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Campaign Connections: Taylor Guitars Hits the High Notes with SMS, Adobe Campaign and Connector

Campaign Connections: Taylor Guitars Hits the High Notes with SMS, Adobe Campaign and Connector

Often enough, a good marketing campaign is like preparing to play guitar in front of a huge crowd. Practicing, experimenting, planning, scheduling, practicing some more. In the final analysis, however, you just to have to put your carefully selected notes out there and hope they strike a chord with your audience. Now that I’ve led you down the Greasy Garden Path of Awkward Metaphors, this story is about Taylor Guitars, the El Cajon, California-based guitar company that has been making some of the world’s most popular guitars since 1974. It’s also about how this company, without any of its own storefronts, used a combination of SMS marketing, Adobe Campaign software, Twilio cloud communications and, yes, Munvo products and technical expertise to strengthen its relationship with both finger-pickin’ consumers and guitar-hawkin’ franchisees.

We’re warning you now that there will be some technical terminology along the way, but don’t worry: we’ll walk you through it.

Chord Progressions

Like playing a good guitar riff, developing an effective direct marketing campaign is all about choosing the right combination of gentle pressures and applying them in just the right order, in just the right spots. [Last guitar metaphor, I promise.]

Convincing and compelling communications are the heart-plucking [sorry] chord progressions [sorry again] of any marketing campaign. When it comes to techniques for reaching the largest possible audiences, no shift has been so tectonic as the one that led us from direct mail and printed brochures to email and Short Message Service (SMS) campaigns. In 2012, Arthur Middleton Hughes compared direct mail with email, and succinctly described the stark difference in costs:

ROI = [(Profit from the sales) – (dollars invested in marketing)] / (dollars invested in marketing) …The in-the-mail price of third class (bulk rate) direct mail (including printing, addressing, and postage) is about $600 per thousand. The delivery cost of e-mails is about $6.00 per thousand. This includes the creation of the e-mail and the delivery costs…In this example, every dollar invested (cost of mailing) with direct mail produced $4.45 in return on the invested dollar. For e-mail, the ROI was $18.33 for every invested dollar.[1]

While direct mail continued to show some advantages when it came to maintaining audience attention and gaining conversions, the sheer economy (and blinding speed) of email could not be denied.

The choice between email and SMS campaigns is not nearly so stark, but it does appear decisive. Both channels are cost-effective, fast, engaging and accessible, especially when each is optimized for those now-ubiquitous smart phones. Both channels offer immense marketing opportunities, but choosing which medium is right for your campaign can be a challenge.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

SMS vs. Email

Studies reveal that typical email campaigns can count on about 30% of recipients opening a given email. That may not seem too bad, until you discover that a full 98% of SMS messages get opened, usually within the first 15 minutes following delivery. Similarly, while emails have a click-through rate of around 7%, SMS messages consistently convince approximately 36% of recipients to take that extra step towards conversion.

Before you jump on the SMS bandwagon and start thinking up clever Keywords, Short Codes and Multi-Touch Upsell campaigns, however, keep in mind that few campaigns are entirely successful the first time out.

Today’s companies usually strategize for longer-term engagements using drip-marketing and other forms of content nurturing. This means engaging customers with multiple messages over a defined period. With automated email campaign platforms like Adobe Campaign, brands can issue up to 30 email campaigns per month, while brands using SMS initiate more like 5 campaigns each month.

Time for an example.

Tailoring Taylor Guitars

I probably don’t need to tell you that purchasing a guitar is a very personal, very tactile experience. To put your good money down, you’re going to want to press the neck and pluck the strings. So how does Taylor Guitars – the world’s largest guitar manufacturer by sales volume – take advantage of all that digital marketing offers?

Cameron Walt is Taylor Guitars’ Digital CRM Manager, and the company’s sole Adobe Campaign expert. He and two colleagues handle all digital marketing initiatives for Taylor Guitars, and have been the impetus behind the guitar company’s transition from a solely hands-on, face-to-face marketing experience to including digital campaigns. Rather than relying almost entirely on independent dealers and in-store sales staff, Taylor is ready to deal more directly with guitar aficionados, while rigorously maintaining personal interactions.

