Moderator Kait Creamer, Manager, Digital Marketing, MakeMusic, and panelists Morgan Chemij, Director II: Marketing & CRM, Americas, HP.com; Neil Gogate, Senior Manager, CRM and Acquisition Marketing, Mattel, and Luke Kintigh, Head Of Publishing, Intel, discuss automation at MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit in December 2018.

Luke: Automation is a big deal for us. We’re trying to figure out how to connect all the dots. We do a lot of personalized email. We don’t talk a lot about product. We feature our people vs. the product. However, ff a person is looking at a product spec and they go to IQ, we serve up a banner ad-type execution that will then target them back to the content. We’re like retailers, where, if you’re on site, we implement a similar execution so we’re tying that experience together.

Morgan: It’s a challenging situation to create best-in-class content. We have distinct sets of users. A subsection of our user base is using their PCs at home and at the office so the content we’re serving them is different from content we’re serving businesses. Printing in 3D brings whole other level of content. One challenge is creating content that’s reflective of your brand at scale is really challenging. You’re required to have good automation, personalized communication. It’s really expensive. Investment in content is investment that may pay off in year 2. Content to enable better automation is a struggle. 

Neil: Challenge for us is we are 70 years old. Our bread and butter has always been Saturday morning cartoons. Digital for us has been slow to adopt. Starting to do some right moves. That causes some complications. Our brands have focused fairly singularly. We want to connect our brands together because we have an opportunity to take a parent and child from Fisher-Price and introduce them to a brand like Thomas the Train. We’re starting to get more buy-in from partners to understand how we can do that one-to-one communication, and showcase the wealth of content and products that our brands have. 

Kati: Getting stakeholder buy-in has been really important for us.

Neil: Over the last two years, we’ve gotten good alignment from both sides to understand what we need from an organization to drive this thing forward. Getting IT leadership support, senior leadership support has been critical ... in driving automation forward. 

Luke: We create about 30 to 40 pieces of visual content a month from 800 to 1,000 words.  How to take content and deconstruct it to get maximum usage out of it. How do we build this image for our Instagram channel? We’re looking at our long-form content as a way to deconstruct so you’re getting 10, 12 social ads living across channels. CTA. Ecosystem, coming back to that content for engagement. Best practice: great way to leverage content is to look at individual items in that list. How do you look at those images, copy as specific to different segments. Where is that content going to travel?

Kati: Automation is so easy to set it and forget it. But you can have a missed opportunity. If you can constantly test something, why wouldn’t you.

Morgan: Part of testing is the content itself and the ad tech behind it. We’re fortunate it, leverage Adobe and Salesforce. Allows us to partner with other brands leveraging for first-, second- and third-party data. With Intel, we can look at people who have been on Intel, and looking at gaming content, for example. Then when they come into HP.com, we know what they looked at on Intel, and we can personalize the experience.

Kati: Do you see a point of diminishing returns? Does it get creepy?

Morgan: Half would think we doing too much, half would say not enough. We’re catering to an entitled audience, expectations have been elevated. They know how much insight data we have on them based on emails. We know if they’re using HP ink vs. refilled ink. Expect us to deliver them the ultimate in experiences. If you buy a PC and I’m sending you content about your old PC, then we’re not dialed in and, ultimately, that’s spam. We all want to avoid that. It’s a fine line.

Neil: We’re trying to find the balance between personalized and over the edge. We’re looking at segmentation as that first piece. Trying to make sure we’re providing value. If you looked at a walker, you obviously don’t have a baby that is walking yet. We want to make sure that we’re providing content, products that are relevant to you. Through website or email or even media and ads.

Kati: How can automation support better lifecycle nurturing?

Luke: We’ve mapped out what we want our audience to do, from fly-by audience, seen piece of media to first-time reader, subscriber, loyalist. Key stages we look at. KPIs will change based on where they are at. Lastly, we took our stack, certain tools at Intel that are very good at acqusition.  

Neil: We’re trying to develop consumer lifecycle, bridge between brands, move the shopper along. Challenge is how do you bring in new consumers? We can spend less and execute our content better, between Fisher-Price and Thomas. New shopper, new child, consumer of content. Don’t actually spend money to bring in. Do those proper transitions. We’re the child that’s about six months, learning to crawl.

Kati: What are the first one or two easy wins? To start automation or make better.

Luke: Content. A/B testing.

Neil: Getting buy-in has helped move things along. Get that alignment to understand what the digital frontier has to offer for our brands. 

Morgan: The best ideas come from customer feedback. Easiest thing to do is to educate people in organization what is possible, not possible. Who’s the closest to the end consumer. Customer support call center. Insights we get from them, that’s where we get the best ideas for content.