What is omnichannel marketing? Today, Chelsea and Kellie of Prodio are joined by Jamie Miller of Stackd Media, a specialist in the area.
Omnichannel marketing is a way to create multiple touch points for your current and future customers - via digital, social media, in-app, tv, radio, and even print. While the "spray and pray" days of mass snail mail campaigns are gone, Jamie explains how data and technology can lead businesses to a much more focused (and successful) print campaign.
Using technology, Jamie and his team can paint a picture of your current and potential audience - using IP addresses and devices to learn about them and their habits, families, etc. And in a world where data and privacy are under increasing scrutiny, we also cover the importance of only targeting folks who have opted in to marketing messages.
This technology isn't just for the big companies any more. Small and medium sized business owners can harness this to create better, more targeted content for their audiences. While Google and Facebook can be part of an omnichannel strategy, there's so much more you can do.
Want to learn more?
Email Jamie: Jamie@stackd.media
Find Stackd on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stackd-media/
Or drop Chelsea and Kellie an email: hello@prodioco.com
Jon: Welcome back to the Prodio podcast. I am producer Jon Gay, joined as always by Kellie and Chelsea from Prodio, a marketing and branding company. Good to be back with both of you.
Kellie: Thanks, Jon. Good to be back with you.
Jon: Thanks Kelly. Chelsea, why don't you go ahead and introduce today's guest?
Chelsea: Yeah, today's guest. We're really excited to cover some of their frequently asked questions. It's Jamie Miller with Stackd Media. They offer omnichannel marketing, which is a hot topic right now, combining different marketing strategies. So we're excited to welcome Jamie to the show.
Jamie: Thanks Chelsea. Thanks Kellie. Thanks for having me looking forward to talking with you today.
Kellie: Let's kick it off Jamie, with a burning question that I'm sure you get asked a lot. What is omnichannel marketing?
Jamie: Yeah, that's a great question. Omnichannel marketing. Everybody, I think probably has their own little spin on it, but the way we look at it is the ability to tie as many channels together, whether that be digital ads, social media, advertising, email, connected TV.
All these digital touchpoints along the journey connected with in our world. We also do believe in the channel of print. So outputs of direct mail, mainly data driven, trigger based direct mail, but our blend of omnichannel is taking all those services, putting 'em together into a 10 to 15 touch journey for customers across many channels.
Chelsea: On the whole printing topic. You know, lots of people. We won't say who, but lots of people say that print's dead. So how is that this really important piece of the omnichannel marketing?
Jamie: That's a common phrase that I've heard for years. In fact, I've been running from that phrase, my entire career. I kind of started in the printing industry, over time worked for more and more data driven based printers.
Eventually get to work with a customer engagement firm. When I worked there, what we learned is print in terms of spray and pray in overproducing and hoping someone gets a coupon and redeems it well, yeah, that's been dead for some time. But when it comes to the way we do print, a trigger based printing, whether that be triggers off of an activity on a website or a trigger off an abandoned cart or a trigger off a misstep in a journey.
Um, new mover triggers. Those are the type of triggers we bring to the table. So we find these highly qualified audiences amongst all channels. And we tuck print into that and we do it really cost effectively as well.
Chelsea: So you're qualifying these individuals as they go through that journey. So that it's this personalized piece versus like you said, that just wide reach.
Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. So the way we look at it is, what's the source of the data? Where did the data come from? What is the trigger? Sometimes we're taking a customer's household database and we're running it against a nightly transaction file on their website. You know, we can identify IP visits and who's visiting and basically give 'em a specific treatment, whether they're a customer or a prospect. But yeah, for us, it, it starts with data and it's about creating this journey and identifying where people are, and then specific triggers that kick in based on online behavior.
Chelsea: So many people talk about how data is leveraged in marketing now, so that all those ads are catered to these people's preferences and everything else like that. So I think that the bringing the whole email and print into it is just kind of an extension of that intentionality, but offers such a new refreshing alternative to these kind of classic ideas that kind of breathes a whole new life into print.
Jamie: Well, yeah, I mean, think about it. So we just went through a period of time where everybody was kinda locked in their house. And it was March of 2020, and going into the pandemic, we were at a point where like 60% of the people in the United States, 60% of businesses, couldn't even sell their products and services online.
