By Lilia Guan
As traditional methods of communication with constituents are undergoing fundamental change, the public sector would do well to examine the way in which some of the world’s best know brands have leveraged new channels to communicate with and serve their customers and communities.
ExactTarget’s managing director, Lee Hawksley told Government News that understanding that all communications need to be multi-channel is critical to ensuring the public sector is part of this change and stays connected to its customers.
He said it's becoming increasingly obvious agencies are likely to have no choice.
While that might sound alarmist, the fact is that these are the mechanisms by which their customer consumes media and connects in their daily lives.
“Ignoring them would be the same as a public body refusing to take advantage of say a website 10 years ago or a phone system 50 years ago,” he said.
For the public sector, it's highly likely that in the main these will be service channels.
“In this case they need to be fully integrated with other service channels (web, call-centre, TV, etc), be absolutely up to date and where possible, able to respond in near real-time.”
He believes they also need to be authentic and relevant and the overall strategy needs to consider that the audience has a finite capacity to consume information – email and Facebook are not the places for small print and regulatory messages.
Businesses should be managing both email and social media marketing channels together if they want to optimise their customer interactions.
“Facebook and email are very alike as the people on your business Facebook page are already your former, current or future customers,” Mr Hawksley said.
“People on your Facebook and email share similar metrics, for example, email subscribers are equivalent to Facebook ‘likes’.
“Facebook and email also share similar content and testing methodologies and businesses should to be thinking about Facebook and email as one customer delivery channel.”
ExactTarget highlights five ways to make the most out of Facebook and email:
1. Join the conversation. The value in conversing with customers across multiple social channels is enormous. Message tagging, team assignments and scheduled updates help you scale engagement and leverage what you learn for other marketing efforts.
2. Understand the impact. Analytics are crucial for growing and evaluating success on Facebook and then leveraging what you learn across email and other channels. Businesses should assess tools that report on Facebook fan trends, inbound and outbound messaging and impressions.
3. Customise the data. It's one thing to push content to Facebook; it's another thing to understand how your message resonates with your audience. Generate reports based on sentiment, message grouping and message type that help drive deeper engagement and customer service.
4. Drive email opt-ins on Facebook. Use your Facebook landing tab as an email opt-in opportunity. Test putting free content or special offers behind a “fan gate” with email sign-up to get email addresses and additional customer data.
5. Promote Facebook in email confirmation and unsubscribes. Use your transactional emails as a way to build your fan base. Some of your customers may prefer passive messages through Facebook rather than more active, direct messages.
To really understand what works for individual businesses, testing also needs to be undertaken.
1. Time and day testing. Use email time-of-day and day-of-week testing to optimise your Facebook status update schedule.
2. Copy testing. Use email subject line testing to optimise Facebook ad headlines. The reverse also works.
3. Image testing. Images have a sizable impact on click through rate for Facebook ads. Test multiple images in combination with headlines to determine the best image for each email.
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@governmentnews.com.au.
Sign up to the Government News newsletter
Related stories
Most read
Scathing report finds little has changed at PwC
Qld council welcomes progress on massive battery system
‘Local’ procurement turns out not to be so local, committee hears
Another report finds local government falling down on cyber security
MoG changes see regions, investment return to NSW Premier’s Department