Critical Success factors in E-Marketing

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Critical Success factors in E-Marketing

Having observed the evolving paradigms of business in the Internet era, there are five critical success factors that the E-Marketer has to keep in mind.

 Attracting the Right Customer is the first crucial step. Rising digital penetration would mean that the number of customer visiting particular sites would inevitably go up. While the number of eyeballs or page views has so far been conveniently used as a satisfactory measure by most web sites, it would be foolish to cater to the whole spectrum of digital visitors. Content has to be very target specific. The digital company has to select its target segment by finding out which section of customers are the most profitable in terms of revenue transactions and who are the customers who generate the maximum number of referrals. Here again it is important to note that the majority of online customers are not seeking the lowest price. Rather they are seeking convenience above everything else.


The power of customer referrals has never been so enormous, since word of the mouse spreads faster than word of the mouth. E-Bay attracts more than half of its customers through referrals. Not only do referred customers cost less to acquire than those brought in by advertising or other marketing tools, they also cost less to support since they use their friends who referred them for advice rather than using the companies’ own technical desk.

 Delivering Content Value to engage the user’s interest is the critical importance in retaining customer participation. This is because content serves as a powerful differentiator. Content would include Product enhancements (Software patches for glitches), personalized interactions (through customized navigation paths as seen on the web sites of GM and Toyota) and Problem Resolution (updates of delivery schedules and e-mail responses). Integral to the concept of delivering proper content value is innovation. The retail financial services industry, for example, is changing rapidly with multiple players jockeying for position. Product innovation serves as a key tool to attract new customers.

Priceline.com, for example, has revolutionized the travel and related services business by letting in a form of “buyer driven commerce”----Customers specify their desired prices and competing companies then bid for customer requirements. Delivering proper content to make existing customers in the traditional “brick” business switch to Web-enabled transactions makes a lot of sense because in every conceivable case, the cost of Web-Based transactions is an order of magnitude less than the traditional ways and is decreasing at a faster rate. The cost of an Internet based banking transaction is less than one-tenth the cost of a human teller transaction. It is keeping this aspect in mind that Indian Banks have started toying with the idea of setting up Internet kiosks to let their low-value customers settle their banking transactions at the kiosk nearest to their place.

 Ensuring E-Loyalty is vital to the success of any online venture. This is because acquiring customers on the Internet is enormously expensive and unless those customers stick round and make lots of repeat purchases over the years, profits will remain elusive. Contrary to the general view that Web customers are notoriously fickle, they in fact follow the old rules of customer loyalty. Web customers stick to sites that they trust and with time consolidate their purchases with one primary supplier to the extent that purchasing from the supplier’s site becomes part of their daily routine. The issue of trust is integral to the issues of privacy and security. Companies like Amazon.com, which command amazing levels of consumer trust, have used a variety of encryption tools ad simple ethical decisions like not accepting money for publishers for independent book reviews to maintain the trust of its customers.

 E-Learning to facilitate personalized interactions with customers has been the biggest contribution of the Web to the marketing strategists. Customers in traditional bricks-and-mortar stores leave no record of their behavior unless they buy something—and even then the date might be sketchy. In the digital marketplace, however technology has made the entire shopping experience a

transparent process. For example, if the customer exits the web-site when the price screen appears, he is a price sensitive consumer. Such minute tracking of customer behavior has major implications for the world of advertising. The Internet may soon be used as a test bed for testing prototypes of marketing and advertising campaigns. By monitoring pages selected, click throughs, responses generated, and other indicators, the company would be able to discover which parts of a prospective campaign would work, thus reducing the risk of a potential flop. This would make it possible for the company to modify its product offerings much earlier than usual in the product life cycle.

 Providing Digital value to the evolving consumer through his life cycle has become possible because of customized interactions and emerging business models. These models have often disturbed the traditional status quo and created new rules of business. The sectors where new business models will emerge or have emerged are the music industry, the financial services industry, the travel industry, the relating segment and the publishing segment. Digital value is delivered to the consumer by promising him convenience, allowing the customer to feel his ownership of the Web experience, and giving the customer a sense of belonging that traverses the physical boundaries.
 
