If you had asked me 6 months ago what a landing page was, what it did, or the importance of it in marketing, I would have stared at you with a blank face. After being enlightened, I now know how important they are and how the ease of creating them is important to any marketer. When creating a landing page, you want it to be engaging for your consumer and if you’re using it through a multi-channel campaign, that needs to be easy as well.
With Saepio MarketPort, creating a customer-engaging landing page is easy. Content is naturally consistent with other elements of a multi-channel campaign and can be dynamically
served based on the consumer or campaign. The content can be generic or personalized to the user based on the objectives of the campaign.
Creating a landing page for the local marketer can easily be done, all while brand standards from the corporate level are securely maintained. Landing pages can also be versioned for localization by the local marketer.
At the distributed marketing level, landing page creation reduces the cost and time of having such content created and ensures that messages are integrated for maximum response rates.
Key features of landing page creation include:
- point and click ease of use,
- easily enforced brand compliance,
- automated posting and linking,
- mobile friendly design,
- produced dynamically, and
- can be co-managed by corporate or local marketers.
Key benefits for the manager of a distributed marketing network are:
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Coordinated web marketing strategy across distributed network. The microsite functionality within MarketPort enables brand compliant and coordinated web sites across a distributed marketing organization, which provides a consistent message to customers and prospects.
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Easy creation of campaign specific landing pages. A campaign landing page can easily be created through MarketPort. This reduces the cost and time of having such content created and ensures that messages are integrated for maximum response rates.
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Brand control. Web content localization within MarketPort enables the corporate marketer to enforce brand standards in the same way the standards are enforced within other mediums.
Key benefits for the distributed, regional, or local marketer are:
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Easy creation of landing page content. Local marketers can easily create high quality landing pages to help increase call to action effectiveness.
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Easy management of a local web presence. MarketPort makes updating and managing a local website profoundly easy. No HTML or website design skills are needed, just the ability to point, click, copy and paste to insert locally relevant copy.
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Time and cost savings. The ease of use of microsite creation saves time, and the ability for the local marketer to easily management the process saves money, which in turn help marketing dollars stretch further.
Now that I’ve done my job of spreading awareness about the mystery of landing pages and their creation, feel free to give us a call at 877-468-7613 or shoot us an email at sales@saepio.com so we can dive deeper into all the features of landing page creation in MarketPort, and all the other awesome features it has that can save you time and money.
Abby Crosthwait
Marketing Communications Coordinator
@saepio
Ask teenagers what channels they like for advertising messages and they'll tell you they stopped watching TV some time ago. The only way they think about the word channel as it relates to advertising is the TV station channel numbers and even those “channels” are quickly fading from memory.
Teens aren't alone. Consumers of all ages rarely think about advertising in terms of channels. They just think about ads and how they are everywhere from road, to phone, to office and home.
Corporate marketers, in contrast, love channels. They organize teams around media channels, hire agencies based on them, plan media and creative for them.
The marketing vendor community loves channels too. They’ve built businesses around them, become experts in them and promote them at every chance too. Media channels, of course, love channels ... well at least their own.
So how does this happen? A whole industry that prides itself on being so customer focused and adaptive being so fully organized in a manner so completely in contrast to how its audience consumes its product. Surely expertise is important, but shouldn't it be connected, not isolated?
This channel fixation really complicates things for the local marketers. Like general consumers, local marketers don't think much about channels. They just think about how to get their message out to the right people and wonder why the marketing industry makes it so hard to build and run cross-channel marketing campaigns.
Interestingly, this singular focus of the local marketers may be a catalyst to drive broader industry change. The fact that local marketing is not saddled with the traditional marketing channel silo mentality, the fact that the corporate marketer assigned to support local marketing must play the integrator role of bringing the multiple cross-channel content into a single resource, and the influence of multi-channel distributed marketing management platform technology may actually result in local leading the charge to break down counterproductive legacy structures and usher in processes that are relevant to the current media structure and how customers consume messages.
