The following is an exercise for the University of Maryland Global Campus planning an integrated digital marketing campaign for the American Automobile Association (AAA).
Segmentation
The American Automobile Association (AAA) is a non-profit membership organization that offers a number of benefits to paying members. These benefits include car insurance, roadside assistance, career assistance, travel deals, and shopping discounts (AAA, n.d.). An integrated marketing campaign should segment the AAA audience into established categories. The first category would target current AAA members. These members could be further segmented into categories based on renewal status and membership package, encouraging current AAA members to renew or increase the membership package commitment.
The next category would target prospective AAA members. This category would encourage prospective members to convert to membership packages. Prospective members have engaged with AAA and are on marketing lists. Next, lapsed AAA members should be targeted to encourage them to resume membership packages. The last two categories would include members of AAA target audience. These individuals have not yet engaged with the brand but would benefit from AAA’s services. These are drivers with poor credit history and new drivers. AAA offers a non-standard auto insurance program tailored to drivers with poor credit history. New drivers would benefit from the suite of services and discounts offered by AAA. These are the segments that should be targeted in an integrated direct marketing campaign to nurture brand loyalty, customer retention, and to grow the brand.
Objectives
With the identified segments, the integrated direct marketing campaign will focus on the following objectives: to increase brand awareness of AAA and its offerings and services, to generate new leads, to increase brand loyalty and customer retention, and to win back lost customers. These objectives apply to each of the identified segments. Increasing brand awareness of AAA and its offerings and services will be applied to current AAA members who are unfamiliar with the full suite of offerings, prospective AAA members who have yet to convert, lapsed members who may not be familiar with current offerings, and AAA’s target audience including new drivers and drivers who would benefit from non-standard insurance. Generating new leads applies to members who have not yet engaged with the brand but are part of the target audience, including new drivers and drivers with poor credit.
However, this could also apply to each of the other segments as current and prospective customers spread positive word-of-mouth. This would mean AAA should be mindful of building trust at all touchpoints and developing easy user flows to capture new leads. Increasing brand loyalty and customer retention applied to current AAA members who are up for renewal or who would like to increase membership packages. This objective will also be factored into marketing tactics to build trust with newly converting customers. Lastly, winning back lost customers applies to lapsed customers. These objectives will build a loyal customer base that champions the brand.
Campaign Description
An integrated direct marketing campaign “can include a web presence, social media, email campaigns, digital advertising, out-of-home ads and experiences, television commercials, and other platforms where opportunities occur” (What is Integrated Marketing Communications, 2021). With multiple touchpoints across a variety of media, integrated marketing campaigns aim to “build deep knowledge of and a strong relationship with a brand, ideally one that results in positive feelings of familiarity and trust” (What is Integrated Marketing Communications, 2021). For AAA, the integrated marketing campaign should combine a mix of digital and traditional methods to best reach the target segments.
Digital methods should include search engine marketing (SEM), display advertising, social media advertising, and email marketing. These campaigns will be tailored to each segment, as the segments include all stages of the customer funnel. For example, new-to-brand customers would be served brand awareness campaigns that send them to landing pages that have a call to action (CTA) of data mining (or lead generation), while middle and top of funnel customers would be served customer education campaigns that send them to landing pages that have a CTA of converting on membership packages or contacting sales teams. These campaigns will be executed on a mixture of segmented lists or researched keywords to ensure they are being served to the correct audiences. Traditional marketing campaigns would consist of direct mail and telemarketing. These campaigns can be highly effective for companies like AAA that require heavy customer education for conversions. This provides customers with the opportunity to conduct their own research and ask questions as they move through the purchasing funnel. Direct mailers will include additional resources, such as a QR code that will send them to specific landing pages. This will allow further segmentation as AAA can send different mailers to different customers. New-to-brand customers may receive one mailer while customers up for renewal would receive a different mailer. These mailers would include relevant information with QR codes to high-performing landing pages.
To assist in the success of these marketing efforts, contact interval rules need to be established prior to the campaigns launching. Each of the segments should receive their own contact interval rules, which will personalize the campaigns according to the customer’s needs. These recommendations are based off of purchasing cycles for AAA customers but will vary based on customer data. Current AAA members will be contacted no more than once per month through email marketing and twice per year through direct mail. This will allow AAA the opportunity to build consumer trust by sharing membership packages and additional services and offerings, while informing the customer of renewal timelines. The other target segments will have an increased contact frequency, receiving no more than one email a week and no more than one direct mailer or phone call a quarter. This will allow AAA the opportunity to share benefits, offerings and services, and identify pain points of these segments. These contact interval rules will not be applied to pay-per-click digital advertising, though each digital advertising platform will regulate the number of ads served to each customer. These numbers will be adjusted based off of effectiveness of the campaigns and the monthly budget, though it is suggested to serve no more than one ad per webpage.
By including a mix of digital and traditional methods, each of the identified segments will receive effective communications, personalized to their specific needs. Contact interval rules will be adhered to strictly and adjusted based on the performance of the various campaigns to each segment. These rules will ensure no segment is contacted too frequently, which can result in customers opting out of communications, thereby negatively impacting the performance of marketing campaigns. These identified customer segments will assist in growing the brand and increasing brand loyalty and customer retention.
References
AAA. (n.d.). AAA. https://www.acg.aaa.com/
What is Integrated Marketing Communications? (2021, May). Northwestern University. https://imcprofessional.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/what-is-integrated-marketing-communications