The Solata Solution to Marketing and Media ROI: Permission
A comprehensive and fully integrated marketing, communications, and technology company, Solata creates permission-based programs to identify and build relationships with targeted audiences critical to business growth. These audiences usually include customers (b2b), consumers (b2c), channel partners, salespeople, and employees most likely to contribute to organizational objectives. Solata’s services are designed specifically for external or internal marketers, agencies, associations, or media companies that want to expedite and streamline marketing and sales communication distribution.
The Rationale
The Fundamentals of Permission
Audiences
Our Customers
Core Competencies
The Rationale
Solata starts with four premises:
- You can significantly improve marketing, communications, and business outcomes by focusing on the people most likely to engage.
- The people willing to engage are more likely than others to give you permission to communicate.
- The people who give permission are more likely to buy over time.
- Profiting from permission requires a strategic, integrated approach focused on the desired outcomes.
People who have given you permission to send information, marketing messages, and offers, etc. are more likely to pay attention than any other audience you can target. Whether you’re focusing on external, channel partner, or internal audiences, permission increases the chances that people will engage.
Permission marketing and media provides a level of ROI analysis rarely available in traditional marketing and communications simply because you can track long-term sales and other outcomes precisely against the people who have given permission to receive your information.
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The Fundamentals of Permission
Today, technology has leveled the playing field for marketing and information distribution: once someone has opted in to receive information, almost any organization can afford to effectively market. But getting permission isn’t for amateurs: people will only grant permission to people they trust who provide something they want, and they are as quick to withdraw it and tune out if that permission gets abused. One misstep and trust, along with access, is gone.
Every successful permission initiative has the following elements:
1. Strategy
What are you trying to accomplish? What audience(s) do you wish to target? How will you identify them, reach out to them, get them to opt-in or subscribe? How can you maximize opt-in or subscription rates? What will you do to engage them over time, and how will you link it to measurable results?
2. Technology
What system will you use to get permission, track it, database it, distribute content, link it to sales, and measure the results?
3. Getting Permission
If properly implemented, a permission strategy incurs very low incremental costs, because it can usually be incorporated into current marketing. The key elements are:
- Getting your message to the right audience
- Giving people reasons or incentives to opt in or subscribe
- Making sure you capture permissions through every contact touch point
- Taking advantage of technology to simplify permission management and content distribution
4. Trust
People have to feel certain their permission and privacy will be respected. They won’t even sign up without at least some trust, and they’ll tune or opt out as soon as they’ve lost that trust. The more you do to earn trust, the more people will opt in. We help you deploy solutions that maximize opt-in and retention rates.
6. Content
What will you do to engage your audience and keep them coming back? Will you offer advice and reference content, entertainment, games, video, networking, , promotions, or learning opportunities? How will this content be directly or indirectly linked to your commercial objectives?
7. A Link to Commerce
How will you use permission and your content strategy to market your products and services to achieve your communications or sales goals—without betraying the trust you need to gain and keep permission?
8. Measurement
With permission-marketing and media, there’s nowhere to hide. You can precisely track your outcomes against the database of people you’ve developed to find out the source of your business, what they respond to, when they respond, your opt-in rates, your opt-out rates, etc.
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Audiences
At Solata, we have first-hand experience helping organizations achieve marketing and sales goals through permission-based engagement strategies for:
- Consumers and Business People
- Channel partners
- Sales people
- Nonsales employees
Our Customers
Any organization attempting to increase the efficiency of its marketing or media operations can benefit from Solata’s suite of service and technology solutions. Solata clients include:
Marketers and Agencies: Solata works directly with marketers or their advertising and marketing agencies to provide specific content and technology solutions or end-to-end permission marketing programs targeted at external and internal audiences. Solata provides content and entertainment development and integrated communications technology services to marketers and agencies, as well as a technology module built specifically for agencies.
Media Companies: Solata’s services and technology products include:
- Consulting and specialized content services for media companies seeking to integrate media on multiple platforms or launch new information or entertainment services.
- A Solata integrated communications technology edition made especially for media companies that wish to fully integrate their communications, sales, content, and advertising on a single platform.
Associations and Interest Groups: Solata provides end-to-end communications solutions ideally suited for associations and interest groups attempting to promote their fields or causes to the business or general public.
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Core Competencies
Solata is all about improving marketing and sales ROI through an integrated, permission-based communications strategy.
- Strategic Planning
Each program, whether it’s addressing internal or external audiences, is built based on client objectives. What are your needs and how do you define success?
- Multi-media direct marketing
We help you leverage your current marketing or supplement it with additional strategies to maximize permission sign-up rates, including direct mail, Web advertising, and incentives. Our team includes a seasoned creative, copywriting, and design team for all media.
- Public relations
Our publicists know how to use your content and entertainment strategies to attract media attention and maximize the number of sites willing to link to yours. It’s easier to get other Web sites to link to your site if yours offers information and entertainment in addition to information about your company.
- Content development
With journalism and production experience a core competency of Solata’s founders and management, our team knows how to use and package content and entertainment to maximize the engagement of your target audience. Our content solutions take the form of:
- Web sites
- E-zines
- Print publications
- Books
- Live content
- Podcasts
- Entertainment
- Games
- Promotions
We provide or work with marketing experts, journalists, creative teams, producers or directors specializing in the content strategy right for your company.
- Integrated Communications Technology
Solata provides a fully integrated communications solution to address every issue of permission-based communications for marketers, agencies, media companies, and association/interest groups:
Getting Permission: Solata Permission Manager
Communicating: Solata Target Sender
Managing Content: Solata Content Manager
Selling: Solata Target Seller and Cataloger
Measuring Results: Solata Performance Dashboards and Survey Manager
Managing Affinity Programs: Solata Affinity Manager
Solata has technology editions designed specifically for:
- Marketers
- Agencies
- Media companies and associations
