4 Qualities to Seek in a Customer Acquisition Platform
The proliferation of tools available to help marketers with core aspects of their jobs has gotten almost overwhelming. At the end of 2016, there were more than 3,500 marketing technology tools available. As that number continues to grow, the process of choosing which technologies to utilize will become increasingly difficult.
A quality customer acquisition platform is one of the tools that you're likely aware of, and maybe evaluating, to help you execute a variety of marketing tactics to target and convert prospects. As I’ve had the opportunity to look at what’s available, I’ve honed in on four key elements that I think are critical to making the best choice.
Created for Marketers, by Marketers
Your first thought when looking for a customer acquisition platform might be to find the newest, most popular technology. While a solution might be a great piece of technology, it’s important to explore both the reasoning behind the tech creation as well as who created it. Why was the platform built and what problems does it solve? Is it solving those problems in a scalable way?
I believe that choosing a platform — and a service partner — with a strong and holistic understanding of the demands placed on marketers should come before evaluating the underlying technology a solution uses. Your expectation should be to get fresh prospects on an ongoing basis, as well as continuous campaign optimization against a multitude of facets (timing, sequencing, channel mix, etc.). To achieve this, you need a platform built for this set of marketing realities.
Identifies Anonymous Website Visitors
Anonymous website visitors account for 98 percent of an average website’s visitor count, so a platform that can identify these unknown consumer will give you a unique and powerful source of potential customers. Unlike prospects from a cold list, these are people who came to your site and have demonstrated an interest in your brand. The ability to remarket to these visitors with personalized messages and offers, within hours of their visit to your site, represents a huge opportunity. We’ve seen a tremendous return on investment at a lower cost per click for our clients who are doing this.
Prioritizes Privacy Compliance
As a marketer, you use many methods to acquire new customers, and you're very aware of how important it is to have privacy standards that are as up-to-date and all-encompassing as possible. Your customer acquisition platform shouldn’t leave you on your own with this.
I recently wrote a piece about the privacy compliance strategies that I think are important. I also recommend finding a partner that employs a chief privacy officer, who can continuously review the standards against which marketers are being evaluated. Some platforms will also review your current site and privacy policy, and recommend ways to keep your customer acquisition strategy compliant and up-to-date.
Focused on Results
As a marketer, you and your team’s performance are measured against internal KPIs. The customer acquisition platform you choose should help support you in your reporting. What separates many good platforms from the great are high-quality, in-depth reporting tools that analyze key campaign metrics, and help you show how your activities support company goals and objectives. Ultimately the success of a customer acquisition platform lies in how well it maps to the metrics you’re being measured against, as well as its ability to continuously optimize against your hoped-for ROI, CPC, average order value, etc.
While the decision process can be overwhelming, it doesn’t need to be. Keep these four qualities in mind when researching your next or first customer acquisition platform, and I suspect it will help you narrow the playing field pretty quickly and end up with a partner and a platform that you can feel confident in.
Andrew Fegley is the president of Remarketable, an ALC Smart Data Solutions Company, a multichannel remarketing platform.
