By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist
Everyone’s talking about digital transformation. How do you do it? Start with a digital marketing road map.
The first draft may be fairly simplistic. It was probably drafted by a couple of visionary folks in your organization who know what they need to accomplish and want to begin to outline a roadmap to get there. It might look like the following:
Improve conversion rates.
More conversions lead to more sales.
Document the current customer experience lifecycle and identify areas of improvement.
We can improve customer experience and reduce customer support tickets.
Improve data hygiene: Remove bad data, organize existing data, and evaluate data collection.
Clean, accurate data is key to successfully reaching our customers in the channels they prefer.
Expand beyond single-channel sending to a multichannel or even omnichannel approach.
Connecting with customers in the channel of their choice will increase engagement.
Not a bad first run, now to get it ready to share with management and it’s not quite ready just yet. When you present it you want to show value to get management buy in. Let’s review a potential strategy to help your strategic roadmap be presentation-worthy.
Make Your Metrics SMART
Management theorist and consultant, Peter F. Drucker (of Drucker-School of Management fame) used the acronym SMART to define and structure success metrics.
Specific—You can define the goal in a clear and precise manner.
Measureable—You can assign a number or checkpoint to the goal.
Achievable—You can actually attain the goal.
Relevant—You can apply the goal to your work or your plan or your larger initiatives.
Time-bound—You can set a certain time period to achieve the goal.
Let’s reevaluate the success metrics to make sure they follow the SMART metrics. Here is a follow-up draft of the initial run.
6-month Strategic Plan
Vision Statement: Provide a seamless omni-channel customer experience in order to become the number 1 seller of our product or service.
Improve sales. Increase conversion rates by 2%. Measurable as a percentage.
Evaluate and test content and call to action in emails. Goal date end of fiscal year.
Improve the customer experience and reduce customer support tickets. Audit and document the full customer experience lifecycle. Measurable by completion. Conduct interviews and secret-shopping exercises. Whiteboard the entire customer lifecycle. Goal date end of quarter 2.
Improve data hygiene to reduce the cost of bad data. Review and document data architecture. Measurable by completion. Identify all data sources and systems of record. Review all platform and application configuration architecture. Audit data for accuracy. Whiteboard and document data model. Goal date end of quarter 2.
Reach customers in the channels they prefer. Create and release a new customer preference center to gain channel preferences from customers. Measurable by completion. Create a blueprint with technical requirements. Build and test preference center. Release new preference center. Goal date end of fiscal year.
Gain new customers by adding a new channel. Research and determine a strategy for adding the mobile channel. Measurable by completion. Determine mobile solution. Identify an action plan for adding mobile. Goal date end of fiscal year.
Sounds a lot better, and a lot more achievable because it is both measurable and time bound.
Note:
Looking for expert help with your assessment and strategic roadmap? Contact your account executive at Summit Technologies LLC to learn how our Strategic Services team can take your planning to the next level.
Once you’ve completed your roadmap, it’s important to come back with fresh eyes to review and tweak it to ensure customer experience is at the heart of your plan and that your goals are SMART.
Want to work smarter? I would propose that you rewrite your roadmap one more time with SMARTER goals instead of SMART goals. What do the last E and R stand for? Evaluator and reward. It is a good idea to have a team or individual who makes the judgment call that the goal is achieved rather than still a work in progress and for best possible buy-in don’t just show a percentage or number but show how it impacts the organization in the long run.