A well run distributed marketing resource will connect channels, organize campaigns around messages not channels and automate marketing fulfillment to eliminate the traditional barriers and self-interests within channel teams and fulfillment vendors.
Innovative corporate marketing managers of distributed marketing networks should see this as an excellent opportunity not only to make a difference for their local marketers but for their organization as a whole.
Saepio’s recent white paper, Turn-Key, Multi-Channel Campaigns Made Easy for Local Marketers helps corporate marketers with this demand for turn-key simplicity by focusing on four steps:
- Provide a single multi-channel content creation point.
- Create a single content versioning and localization process.
- Ensure a single-step campaign payment and fulfillment process.
- Consolidate best practices reporting.
Learn more.
Download your free copy today!
Social networks are clearly redefining marketing. Word of mouth marketing was always the best form of marketing. In the form of social networks, its power has exploded and unlike traditional word of mouth, marketers can easily participate in it. It’s like the marketers best thing since sliced bread.
But it comes with a dark side too. The majority of social networks are a colossal waste of marketing resources. Even the darlings of today can quickly fade away, taking hours and hours of marketing investment down with them.
So as the manager of a distributed marketing network’s social marketing program what do you do? The answer: Pick five and forget the rest. There are simply too many social networks and too much change to engage at a full level everywhere. Put resources where they will matter most.
Start by prioritizing social networks based on your customers. What are they using? Where are you most likely to engage with them in a meaningful way?
Once you have your five identified, optimize them for your local marketers. Determine the best structure to engage with local marketers. If there is a local aspect to the social network such as Facebook, this may involve you controlling the local page, the local marketer controlling it or some blend of the two.
Next let your local marketers know why you selected the five you did and how you want them to engage. It can also be helpful to provide a short explanation of why you left a popular social network off your list.
Finally, review your list frequently. The popularity of social networks rise and fall at a rapid rate. While this may be the very reason why you need a list of five, it is important to identify rising stars quickly. Not only does this benefit your organization, it helps build credibility for your partnership with your local marketers too.
More recommendations for managing social marketing across a distributed marketing network can be found in “ how to social” how-to white paper from Saepio. You can download it free at …..
According to the Mobile Marketing Association’s white paper Mobile Messaging in North America: A Fresh Look at Current Options for Marketers from earlier this year, mobile messaging is the most used means of consumer communication ever created – surpassing email traffic by 5x and postal traffic by 300x in 2011.
Think that stat seems high? Just look around you. Try to find some room, meeting, event or street corner where someone isn’t sending or receiving a text.
Additionally, odds are growing that texting isn’t all that’s taking place. With the rapid adoption
of smart phones, mobile devices are increasingly being used for surfing, emailing, tweeting, watching, pinning or social postings. Occasionally, someone even uses a mobile phone to talk!
Mobile is simply becoming front and center in daily life.
For the marketer, it’s increasingly the intersection of a wide range of messages as well. This really raises the stakes when it comes to integrated messages. It’s one thing to have a prospect see a message in an email they read on their monitor at work that is different from one they see in a TV commercial at home. Or, a message on a social page that doesn’t match up to what they heard in the car on the drive home. Lack of integration confuses messages and limits opportunity to mobilize response.
Imagine, though, how disconnected all of this would feel if it was all consumed on a mobile device. With 30 percent of emails being read on mobile devices, a growing use of mobile for television show watching, a substantial percentage of social posts happening via mobile and live streaming radio, it’s no longer just possible that these four channels would be consumed on a mobile device, it’s likely. Thanks to mobile, integrated marketing messaging has moved from a nice to have to a must have.
Distributed marketing organizations must be especially mindful of this change. Not only must channels be connected, corporate and local marketers must be as well (see the Saepio white paper Mobile Origination for Local Marketers: Mobile List Building). And, in addition to messaging, the frequency and cadence and message distribution across all channels must be coordinated as well.
As channel lines blur, connecting messages, delivery, local and corporate is becoming increasingly critical for marketing success. When one can hold and consume 10 or more channels in the palm of the hand, traditional thought processes and marketing methodologies are no longer relevant or effective. Simply stated, texted, posted, tweeted, spoken or viewed, it’s a new era that requires a new platform and a new level of connectedness.
