We talked to Marc Ginestá about personalized communications. With more than 17 years of experience working in digital environments in the sales and customer area, the Director of Sales Northeast Zone at Customer CommsThe company is committed to improving the customer experience, converting data into knowledge and automating certain processes to improve the results of communications.
What role does MailComms Group play within the digital transformation of companies?
We support and advise operational, marketing and legal departments in meeting the current challenges of composing, automating and generating personalized communications with their customers. In this way, we are a technological ally, since we get involved in the projects, providing key resources and developing procedures that allow us to reach the goals set together with our clients.
To this end, we have a mix of proprietary and market solutions, accompanied by a high degree of experience and operational creativity to address campaigns or projects in a holistic manner, avoiding delays or unwanted setbacks. For example, our Customer Journey Mapping or Legal Communications services are an example of our commitment to solutions with a clear contribution to technological change management, interesting for companies looking for an improvement in their internal management or an increase in the efficiency of their budgets.
How have omnichannel personalized communications evolved in this digital context?
The evolution is uneven in the different sectors of activity. For example, banking has quickly positioned itself in the state of the art thanks to the strong implementation of electronic banking in our consumer society. On the other hand, insurers are slower to evolve due to their mediated channel nature, and are currently facing a double challenge: to collect digital data and automate communications with their customers. Another example is the utilities sector, which presents great opportunities in operational consulting for communications with variable data to combine transactional communications and marketing mailings.
How do physical and electronic channels connect in this new context?
The key is to identify which channel is the preferred one for each customer/communication and to make appropriate use of it. For example, with our Communicalia platform we can actively listen to the behavior with the communication/client and measure the results through the KPI’s indicated by our client.
We can explain successful experiences in the positive convergence of channels from off to on. For example, we use short personalized URLs or BIDI codes that allow us to evaluate a satisfaction survey in real time and provide an immediate response if the level of response is not as expected.
Our best experiences have been when we have managed to centralize and relate all the communications of an end customer, allowing us to have a 360º view of the interactions. This enables a unique and effective customer view for brands.
Based on what criteria can we select the best channel for communication with each customer?
For us, there are still essential factors for the efficiency of personalized communications that are sometimes forgotten by companies. First, the quality of the data. We have the possibility to enrich the digital data and validate them before the generation of communications. Second, the proper obtaining of consent and the channel for its use. The GDPR regulation has made a lot of noise about databases in the portfolio, but what are companies doing with the new records? Consents now have to be explicit, and this is an opportunity to understand customers’ preferred communication channels.
We have improved the efficiency of personalized communications by generating cascading flows or by analyzing the behavior of the recipient of the mailing with the communications. To do this, we had to develop communication automation processes that would allow us to make decisions based on KO’s or changing customer preferences.
How far can we personalize a communication?
The limit is set by customers. Obviously, more and more information is becoming available, which at the same time has to be processed and converted into knowledge, and this is one of the values of the MailComms Group. We want to help and collaborate in the evolution of personalized communications by making them highly valuable for end customers.
The success of personalization lies in giving value to the customer, not in having more or less segmented fields. For us, personalized digital communications are not simply about generating e-mails or SMS with a series of personalized variables such as name, premium value or particular conditions; rather, it is about improving experiences (CX), analyzing and improving the behavior with the communication between “Brand-Customer”, generating processes that facilitate an acceptance or digital signature, or simply a bidirectional click to action to measure the degree of satisfaction in real time.
Beyond choosing the right channel or personalizing the delivery, in an era so saturated with information, the user expects to be surprised by a brand. What does MailComms propose to attract the attention of the end customer in transactional or transpromo communications?
Creativity and Technology. We are an MPS(Marketing Provider Service) that has integrated in its value chain operational agency services, in which we bring together design technicians capable of drawing the Customer Journey Map of our customers and provide them with services aimed at improving the CX. Among them, we can mention the Welcome Pack DigitalAgency Services or the Advanced Digital Strategy (such as interpreting results and improving CJM), all integrated with a technology solution to automate/analyze customer feedback at brand touch points.
Along these lines, how do MailComms solutions help companies to improve their Customer Experience in the recruitment process?
With our functional and legal vision we have achieved light automated contracting processes. For example, a simple click can be used to accept a consent or a contract. Our capacity as a Trusted Third Party allows us to offer real solutions based on current laws or GDPR policies.
We are specialists in online acceptance and contracting solutions. For example, we have specific solutions for the new IDD directive for the insurance industry, which comes into force on October 1 of this year.
Within its digital solutions, MailComms has already developed new tools with a strong impact on the Customer Experience, such as the Digital Welcome Pack. How important is it when planning a Customer Journey Map?
We have not invented anything, we simply know the traditional and digital processes very well. Add to this our strong focus on improving the customer experience with communications, and you get powerful solutions such as dynamic communications or the Digital Welcome Pack.
The consulting aspect within these solutions is extremely important and we give specific weight to each project. Today there are many companies that are still painting their journey on a whiteboard or notebook. We compose it through flows and analyze the interactions between customers and communications with the obvious advantage of improving in all aspects.
For this roadmap to work, it will require advanced data analytics. What role does Big Data play within MailComms’ omnichannel personalized communications solutions?
Our differential value is not the analytics itself, but the strategic interpretation of the data. Our focus on operational consulting seeks to anticipate the decisions of end customers, achieving the best CX experience with personalized and omnichannel communication.