“We’re after that final five feet in the purchase funnel,” Cameron says. “Our dealers and sales reps are still the rock stars when it comes to customer interaction, and we have a healthy online presence, but when it comes to that final in-person guitar sale, we wanted to figure out a way to be part of that in-store experience without disrupting that personal interaction. That’s when we engaged Munvo to help with a robust SMS campaign.”

Deliberate and Divide Tasks for Strategic Teamwork

Although collaborative campaigns can get chaotic due to versioning, quality control, and operational task division, the integration of Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Campaign enables colleagues to work together in perfect harmony. Your creative and marketing teams will be equipped to consolidate data from different systems, and ultimately, unify and personalize your company’s website, emails, and marketing materials.

This integration then allows for efficient metadata storage, handle versioning, and image resizing in response to various devices. It also simplifies the process of transferring content directly from Adobe Campaign to AEM without a hassle, while reusing AEM assets without the necessity of copying files from one system to another.

Information Direct

If you’ve ever been in the market for a guitar, you know the experience. Go into a music store, large or small, and the walls are covered with shiny new guitars, some of which are Taylor’s. But guitars are not like other products; you don’t get a spec sheet with a guitar, you just take it down and play it. There might be a price tag (FYI: Taylor’s most popular model, the 1814ce, retails for around USD$3500), maybe a barcode, but the rest is up to your fingers and ears.

Taylor Guitars decided to use Adobe Campaign to create a SMS campaign as what Cameron calls a “product extender”: a quick and easy way to instantly discover more about whatever axe has caught your eye.

“We wanted to create something that would help consumers and sales staff to quickly find out more about particular guitar models, on-the-spot,” says Cameron. “We know our customers will only make their final purchasing decision when they hold and play the guitar, but by giving them an easy way to get the facts about a specific model, we hope that will increase the chances they’ll walk out of the store with a Taylor.”

SMPP to REST = Munvo

Munvo was on-hand to help Taylor with all things Adobe Campaign-related, including Cameron’s desire to use the more flexible Representational State Transfer (REST) protocol in place of the more ubiquitous Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP):

“REST is far superior to SMPP for the kind of conversational SMS communications that Taylor was after,” explains Andrew Didinchuk, Senior Adobe Architect at Munvo. “It has very low latency, you can communicate directly from Adobe Campaign and you’re able to execute very complex logic for the processing of inbound messages.”

Unfortunately, Adobe Campaign does not support REST-based delivery communications straight out of the box. Fortunately, we could provide Taylor with our own SMS Connector to bridge that gap.

SMS Connector fits right into Adobe Campaign, enabling you to use REST for sending communications to Twilio, a REST-based service provider for sending SMS messages (we’re already working with additional service providers). It processes outbound requests, both in terms of one-off messages and larger batches, as well as pulling status information on those messages, making it easier to determine if your messages are delivered or not. SMS Connector is also able to receive, process and store inbound requests in real time when customers text you.

Taylor (and Cameron) are very pleased with the results so far:

“We’ve achieved on-demand product information for both our customers and our dealers,” explains Cameron. “We’ve really sewn up that last 5 feet in the funnel. What’s more, this has augmented our support for the staff in the music stores. They’re more confident, knowing more in-depth information is just a few phone taps away. And from our side, there is minimal maintenance required, now that it’s up-and-running.”

Taylor Guitars are currently in rollout phase, with no less than 150 dealers interested in adopting the new SMS system.

In parting, we recommend everyone forget about all that macho stuff and learn how to play guitar.

[1] Hughes, Arthur Middleton. Strategic Database Marketing: Fourth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Pp. 50-52.

In parting, we recommend everyone forget about all that macho stuff and learn how to play guitar.

[1] Hughes, Arthur Middleton. Strategic Database Marketing: Fourth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Pp. 50-52.

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Plus Company Privacy Policy

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(Canada) EN

Updated as of September 11th. 2023

“PLUS COMPANY” AND “COMPANY” MEAN PLUS COMPANY CANADA INC. AND ITS AFFILIATES AND BUSINESS UNITS IN CANADA.

Plus Company respects the privacy of its customers.

This Policy concerns you. It describes how we collect, use, disclose and protect your personal information, including when you visit our website or any website we own, operate or control (collectively, the “Site”), when you contact us by phone or email or when you communicate with us via social media.