You know, companies worked really hard at having a digital footprint and playing in the digital space. And that's allowed for us now to step into the space and say, how do we take data and analytics and take it to the next level? How do we identify the right customers and prospects? How do we identify the underperforming segments in your database and make sure we're not letting those people slip away?
Print is a huge part of that. When everybody gets locked in the house, the key to getting people into online activities wasn't oversaturating with digital ads. Our most successful customers were sending direct mail pieces directly to the mailbox in conjunction with multiple touches in other ways.
And the opportunity in the mailbox is, you know, I've been running from printing my whole life, but it's a big part of what we do. And the days of 70 page catalogs and 80 pound text with 146 pound cover weight, with a UV and a die cut might be over en masse, but when it comes to data and driving results, print is a big part of that.
Kellie: Yeah. So Jamie, you talk about the customer journey. Can you describe what that really means and why as a business owner, why do I care?
Jamie: Thinking about the customer journey, it's really around your engagement with the customer prospect and how you look at them. Again with us, it's a really data driven process that just comes with identifying a behavior, whether that be online or offline, and then identifying where the customer is. Are they a qualified person that we should be upselling to, or they were looking at these products online. Should we be sending off a private offer at that point? Once we've identified these individuals, customers, prospects, they can all have different journeys and every journey's independent of one another and they're one to one journeys.
So we have to think behind the scenes. We have all these stock ads sitting there for digital display. Social media. And we have a creative set for email, a three touch series. And then we also have a creative set for a postcard, right? So now we have all these different assets. We have videos sitting there.
We can do a commercial along with this. We can run a radio spot. We create this 10 to 15 touch journey around the individual, in their actions that allow them to qualify. And then we personalize that messaging along the way. And again, it's not following them with hundreds of ads. It's delicately finding them in their element, on the apps they play in, on the websites they visit, social media where they act.
But again, it's not invasive because their actions have asked for it. That's how we get pretty remarkable response rates.
Kellie: So another question, we get asked a lot and I'm sure you hear this one too, is why should I care about my customer data?
Jamie: Well, I mean, first and foremost, privacy laws are the reason.
I think if you look at one of the greatest challenges that are facing marketers today is the ever changing privacy laws. The apple iOS, California Consumer Protection Act. These are laws we've been studying for years and years. And we have to be out in front of 'em because, you know, we deal with healthcare data.
We deal with financial data. So we have to be very aware of laws and our data strategy is built around deterministic data matches. It's not like there's this magical database that sits somewhere and has everybody's picture with all the things they like sitting there. But it's a very technical, analytical process that starts with us matching devices to mailboxes, and then having this full view of the household and what the household looks like, how the people act. Well, that's getting harder and harder, right? And it might become more and more difficult over time to capture that picture of your customer. So the hot button issue, I think you hear a lot abou,t is first party data.
So customers, biggest opportunity and challenges kind of getting ahold of their data. Anytime someone visits your website, anytime someone visits your store, we can identify and analyze that data and find more and more ways to communicate with them. Once you have that, we are always creating an opt in experience.
So we're not sending correspondence to somebody who hasn't raised a hand or volunteered to opt in, but getting hold of your data and having it in your database. So you can now make actionable decisions. To drive your business is really why it really begins and ends with data.
Chelsea: It's all about kind of choose your own adventure with these customer journeys.
People are going step through step, through the journey based upon the different actions that they take. It then sends them in these more specialized journeys. So that then even the creative can be tailored to these different segments cuz you're learning over time. And then, your omnichannel strategy is evolving to meet what that data is telling you.
So what would you tell a small business owner that kind of has all this data just sitting there? How they can begin to really digest that. But then also bring in dynamic strategies like omnichannel?
Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. So the funny part though, about that is when you said choose your own adventure, that's pretty much how I got through the eighth grade.
That was my strategy for book reports and. And I'd always choose the quickest journey so I could write the book report, but that's a great way to describe a customer journey. There's different forks in the road and different decisions to be made. And I think one of the biggest misnomers for small businesses is that they don't have access to that information.
And maybe they do have the database. Maybe they don't, we can always enhance that and make more of it. And you can literally start for pennies. There's plans that start for pennies to buy email addresses and build audiences. So only certain people are seeing your ads on social, but, the data driven process starts with your database and we work to make data visual.
