By Aimee Chanthadavong
Multi-channel marketing company Salmat has introduced a new solutions suite ‘Influence’ to enable customers to manage their omni-channel marketing communications through one platform.
Influence is a locally hosted solution that combines Salmat’s campaign management and marketing services with Teradata applications, an integrated marketing software.
“Salmat Influence will empower marketing professionals to communicate consistently across digital, traditional and mobile channels but utilising data analytics in real-time to deliver highly relevant offers at the right time and through the right channels,” Peter Anson, Salmat consumer marketing solutions chief executive officer, said.
The Influence dashboard offers a single customer view into how customers are responding to marketing efforts in the form of behaviours or actions, such as what they are saying through conversations with call centre staff, how they navigate through the website or which links they click through to on the Facebook page.
According to Jodie Sangster, Association for Data-Driven Marketing & Advertising chief executive officer, content marketing is key to business operations.
“Businesses have the responsibility to create appropriate content that will engage customers,” she said. “But distribution of how do I get the word out is sometimes a challenge and that’s where we are at now when it comes to content marketing.”
Sangster also highlighted one area that marketers lack focus on is mobile marketing. She said research from ADMA shows currently less than 1 per cent of marketing budgets are spent on mobile marketing despite the fact that Australians are one of the fastest markets to adopt smartphones.
“So is this the year of mobile? Not yet. Mobile marketing should not be an add-on but at the centre,” she said.
MGM Resorts International is one company that has been enjoying the benefits of the content marketing that has been adopted through its loyalty program, M life, which is an umbrella rewards program for its entire brand.
Adam Bravo, MGM Resorts International director of campaign operations, said the loyalty program has been designed to build and capture all the different market shares and their wallet.
“Only 30 per cent of our business is related to casino activity so that means that we’ve had to be conscious about how we market the gaming side. So our focus has had to change over time as there are some people who come visit us to stay at our hotel, others are there to just see shows or just to eat. So it’s my responsibility to be responsive with marketing. At one point I was marketing chefs,” he said.
“MGM has had to be adaptive. Using data to be relevant to these changes we’ve introduced database marketing.”
MGM now operates on the basis of segmentation, targeting and customisation, which has since seen the company’s margins double in the last 24 months.
“Talk to those customers and engage them by providing relevancy through all the channels they want to talk to you through, what time they want to be contacted and bring them information specific to them,” Bravo said.