8 Use Cases Using Search Marketing and CRM Together

Search and email account for 50 to 60 percent of all Web referrals, according to a recent Business Insider article on why Google needs a “buy” button. Talk about world domination!

Optimizing your presence in search and email are two very different activities. One focuses on targeting individuals based on a customer relationship management (CRM) profile and other sources of information, while the other targets anonymous audiences. However, today I’ll point out some connections between the two that you can use to create more value.

What You Need to Connect Your Search Engine and Email Marketing

If you have the right solution, you need only a few things.

That’s it. With these three things, you can start using the two biggest sources of Web traffic together. For example, you can segment your AdWords campaigns based on your campaign manager segments—customer vs. not customer, men vs. women, frequent buyer, recent buyer, customer with average cart value above $100, high income, married vs. single, baseball fan, etc.

How to Connect Your Search Engine and Email Marketing

In a nutshell, open your DMP, configure an audience, and select AdWords as the destination. Then, synchronize this DMP audience with your remarketing list. That’s it! Now you can target your AdWords campaign as precisely as you desire!

8 Use Cases You Can Deploy

You can refine your ad targeting and enrich classic keyword search targeting across a wide range of potential use cases. These include:

  1. Leveraging your audience’s family status (single, family, DINKY, young couple, etc.) for very targeted ads
  2. Leveraging your segments and scores for segmented offers
  3. Offering ads for low-income vs. high-income customers
  4. Sending highly segmented ads based on customer behavior (people who contacted your customer service, rated a product, installed your app, participated in your contest, etc.)
  5. Sending follow-up ads based on email or SMS campaign clicks
  6. Sending different ads to your most loyal customers or daily website visitors
  7. Sending geolocated ads based on the most recently visited shop location
  8. Sending upsell ads to recent buyers

These are just some use cases off the top of my head, but you’re only limited by your imagination. Just don’t forget you have to anonymize everything to protect people’s privacy.

Not Connecting Your Search and Email Marketing Can Cost You

Imagine a customer who filled out his details and preferences in your website preference center. This same client orders products through your website every month, clicks on your email links, fills out your customer feedback surveys, and even spreads the word about your brand and products on social media. This is a seriously valuable customer.

Now imagine what happens when he types in your brand name on his search engine. If your search-based and email-based marketing are siloed, you’ll most likely point him to your landing page, or worse, to a terrific new-customer offer he can’t use. At best, you miss an opportunity to cross-sell, up-sell, or offer him a valuable “VIP customer” offer. At worst, you may irritate him so much that you break a valuable customer relationship and cost yourself a loyal brand ambassador.

What You Should Do Now

Connecting your search and email marketing in order to leverage together your two main sources of Web referrals is an extremely valuable practice. However, you can only do this if your campaign management solution or CRM is tied to your DMP.

If it’s not, you need to consider switching to a platform that integrates the two straight out of the box (one guess which one I’m talking about …).