incorporate that into your phone and email contact. Business doesn’t have to be stuffy and impersonal. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Your clients are people too. And they have senses of humor and interests. Use this to further develop your relationship and let them know that your business has personality too!
