E-Mail as a „Black Box“
As an audio marketer, you're sure to know this situation: you've had a promising annual review meeting with one of your clients or an agency and have been asked for a quick, but individually tailored offer for the new year. Of course, you do your best to fulfil this request as quickly as possible and send the offer to your contact person via email shortly afterwards. And then? Nothing happens.
You – and the entire team involved in the proposal – suspect all sorts of reasons for this: „The proposal isn't liked“... „We're too expensive“... “The client has had second thoughts“, etc. Emails are always like a „black box“. You don't know what happens after sending: whether your message was even opened, let alone if the content and attachments were read. Perhaps your contact person has simply fallen ill in the meantime, and now the email, so important to you, is „stewing“ in their inbox. It's possible it might even be deleted upon their return because hundreds of emails have since accumulated in that inbox.
Data deluge
Your advertising clients are also familiar with this situation: they decide to handle radio advertising themselves. Those responsible research online and contact a station or marketer. Emails are exchanged, and appointments take place, either virtually or in person. They receive contact details or business cards, media data, and information brochures from several contacts, bookmark interesting facts, videos, or podcasts on the subject, make notes, and gradually receive offers in multiple versions. These offers are then shared, discussed, and processed with various colleagues within their own company. In a short period, a flood of data accumulates regarding this process. Maintaining an overview here requires good organisational talent.
Customer portal as a solution
Both the situations described are unsatisfactory. And time-consuming. A digital customer portal can offer a remedy here. At the latest since the Corona pandemic, customer platforms on which companies interact with their customers online have become an important building block for a successful and future-oriented sales strategy. What companies like Amazon or BMW, the insurance industry or health insurance providers have long been successfully demonstrating in consumer business, is now also finding its way into B2B business.
In our Case 1, your offer would not have been sent by email, but would have been uploaded to the digital customer portal. From the outset, there would have been access rights for several contact persons on both the client and marketer sides. The illness or absence of an individual would likely not be able to halt an offer process.
And on the purchasing side, no one would have had to manage a growing collection of information and data in various places, partly on paper and partly digital. This is because the customer portal takes over this task. After a short login, all your information on audio advertising is available: from the media lexicon to prices, to production possibilities, as well as all contact details, the history of collaboration, and all offers in their various versions, and finally the completed orders. Correspondence relating to specific individual projects is also recorded there. For example, a chat can be used to quickly request missing audio material or to arrange a video call for a consultation. All contracts, discount agreements, and other correspondence can be accessed by both parties in the portal at any time.
External or in-house solution
Such communication portals between media houses and their advertising clients or media agencies already exist on the market. They enable simple, direct communication and speed up the processing of advertising processes. Advertisers or media agencies gain access to their advertising campaigns. The digital systems facilitate the seamless exchange of advertising plans and bookings, integrated chat functionalities, and round-the-clock direct communication between all parties involved in the workflow. Before embarking on the conception and development of your own customer portal, it is worthwhile, for reasons of time and cost, to take a look at ready-made software solutions. Depending on the size of your company and the complexity of your offers and products, developing your own system can also be worthwhile. It offers greater flexibility regarding the implementation of your own goals and the provision of individual solutions with unique selling points.
More service = higher customer satisfaction = more revenue
Customer platforms make an important contribution to customer satisfaction through more service, which in turn leads to longer-term customer loyalty and increased revenue. However, success depends heavily on how user-friendly the portal is designed and whether it is regularly updated.
ESuccess parameters
Senders and marketers must be aware of the different needs and usage intensities of their target audiences on digital channels and consistently align the portal with the well-being of their customers. It sounds trivial and simple, but it is essential: your customer portal must above all be clear, self-explanatory, and beneficial. The customers and their need for information and communication should be at the centre of all considerations regarding the structure and design of the customer platform.
Data protection is an unpopular, but equally important, topic in this context. Your users want to know that their data is in safe hands with you.
When designing such a customer portal, interfaces to other systems must also be considered. On the broadcaster's side, for example, to their own CRM tool and campaign management system, but also to telephony, mail, and calendar functions. And on the customer's side, there may also be requests to connect to their own advertising management systems.
Get going
Nowadays, customers attach great importance to obtaining information or completing tasks in connection with a business relationship or purchasing process when it suits their schedule. From a company's perspective, sales is becoming increasingly hybrid. The classic phone call and personal visit still exist, but various digital communication channels are playing an increasingly important role. An agency's media buyer, for example, wants to provide a broadcasting group with the advert motif for tomorrow's broadcast in such a way that she can complete the task quickly, easily and in line with her schedule. And they want to be sure that the spot motif will actually be used tomorrow and not get „stuck“ in the email inbox of their usual contact person because they are on holiday for a day. These needs should be taken seriously. A customer portal can help you with this. Now is the time to get to grips with it.
Yours, Andrea Anders
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