We may update this Policy (see “Changes to the Policy” below).

You should read this entire Policy before submitting information to us or using our Site. If you submit personal information to us, we assume that you authorize us to use and disclose it as described in this Policy.

What is personal information?

Personal information is information that identifies you directly or indirectly, on its own or with other information, such as your name, contact details or IP address.

We may make full use of all information that is de-identified, aggregated or otherwise not in personally identifiable form.

Information collection and use

We collect personal information …

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  • Using automated technology when you visit our Site or communicate with us through email
  • When third parties, such as service providers, collect such personal information on our behalf

When do we collect your personal information?

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What type of personal information do we collect?

  • Usage information – IP address, information on the device, domain name, browser used to visit our site, pages displayed, time spent on a page, link clicks
  • With your consent, we may have access to your geolocation and
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  • Information you provide to us, such as personally identifiable information or contact information, as well as your comments or questions.

Why do we need it?

  • To better understand how you use our Site.
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With whom do we share this personal information?

As part of our business operations, we may disclose personal information to the following categories of third parties:

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Where is your personal information stored?

We currently retain personal information in North America.

We may disclose personal information in locations other than your country, province or state of residence, where privacy laws may differ.

If your personal information is used outside your country, province or state of residence, it is subject to the laws of the place where it is located and may be disclosed to governments, courts, law enforcement agencies or regulatory bodies of that place, or disclosed in accordance with the laws of that place. However, our practices regarding your personal information will remain governed by this Policy and by applicable privacy laws.

Retention of personal information

We will retain your personal information (collected through online and offline methods) for as long as it is necessary for the purposes described in this Policy. We will also retain and use your personal information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our legal agreements and policies.

Intended audience of Site

Our Site, social media accounts and online activities are intended for persons aged 17 and over. Therefore, we do not request personal information from minors aged 16 years or younger, nor do we knowingly collect such information from minors aged 16 or younger. If you are not 17 or older, you should not visit or use our Site.

How do we protect your personal information?

We take reasonable, appropriate steps to protect personal data from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction, whether in transmission or storage. Remember, however, that no security system is infallible and that transmission over the Internet is not perfectly secure or error-free.

We use a secure server. Only authorized persons have the right to access this information, which they are required to keep strictly confidential.

Your rights with regard to your personal information

Right to access and correct

You may request access to and obtain a copy of the personal information we hold about you.

If any personal information about you is inaccurate, incomplete or ambiguous, or if the collection, disclosure or retention of such personal information is not permitted by law, you may require that it be rectified.

You can also ask us for information about the source of your personal information (if it was not obtained from you), as well as the names of persons who have access to your information and details about how long it is kept.

Right to withdraw your consent

You may request to withdraw your consent to our use or disclosure of your personal information.

In most cases, withdrawing your consent means that we will no longer be able to offer you certain services. Otherwise, we will inform you of the consequences of refusal in our request for consent.

To exercise your rights, please send a request in writing, along with proof of identity, to our Privacy Officer at the contact information provided under How to contact us.

Once your request has been received, we will respond in writing within 30 days.

Cookies and other automated technology

A “cookie” is a small text file that is placed onto an Internet user’s web browser or device and is used to remember and/or obtain information about the user. A “web beacon” is a small object or image that is embedded into a web page, application or email and is used to track activity. Web beacons are also sometimes referred to as pixels and tags. We and/or third parties, including our service providers on our behalf, may use cookies, web beacons and other similar technology to collect information for the purposes described in this Policy, including analytics and monitoring performance and improvement of our Site (traffic, errors, page load time, popular pages, etc.). Before using these technologies to geolocate you or evaluate certain characteristics about you, such as your personal preferences, interests or online behaviour, we will ask for your permission by informing you how to enable such features. We use Google Analytics to understand how our Site, services and products perform and how you use them. To learn more about how Google processes your data, visit https://policies.google.com/privacy. To change your settings relating to cookies and other automated technology, visit our Cookie Manager.
For information and questions about the use of your personal information or this Policy, you may contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@pluscompany.com.
This Policy may be revised from time to time for any reason. In such a case, we will notify you of such changes by indicating the date of the last update. Review the Policy before submitting personal information or using our Site, services or social media pages.
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