How Intilery helps compliance, technical, marketing & sales work together to achieve goals.
Many businesses start with one person or a partnership but the big results usually materialise once a team is formed, and different skills and expertise drive the business forward. Just look at the likes of Gymshark and Social Chain, going from a small business into huge multi-disciplined companies.
With a cooperative coordinated approach, the business will start to gain momentum in all areas. From sales & marketing through to technical and compliance, we all know how difficult it can be for teams to work together especially when each department does not understand the challenges, objectives and jargon in another department.
It is so easy to stay in your own lane and not coordinate your efforts effectively.
There are many industries that work in different ways. For example, the financial and professional services industry will need to get everything approved by stakeholders and compliance before publishing marketing campaigns, a new product or even the template for a new service letter.
The likes of hospitality and e-commerce can be a little more flexible but the pressure is still on as the turnaround of promotions and products are usually shorter with smaller timeframes to communicate to their customers.
The process of a marketing campaign connected with a product launch or offer will usually go through many departments, let’s take a look:
1) The buyers/product team will discuss a new product being launched, this could be a service or product. Eg. A mortgage for first time buyers.
2) The compliance team will then work through product details and ensure that the messaging and product is correct.
3) The marketing team will produce the promotional messages, the campaign, the tone of voice, who they are targeting, through which channels and produce all the marketing literature through the creative team.
4) The sales team are given a campaign brief and work through their sales channels to communicate to existing customers and prospects.
5) The compliance team are then likely to review all the sales and marketing material to ensure it is correctly communicated (this stage can go back and forth).
6) The content is then published, and it is down to the operational team to deliver, this could be at store level or purchases online/over the phone.
With this process in mind, how easy is it for teams to work together so that messaging is not lost along the way?
We have all played Chinese Whispers and we know how it usually ends; it is vital that the teams work coherently to deliver.
Let’s look at an example where not working together on messaging has recently caused a stir in the media.
Center Parcs during the Queens funeral
Center Parcs recently announced that they were to close all holiday parks on Monday 19th September in respect of our late her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth.
This sparked huge anger from customers who were due to be staying in their holiday parks on the Monday. Now, this is something that may have followed all the above channels in terms of compliance, operations, and so on, however, they did not seem to take the customer journey & experience into consideration. Personally, I see this as being a bit ‘nose blind’ to their target markets situation.
Booking a holiday should be an enjoyable experience from start to finish, especially for those spending their hard-earned income on treating the family to a UK break. If Center Parcs had considered the effect this would have on their customers, they would have thought about the following:
1) A disrupted holiday is not going to be relaxing for their guests, having to organise alternative accommodation would potentially ruin their getaway.
2) The brand is seen as a relaxing, luxury brand. Therefore, it is a huge shame to share a message which would cause such an inconvenience to its guests.
3) Their mission statement reads ‘We aim to satisfy the needs of our guests at all times and often exceed expectations.’ which they clearly did not live up to before their announcement.
After this PR disaster, the Center Parcs team will have to do everything in their power to improve their brand image, with one disgruntled customer on Twitter tweeting “This is ridiculous, how can anyone book with Center Parcs with confidence in the future? Surely people can pay respects at your locations?”
Working together seamlessly
Here are some tips on how to work with different departments seamlessly.
Communication
Communication is key! Use different means of communication, such as face-to-face meetings, Teams or Zoom updates and Slack is one of my favourites for instant messaging between departments.
Simplify department jargon
If you’re using one of your fancy department words, explain it in simple terms to your peers. I often use marketing terms and other departments will look at me blankly. Eg. instead of saying SEO, say “Helping to get us on page 1 of Google.”
Use an effective CRM Tool
Enabling all departments to access customer records and campaigns in one place, be able to leave comments and seek or grant approvals for messaging.
Use an effective CEM Tool
Enabling you to track and record customers engagement with your website and campaigns, use this to inform or automate responses and for these responses to be generated via the one platform rather than individual team members email accounts, so avoiding confusion between departments, teams and team members.
An award-winning Insurance company works with Intilery to completely automate its communications to their customers. Fully integrated with their customer data and internal software, the Intilery platform calls on API’s to ensure that the right messaging and docs reach the right customers at the right time.
Using SMS, email and mail options – they communicate to their customers using an end-to-end automated comms strategy.
Inbound generation leads feed into Intilery allowing their prospects to enter a journey where they promote targeted products to them using dynamic content. Once the sale goes through, the compliance letters and documents are automated and sent to the customer along with emails and SMS.
The team also has access to the Intilery approval process where senior team can approve all assets upon creation.
If you’re a CRM Manager and you’re looking to take your marketing funnels to the next level, it’s time to talk to Intilery.