So you can make decisions and really identify these really small segments of opportunity within your marketplace. And it's accessible. And that's how, when we work with Prodio, I mean, we have this shared kind of vision for small business. And giving them access to all these tools that include data analytics.Audience building other strategic initiatives from campaign management to measurement.
And optimization. We literally are giving that to small businesses for like starting out at $1.50 a lead, I mean, that's a big deal and it gives the tools to small businesses to really go out and market like the big companies do.
Chelsea: Yeah. It's so amazing that you're taking these tools that have existed at kind of enterprise level for a while now and now you're packaging them and breaking it down into these more digestible, accessible pieces, for small to medium businesses. I think that's absolutely incredible. I know that on the Prodio side, in terms of small business,, starting that first step of getting that pixel installed on your website to start collecting data, looking at some of the analytics that you have readily available to you,through Facebook, Instagram, or some of these different platforms that you may engage on is a great way to start learning what your customer base is made out of. I think one of the biggest mistakes that we see is that it's taking marketing strategy and kind of throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks. And then being frustrated when, a year or three years down the road, you've spent money on activities that really haven't had that ROI.
So I think, starting small, it's an amazing way you can learn in the short term and then with tools like this. To then just maximize and optimize those activities, I think is incredible.
Jamie: Yeah. One of the things we look at is, again, you mentioned the pixel. A pixel's just a tiny little line of code that anybody can put onto their website.
And what that does is it allows us to identify the IP address that's interacting and engaging with their website. And then through some proprietary technology that we source and have built, we have databases behind the scenes that give us that household level picture of what the family looks like, what the household looks like and financial criteria, all these things that can help us make decisions in the audience building process.
But yeah, it starts with identifying and measuring data and really making data driven, marketing decisions.
Kellie: Okay. So we talked a little bit about social media and I'm curious because it's a question that we get all the time. I'm curious to know what you say to business owners who want to know why their ads aren't performing on Google or why they're not performing on Facebook.
Why is that not always the best strategy?
Jamie: Yeah. So Facebook and Google are part of the omnichannel strategy. We tend to incorporate that and bring it in. And in our world, Facebook and Google, our channels, their data sources, all things that are part of painting the advertising picture for small and mid-size businesses.
But at the end of the day, I mean, you guys saw the social dilemma. I watched the first 20 minutes. And that was it. I didn't watch the rest. I didn't have to.
Kellie: It's hard to watch. Right?
Jamie: Well, we live it. , so I have young kids too. I have a teenage daughter, a teenage boy, You feel some sort of responsibility to be better advertisers when you see that. And this isn't an assault on big tech, it's just, when it's about money, it's about money.
When you look at our mission, our vision, we're really here to help smaller businesses. And those are all tools that are important, but far too many times, you see. We've talked about it. It was like 75% to 80% of all digital marketing spend, goes to Facebook and Google.
Like that doesn't make sense. You're limiting yourself to a couple of the big players, right? Well, they are part of the tools, but we need to take those dollars and spread 'em out and be a little bit smarter about it. And we make that money go a lot further.
Chelsea: Yeah. And also, hen you're talking about 80% is going to these very limited number of entities.
You're competing with everybody else. So, with these algorithms, with these baseline spends, it's hard, if you have a smaller, monthly spend to really compete. So using some of these activities that then can produce an ROI, even in the short term, versus trying your luck.
Where I think we lie is it's an important piece, but it's not the only piece. It has to be part of this well rounded strategy and knowing that your different customers are gonna find you in different places. And if you wanna speak more directly to them, then things like omnichannel is definitely.
Jamie: And look at it like how we deal with our customers. I look at social really simplistically, like overly simply. You have to have the presence. That's a thing. It's gotta be online with your brand. It's gotta be telling the story because if you're not there you're missing. Now, do you have to have crazy budgets, building social media audiences? No data can build those audiences for you.
And it doesn't have to be just the algorithm that's written by the big companies. We can literally build your audiences and say, these are the people that should see your ads. We feed that into your social media seat, social media's again, a big part of the process, but it needs to be a smaller part than it.
Kellie: So let's talk about some of those other pieces. I think we mentioned keywords in an earlier conversation. Why are keywords important to a small business owner?
Jamie: You know, for us, it's interesting because we're always trying to find new ways to package a bunch of stuff together and bring a lot of value to our customers.