Critical Success factors in E-Marketing

Having observed the evolving paradigms of business in the Internet era, there are five critical success factors that the E-Marketer has to keep in mind.

 Attracting the Right Customer is the first crucial step. Rising digital penetration would mean that the number of customer visiting particular sites would inevitably go up. While the number of eyeballs or page views has so far been conveniently used as a satisfactory measure by most web sites, it would be foolish to cater to the whole spectrum of digital visitors. Content has to be very target specific. The digital company has to select its target segment by finding out which section of customers are the most profitable in terms of revenue transactions and who are the customers who generate the maximum number of referrals. Here again it is important to note that the majority of online customers are not seeking the lowest price. Rather they are seeking convenience above everything else.


The power of customer referrals has never been so enormous, since word of the mouse spreads faster than word of the mouth. E-Bay attracts more than half of its customers through referrals. Not only do referred customers cost less to acquire than those brought in by advertising or other marketing tools, they also cost less to support since they use their friends who referred them for advice rather than using the companies’ own technical desk.

 Delivering Content Value to engage the user’s interest is the critical importance in retaining customer participation. This is because content serves as a powerful differentiator. Content would include Product enhancements (Software patches for glitches), personalized interactions (through customized navigation paths as seen on the web sites of GM and Toyota) and Problem Resolution (updates of delivery schedules and e-mail responses). Integral to the concept of delivering proper content value is innovation. The retail financial services industry, for example, is changing rapidly with multiple players jockeying for position. Product innovation serves as a key tool to attract new customers.

Priceline.com, for example, has revolutionized the travel and related services business by letting in a form of “buyer driven commerce”----Customers specify their desired prices and competing companies then bid for customer requirements. Delivering proper content to make existing customers in the traditional “brick” business switch to Web-enabled transactions makes a lot of sense because in every conceivable case, the cost of Web-Based transactions is an order of magnitude less than the traditional ways and is decreasing at a faster rate. The cost of an Internet based banking transaction is less than one-tenth the cost of a human teller transaction. It is keeping this aspect in mind that Indian Banks have started toying with the idea of setting up Internet kiosks to let their low-value customers settle their banking transactions at the kiosk nearest to their place.

 Ensuring E-Loyalty is vital to the success of any online venture. This is because acquiring customers on the Internet is enormously expensive and unless those customers stick round and make lots of repeat purchases over the years, profits will remain elusive. Contrary to the general view that Web customers are notoriously fickle, they in fact follow the old rules of customer loyalty. Web customers stick to sites that they trust and with time consolidate their purchases with one primary supplier to the extent that purchasing from the supplier’s site becomes part of their daily routine. The issue of trust is integral to the issues of privacy and security. Companies like Amazon.com, which command amazing levels of consumer trust, have used a variety of encryption tools ad simple ethical decisions like not accepting money for publishers for independent book reviews to maintain the trust of its customers.

 E-Learning to facilitate personalized interactions with customers has been the biggest contribution of the Web to the marketing strategists. Customers in traditional bricks-and-mortar stores leave no record of their behavior unless they buy something—and even then the date might be sketchy. In the digital marketplace, however technology has made the entire shopping experience a

transparent process. For example, if the customer exits the web-site when the price screen appears, he is a price sensitive consumer. Such minute tracking of customer behavior has major implications for the world of advertising. The Internet may soon be used as a test bed for testing prototypes of marketing and advertising campaigns. By monitoring pages selected, click throughs, responses generated, and other indicators, the company would be able to discover which parts of a prospective campaign would work, thus reducing the risk of a potential flop. This would make it possible for the company to modify its product offerings much earlier than usual in the product life cycle.

 Providing Digital value to the evolving consumer through his life cycle has become possible because of customized interactions and emerging business models. These models have often disturbed the traditional status quo and created new rules of business. The sectors where new business models will emerge or have emerged are the music industry, the financial services industry, the travel industry, the relating segment and the publishing segment. Digital value is delivered to the consumer by promising him convenience, allowing the customer to feel his ownership of the Web experience, and giving the customer a sense of belonging that traverses the physical boundaries.

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