Brad Rencher emphasized the importance for companies to focus their efforts up until the last millisecond of an interaction with a customer. Rencher noted that digital marketers must deliver experiences within milliseconds and have 300 milliseconds to connect actions to experiences. The entire company also needs to work collaboratively to engage customers effectively in today's business environment.

1. In his keynote speech at this year’s Adobe
Digital Summit Brad Rencher, SVP & GM of
Digital Marketing, spoke in terms of making
sure companies focus their efforts all the
way up to the very last millisecond before
an interaction with a customer or prospect
takes place. It’s too important not to blow it
at that instant of engagement — whether the
company or the consumer initiates it.
Rencher says digital marketers are tasked
with delivering experiences in milliseconds,
and that we have 300 milliseconds to
connect actions to experiences. I would
expand on Rencher’s thought to say it goes
beyond just the digital marketers in the
organization who have to think and operate
in this way. In order to find, catch and keep
good customers today, it takes the entire
company working in a collaborative manner
to pull this off — whether that company is
2,000 people or just two. It takes marketing
and sales working together like HubSpot is
doing. But even if you’re a one- or two-person
operation, you have partners that help you
and customers who will do the same if they
like you. Even the vendors you buy from can
play a role in you building your business. So
you need to efficiently collaborate with many
people if you want to succeed in today’s
business world.
It takes valuing customers for more than
what’s in their wallet, but also for what’s in
By Brent Leary
About the Author:
Brent Leary is a partner of CRM Essentials. He is co-author of "Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons
for Small Business." You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/brentleary
their minds and hearts to take advantage
of their collective voice. And it means
understanding that social tools and strategies
work best when they are integrated into your
business culture — not viewed as standalone
gimmicks for short-term promotional gain.
It’s still natural for us to focus on what is
perceived to be the biggest issues we
face. Customer acquisition is always near
the top of every business challenge, year
in and year out. Marketing budgets are
driven by activities focused on this. In fact,
Adobe recently put out a study that found
86 percent of the 1,800 companies they
surveyed spent less than 15 percent of their
budget on website optimization activities. So
it probably comes as no surprise that website
conversion rates are below 1 percent for 35
percent of the companies surveyed.
But the companies who use 25 percent of
their marketing budget on site conversions
were twice as likely to enjoy conversion rates
of at least 9 percent. And that’s important
because, even in the age of social, you need
a home that you have full control of. Your
website is still that place, and most of the
important conversions (email list sign ups,
sales transactions, etc.) take place on your
home turf. Every second counts when it
comes to meeting customer expectations.
With your website still needing to be at the
center of your relationship building activities,
you have to continually make it as appealing
as possible to customers and prospects alike.
That means providing a consistent flow of
relevant information to keep them coming
back. It also means making sure the site is
fast.
A study by Kissmetrics found that 47 percent
of consumers expect a Web page to load in
two seconds or less, and just a one-second
delay decreases customer satisfaction by 16
percent. According to a recent University of
LivingattheIntersectionofthe
LastMileandLastMillisecond
Massachusetts study, if a video hasn’t started
streaming in five seconds, about 25 percent
of potential viewers will bail before viewing,
and if it doesn’t start in 10 seconds, that
jumps to almost 50 percent. To put it into
a few words, when it comes to people and
their expectations — speed thrills, and the
lack of it kills. And as Travelocity founder Terry
Jones recently told me, Amazon.com has
made life for all businesses a little harder now
because people expect every website to be
as good as theirs. Now we all know that will
not ever be the case, but that doesn’t mean
you can’t consistently be looking for ways
to improve things like better content and
better speed. In fact you can go to sites like
WPEngine.com and Yoast.com to find tools to
help with that if you have a WordPress site.
The above illustrates the importance of
understanding that processes must be
connected throughout lifecycles, and
people must collaborate across lifecycles
in order to turn content into clicks, clicks
into conversations, and conversations into
customers — and customers into loyalist
and advocates. Every interaction with
customers and prospects does matter —
with your relationship being only as good
as your last interaction. So don’t make
your last interaction with them, your last
interaction with them … because you blew
it. Think about the processes that go into
creating each interaction right up to the
last millisecond before it takes place. All of
the heavy lifting done by getting the more
complex areas addressed could all be for
naught if you overlook things that may
look to be small, or easy to deal with. In
many ways it’s the little things that make
customers out of prospects. Business today
is all about connecting data and culture. That
really seems to be the last mile of customer
relationship management. But you have to
keep working up to the last millisecond to get
there. AT
WWW.ATLANTATRIBUNE.COM46
TECHSUITE