So one of the topics that, you know, contextual targeting everybody's really familiar with in the digital space. And that's simply anytime anyone Googles any of your business's keywords, you can immediately retarget them with ads, right? That's contextual retargeting. So some of our strategies are to have a plan in place to do contextual retargeting, but through matching, we can identify IP addresses, match those IP addresses to, the other contact information, physical address, social media username.
You know, device IDs, all that stuff. And then again, those are the people that get these multi-channel campaigns that can include print and digital, online and offline kind of that integrated experience. But when we look at how we build audiences, you gotta think of the traditional sales funnel, brand awareness.
Those are things, you know, social media's up there. And digital advertising strategy is part of that. Billboards. Influencers. Like that's all part of it. That never goes away. Below that though, there's this, regardless of the sales funnel, you look. There's this part in the middle that talks about
where people are in the process, and it's usually something around, showing interest or making a decision in terms of whether or not they want to engage with the brand. So,one of our sources that is working tremendously right now is we have a data source where we can identify every time someone's Googling a keyword, that IP address.
Well then, through all of our other tools, we can match that IP address to a physical address. For instance, when one of our car dealerships in, Mukwonago Wisconsin, they have a Ford, a Chevy and a GMC dealership. Bang, bang, bang geo fences around all three. Anytime anyone comes in now we have device information. Website, pixelated, each one of 'em.
We pull back, we can identify who's coming to their website. We can feed that to their sales team. By the way you need us to match to a phone number? We can do that. We identify where people are in that process. And we send these omnichannel campaigns based on their actions.
Kellie: Jamie, this has all been such great information. Thanks so much for sharing today. As we wrap up, I just have a question about big data because we do work with a lot of small to medium sized businesses. So why is big data important and what can it do?
Jamie: I mean data's money, right? So budgets are a thing. And, you know, as marketers and advertisers, we have to help our customers make responsible decisions with their spend.
If you're overspending for Google search, that's alone not a strategy for growing your business. If you're just putting ads on your Facebook and Instagram page, again, that's generally not a strategy, to grow a business. It's a piece of the puzzle. But starting with data and really making actionable decisions.
And again, there hasn't been a company. Can you think of one where we haven't been able to create a data driven program within a budget that works? I mean, it's for everyone. So data's accessible, big data's accessible, and we really work to make data visual and bite size and understandable to our small business partners can make business decisions.
Chelsea: Awesome. Well, we so value your time today and sharing some of your frequently asked questions and bringing this whole idea of omnichannel marketing, how to kind of crack the code, as a small to medium business owner. But specifically, like you said, data is for everyone. And if you're looking for those right solutions, data's a great place to start.
Cuz it's that educated decision making and takes out a lot of the guesswork and especially, small businesses where you're kind of a Jack of all trades, taking care of so many different elements of your business. That is a huge asset.
Jamie: Yeah. And to go off the rails on you a little bit on this, when you look at the creative process, really data's a gift to creative.
You'd rather spend your customers money, creating better copy, better brand proposition, better storytelling. Data gives you that. It allows us to make our customers creative better. So, I think it makes it fun. Data and creative tying it together is a fun little place to play.
Chelsea: Yeah. And it gives you that great kind of boost that you need as you don't have to necessarily wait until your business has increased that 20% over the course of the year, but those datas can offer you those quick wins. And that directionality that so many business owners really are looking for.
Right. I think this is a great conversation about frequently asked questions. Jamie, as always, it's great getting together with you and we love partnering with you on these omnichannel strategies, bringing creative and other marketing pieces into play. And so we thank you for being with us.
Jamie: Thanks for your time.
Chelsea: All right. And a big, thanks to Jon, our producer.
Jon: Pleasure being here as always, before we wrap up, Jamie, how does somebody find you at stacked media?
Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it.
Jon: Jamie@stackd.Media.
Jon: And Chelsea, if our listeners wanna talk to you at Prodio, how do they find you?
Chelsea: As always, you can learn more on our website. That's prodioco.com. Feel free to reach out to us. We're always happy to answer any of your burning FAQs.
Jon: That'll wrap up this FAQ-Cast. That's F-A-Q Cast. Will have everybody's links in our show notes.
Thanks, everybody. We'll talk again soon.
Chelsea: Thanks, Jon!