Smart Lights
There have been a number of things I have been hoping to make happen in an effort at putting that proverbial silver lining on this nasty recession. One of these has been an attempt at finding a vacation deal. So, I contacted the travel agency that I have been using lately and told them what I wanted to do. They gave me back some options and some prices and I was surprised. What I wanted to do was not being discounted all that much. There are some serious deals out there. The cruise lines are just about paying passengers to get on their ships in the Western Caribbean right now, for example. No deals for me. So, I asked the travel agency to monitor the situation and let me know if a deal comes along. They said no. What? I know that the software exists to set this up easily – most of the dot.com travel companies make it available. I was flabbergasted.
This is the same thing as approaching an intersection late at night when there are no cars on the road and having to sit at a red light while all the other lanes, with no cars, get their turn at green. The invention of the smart light has been a great thing for people like me with no patience. Why should I sit and wait for absent cars to pass the intersection? The smart light solved this problem – it detects my presence and knows I am there alone and allows me to pass blissfully through. My travel company needs a smart light (in fact I bet they have one and choose not to use it). With little effort they can program my interest and when what I want comes along they can let me know – and they don’t need a traffic cop at the intersection to figure it out – it can all be done with automation.
This is great stuff for the consumer e-commerce space and I believe it has served as a significant component of the web 2.0 revolution. Now it is time for the B2B folks to get on board.
The smart light is also the roadway analogy to the concept of trigger marketing. When I approach an intersection a magnetic sensor buried in the pavement senses my approach. It sends a signal to a computer chip that has been monitoring all the lanes, including turning lanes, and determines if I should have the opportunity to go out of order. There are certain rules programmed into the decision making, and if I meet the criteria, I got a green light, literally. I can’t tell you how much I value this invention. The same exists for your marketing department, if you set up your intersections with smart lights.
Trigger marketing tools monitor your customer traffic. They detect certain traffic situations, such as do they stop at a white paper and then do they stop at a webinar? If so, you might set up your sensor in the road to trigger that behavior and send a lead to the sales person who would manage that account. Nobody has to wait for anybody. The trigger does the work of letting you know about the traffic. It is just as fantastic as the smart light. I really dig this stuff.
Of course, there is the challenge of driving the traffic. I find that triggers are easy to explain and convince my clients of their value. The harder topic is the effort needed to drive traffic to the intersections where the triggers are buried in the road. This requires campaigns.
It is still somewhat of a mystery to me why so many organizations resist the concept of conducting marketing campaigns. Some believe it is only for consumer marketing. Some think that their customers won’t respond or don’t read e-mail (you have got to be kidding). Some have tried a campaign but have experienced poor success. My perspective is that these are all unsatisfactory reasons for not using the marketing function to drive customer interest and enable the customer to tell you when they are ready for contact on a topic that fits their needs. Campaigns that drive traffic (to a website, to an event, to reply to a survey) are an extension of the company’s ability to deliver messaging to customers and prospects about your products and services that they require. The great advantage of the trigger is that it allows your customer to determine when they are ready for a contact.
Then there is the marketing function that is fine with running campaigns and regularly sends leads to sales, but the leads are largely ignored. This is another great value that can be derived from the use of triggers. With the creation of a bit of sophistication, such as through behavior scoring, you can set up the triggers to only detect interest after all the required criteria is reached. This scoring approach increases lead value and ultimately sales acceptance. No more leads based on who stopped by the trade show booth just because they wanted whatever free goods you were pawning.
The next time you are sitting at a stoplight and getting irritated with the delay, think about that missing sensor in the road. If you are not using trigger marketing, you are basically doing the same thing with your marketing function – unnecessarily delaying traffic.
Happy Driving!