The president of a marketing technology firm recently observed that today’s marketing environment is very unique. Marketers understand the need for cross-channel marketing, they recognize that cross-channel marketing is possible, they talk the cross-channel talk but for the most part, they simply unable to do anything about it.
It’s true. To a large extent, when it comes to cross-channel campaign execution, corporate marketers are paralyzed. They don’t need educated. They don’t need convinced. They’re just stuck.
While there are may be many reasons causing today’s marketing paralysis, three seem key.
First, marketers organize and think channel. Even though they know consumers don’t.
In most cases, marketing is structured incorrectly for today’s environment. Teams and agencies are organized in silos and around channels. And while integrated marketing is far from a new concept (Northwestern’s Don Shultz has been brilliantly preaching it since the 80s), few within marketing give it anything beyond lip service.
Consumers, on the other hand, don’t think about an interaction in terms of email marketing, social marketing, out-of-home, or traditional marketing. They think about it as a conversation they are trying to have … one that often seems confused at its different interaction points.
The new marketing era requires a new approach. For many, that’s paralyzing.
Second, change feels too big.
Frankly, the change needed is big. You simply can’t be cross-channel, engaging and real time with current marketing processes. The new era marketers find themselves in requires a new platform approach to marketing communications. It’s big.
The challenge, however, is not in how big of a change is needed, it’s in marketers not being able to see and act on the small steps that are needed to begin the change journey. Instead, they throw new tactical technologies and new siloed teams to support new channels, applying old systems and hoping to address new realities.
The first step to overcoming the feeling that change is too big is to identify the small, manageable steps that get change started and take them.
Third, systems and platforms feel like foreign words to many marketers.
In spite of all the current attention on measurability, analytics and data, marketers still are not systems thinkers. That doesn’t mean they don’t love and consume new technology and embrace new ways to communicate with their target audiences. It just means the mindset is not one of platform based, repeatable, scalable process. But that’s what the new marketing era is asking for.
You simply can’t throw enough creative talent and project management together to create meaningful, personalized, cross-channel, analytics driven, location-influenced, engagement-based marketing. Without a marketing platform, it’s just too hard to build and run the kind of campaigns today’s customers expect.
It all seems make sense, but it’s not a language most marketers really understand.
Breaking free from paralysis
Breaking out of the paralysis that is preventing effective cross channel marketing is wholly a mental issue. Certainly, rethinking teams, systems and approach takes work. But none of it can start without a fundamental shift in how one thinks about marketing. And it starts with the courage to take the first small step. For some it might be to begin moving to a dynamic content creation approach. For others, it might be implementing cross functional workflow. For the brave, it may be diving headfirst into a full marketing platform. Whatever the direction, taking the first step is the hardest. It’s also the most important and, ultimately, most rewarding.
It’s fascinating to watch reaction and adoption as new tactical technologies for corporate marketers burst onto the awareness scene. Marketers have been notoriously enamored by the latest shiny object and today’s marketers are no exception. But with so many options coming at them so fast, marketers need to be careful to pause and also examine the established and proven technologies as they ooh and ah at latest tactical tools.
Gartner’s Hype Cycle for CRM Applications provides an interesting view into how marketing technology is viewed and ultimately valued. In the Hype Cycle model, a technology 
progresses along the path from Technology Trigger to Peak of Inflated Expectations to Trough of Disillusionment to Slope of Enlightenment to Plateau of Productivity. A successful marketing technology that makes it through all of these phases can expect to follow such a pathway and to experience marketplace emotions to be largely in step.
Understanding this natural progression can be beneficial for the corporate marketer that is starting or rebuilding a marketing technology strategy. Rather than running to the technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations that will inevitably disappoint, savvy marketers can begin by looking to the proven foundations that have reached the Plateau of Productivity.
