Canadian Retailer - Winter 2015 - 25

sEcRET FoR succEss: FREquENT, RElEvaNT, auThENTIc MEssagEs

Marketing works on three principles, says Mamdani-frequency, relevancy, authenticity. Successful marketing campaigns engage customers with frequent messages that mean something to them and speak
to them in a way that sounds true to the person speaking. So take whatever budget you have (including
time), distribute it over a specific timeframe. The goal is to have frequent messaging across all platforms.
work hard to understand individual customers so you can target small groups with messages they will
find relevant. Look to use a customer relationship management system that syncs with your marketing
activity. Finally, speak for yourself and use language you're comfortable using. If you're not hip, don't try
to sound hip. An authentic voice will do more for your ad pickup than any kind of posturing.
Make the Most of Email Communication
email marketing might be your best untapped resource, says driscoll. "You have an email database,"
she says, "but you might not be using it to its full extent."
Send out offers: emailing offers
to key customers keeps you
top-of-mind and alerts customers to new products and promotions. To make the most of email
offers, target offers to seasons
and specific customer interests.
Generating exclusive email offers or tagging email offers with
a special code can help you track
the success of the outreach.
Capture attention with a catchy
subject line: The subject line of
any email needs to have a hook.
What hooks readers? Numbers,
says driscoll. Give customers
sales prices ("Mittens for $10"),
discount percentages ("10% off
leather wallets"), factoids related
to who they are and rhetorical
questions ("1 in 10 fathers say
they need new shoes. do you?").

Sell the benefits: To get customers reading your emails more
closely, highlight how your
products will benefit them. The
more finely you can target your
customers, the more directly
you can speak to them about the
benefits of particular products.
and because you know your
product better than anybody,
you can highlight unique benefits of product in ways that an
algorithm cannot.
Keep the message short: email
messaging has to fit on a single
mobile screen, without much-
or any-scrolling. So keep messages short, targeted to specific
customers, and focused on
specific benefits-a single offer
in a single message. Stick to a
product image, a sharp head-

Update your website
Before you begin promoting yourself on
social media, update your website to bring
it up to par. This doesn't mean adding full
e-commerce functionality, but it does mean
cleaning up the look, updating the content
(including hours of operation) and linking
to your social media platforms.
Test before committing
"don't heap all your dollars into one basket," says kate driscoll, Principal of lux 9,
a marketing company in Toronto. driscoll
counsels retailers not to lock in to an ad plan
and not to commit to a single, long-term
plan. "Test first," she says, using small increments and small timeframes to see what
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line, branded colours and other
details about the promotion
times and your location.
Recruit for your mailing list:
ask customers at the cash if they
will join and make the list worthwhile by offering special deals
available only to email members.
Include a subscribe/unsubscribe
option to your website.
Text the message: For customers, texts are easier to digest. For
you, there is less work. You get
the benefit of getting under the
noses of your customers without
the workload associated with
other kinds of marketing. The
key with text messages is to keep
them short, make them regular,
and give a reason for customers
to care, like a limited-time offer
exclusive to text subscribers.

works. "Start small, stay agile and pay attention to what works," she says.
Experiment with Google adwords
Google adwords, and similar services, target
advertising to specific groups within a budget.
For example, if you have a specific goal-say, to
sell x number of units of a specific SkU-you
can agree to purchase a set number of clicks.
This strategy has a number of pluses. First,
you only pay for clicks, meaning you won't
spend more than you budgeted, and second,
you can target the advertising to a specific,
local customer. Google's analytics allow you
to monitor when people click, what they click
and where they click the ad-feedback that will
help you tailor your ads better next time.

Winter 2015 | caNadIaN RETaIlER

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Canadian Retailer - Winter 2015

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