Marketing Asset Management (MAM) is such an example. MAM is simply foundational to any marketing communication process and will be found as a key element of any legitimate marketing platform technology. In the case study white paper Marketing Asset Management, The Key to Marketing Success Frost and Sullivan notes “MAM systems have become a critical tool for the success of any marketing organization. They provide a platform for traditionally siloed systems to integrate with and provide a collaborative workflow environment for creative teams to seamlessly work on marketing asset creation, management, repurposing and delivery.”
This is especially true for organizations where corporate and local marketing synergy is needed. As the Frost and Sullivan paper observe, "With an increasing array of distribution and business models cropping up, the ability to deliver a consister and engaging marketing message across mutliple channels in the least amount of time, while reading the largest audience necessary, is paramount for the success of any marketing organization.
In Spite of the plethora of marketing technology solutions available in the marketplace today, many corporate marketers are pretty early in their discovery and implementation processes for marketing technology. For those in this position and those rebuilding their technology strategy, taking pause to examine the proven technologies that have traversed through Gartner's "Plateau fo Productivity" can provide enduring foundations upon which to build a solid and lasting marketing technology platform.
As companies have adopted marketing platform technology, and in particular marketing technology focused on content creation within a marketing asset management (MAM) approach, they have experienced interesting benefits beyond their original expectations.
Most companies implement MAM technology with the objective of better brand control, easy localization of content, and improved speed to market. But as a new whitepaper from Saepio shows (Using Marketing Asset Management Technology to Boost Marketing Results), organizations are experiencing several other benefits.
Ensure Current Content
At the forefront of these is current content. In a business environment of rapid change, keeping current inventory is essential. Companies have grasped how a just-in-time content creation process can eliminate the need for large inventories of pre-printed material and the 
associated risks of obsolescence but they failed to understand the same inherent risks exist with digital documents as well. What they discovered is that a pdf version of a product sheet on a sales person’s hard drive has the same risk factors as a skid full of brochures in a warehouse. Companies that adopted MAM eliminated that challenge. With current and customizable versions of content available from a marketing storefront, content now is easily available to the field and even content stored within an individual users personal library can be updated at the corporate level without losing the individual’s customization.
Efficient Changes and Brand Control
A second, but related win, is the discovery of how efficiently wholesale changes can be made to an organization’s collateral. An NCAA case study by Gleanster and available at Saepio.com illustrates this. NCAA needed to change out its second tier branding for the various sports. With a traditional process, this would have been a weeks-long process to find and update all of the materials across all sports. Since MAM creates content real-time via a template approach and as the various elements of a layout are treated as unique marketing objects brought together based on an instruction set or recipe, NCAA was able to complete the branding update – including testing – in only a few hours. No one implements MAM with the intent of easy brand updating, but as the NCAA example shows, brand updating is an unexpected benefit.
Enabling Local Marketing
A third area of unexpected benefit comes through enabling local marketing use of a broader range of mediums. As a quick example, creating emails that are connected to landing pages that launch retargeting campaigns is something that is beyond the knowledge, ability and time-constraints of most local marketers. Within MAM, it is a simple workflow. Again, when organizations implement MAM, it is typically to better manage current capabilities but often leads to unexpected opportunities for the corporate and local organizations.
Efficient Corporate Communications
Fourth, some marketers are finding unexpected benefits from MAM within corporate communications as well. A case study by Frost & Sullivan available at Saepio.com explores how the health system HCA finds value from MAM beyond the expected use within marketing application.
Hyper Relevant Content
Finally, as the whitepaper Using Marketing Asset Management Technology to Boost Marketing Results points out, marketers are starting to really explore the power of MAM to deliver hyper relevant content. Because content creation happens just-in-time and because any data, including consumer supplied data, can dictate what content is served, MAM enables instantaneous creation of highly relevant content that can engage a consumer on his/her terms when the information engagement is sought.
Visit www.saepio.com to learn more about how companies use MAM. In addition to whitepapers and other documents, you’ll find several 5-minute webinar summary case studies that show how marketers in several industries use MAM to solve daily challenges.