At LC, we pride ourselves in fostering innovative thinking across the board—this applies even to our interns. With voice tech continuing to emerge as an industry mainstay, we tasked our interns with creating their very own Alexa skill.

Their response was a skill that helps with a tried-and-true food dilemma: what restaurant does one choose when going out to eat? Introducing, the Restaurant Finder. This is a skill that allows users to specify the location, type of food and price range to search for when at an eating-out impasse. Skill co-creator and current LC intern Paige Rosynek states, “Technology should be used to solve problems, no matter how small. And voice recognition technology definitely has a huge potential to solve problems of all sizes in numerous fields.”

I went out to dinner this past weekend and was so happy to have to wait for a table. Sounds odd, right, but after 14 plus months of the most challenging times for our restaurant partners, I was glad to wait. I was also glad to be extra patient with the mostly new staff the restaurant was lucky enough to recruit and glad to tip extra generously to help workers start to make up for lost time.

A specialty area of our PR services has always been assisting tourism, entertainment and restaurant brands when they are growing and expanding, rebranding, entering a new market, announcing new offerings or facing a challenge or crisis situation.

We’ve launched firsts to the market, seeded and sampled communities, run Friends & Family Nights and so much more when times have been good. We’ve also helped through challenges, side by side by owners and managers.

But right now, I see the tables as turned, and I have found a new way to try and support our restaurants, their owners and their staff. Collectively, we the masses, can send individual messages to each of our beloved restaurant owners and operators, letting them know they’re appreciated and we’re supporting their comeback to be stronger than ever.

Join me and share your awe and gratitude with restaurant owners for their resiliency and unwavering commitment during the pandemic. Acknowledge the significant steps taken to ensure safety and comfort for employees as well as guests. Share your amazement at the creativity and flexibility so many demonstrated with popup outdoor lounges – even in our Midwest winters – and making carryout a luxury experience. Praise their generosity for the ways they rallied to support displaced workers or health care heroes with a warm meal. And, because actions can often speak louder than works, let’s all be patient, understanding and generous as our restaurant workers return and ramp up.

Certainly, PR is about publicity and promotion, but it is also about valuing relationships, expressing authentic gratitude, creating a sense of community and making people feel valued. That’s PR we can all do right now.

Kristine Naidl, APR, is the executive vice president and managing director of Laughlin Constable’s PR offerings. She has worked with dozens of national and regional restaurant brands to raise awareness and drive traffic, create charitable and community programs and guide them through crisis situations.

This article was first published in Email on Acid.

Marketing automation has long promised a sort of magic — using technology to reach the right leads and customers at the right time with the right message, with better reporting and better returns. But in the wrong hands, with the wrong strategy, marketing automation doesn’t lead to magic. It leads to mayhem.

Mayhem can show up in a number of ways: invalid data, communications failure, lack of leads. One company tried to learn their platform themselves and ended up moving leads to the end of campaigns, skipping all the emails that were supposed to be sent.

Another had to get new instances of their marketing automation platform because it was so messy that it was unusable. Mayhem can come from a lack of focus and understanding of who is handling what, and it can ultimately drive your leads and customers away.

You don’t want that. You want the magic. Here’s how to bring it.

Understand how the magic works

To talk about where we are, we have to start at the beginning. Everything changes over time, and stagnancy equals irrelevance. The magic of Houdini’s incredible straitjacket escapes has evolved into airplanes appearing out of thin air on-stage. The same is true of marketing automation. 

What started out as a tool to deploy emails has become a vastly powerful discipline that crosses channels, harnesses data, tracks behaviors, scores leads, connects with technology stacks, personalizes, customizes, targets…. the list goes on and on. So, if you’re simply thinking you’ve got a neat email tool, you aren’t doing Marketing Automation, you’re missing out on an opportunity — and you’re paying for the privilege.

You may now be wondering: “what do I do” and “how do I start?” First, you need to understand what marketing automation can do for you and take out barriers to using it. As a starting point, your business should look across channels and remove any silos between groups, specifically sales and marketing. This way you can understand the full need for marketing automation tools and create the right journey for your leads and customers, from their first interaction with your brand and beyond.  

The right automation platform will be driven by your sales and marketing needs: the data integration, channels, lead scoring, and dynamic content that are important to you.

You should explore solutions both specific to your industry, as well as generalized tools that fit the nuances of your company. Before making your final decision, you’ll want to narrow it down to two strong choices that you do trials or demos with, which will give you a true look into the tools. If this feels overwhelming, you’re not alone! You may also choose to work with an outside agency or consultant as they will remain agnostic in their recommendations.

Create your magic potion

If you want to create magic, you need a magic potion. In the world of marketing automation, data is the magic wand. Bad data in equals bad data out. If bad data is driving your marketing automation efforts, you’re sure to have challenges. One company didn’t ensure its data was cleansed, and sent out a communication with “Daughter Killed in Car Crash” as part of their name field. You don’t want this to happen to you.

If you have just obtained a CRM system or marketing automation platform, it is imperative to do a data audit or cleanse before you simply populate these tools. Ensure accurate data that is formatted and mapped as desired is loaded in.

If you’re already past this point, don’t worry, it isn’t too late. Once your systems are running you should still be using data clean-up processes like sunsetting programs and audits. Have a regular cadence of data audits set up to ensure you are compliant with data and email laws, and that your data is properly flowing through your systems. You should also be strict with system access, giving only those that are able to make changes to data or assets the edit features, while the rest can simply view.

Pull a rabbit out of your hat

You’re ready to learn magic now, right? The answer is a big maybe. Because in order to pull a rabbit out of your hat, you need a magician: a marketing automation expert.

This is where many companies fall down. They either hire someone that has experience in their particular systems, or they have their current marketing team try to learn the platform. So you have someone who understands the software but not the marketing ecosystem, or someone who understands marketing but not how to bring it alive through the platform. Because marketing Automation is an art, you need someone who understands the specifics of the platform you have chosen in full and the strategy and best practices of the marketing automation discipline and channels. If you only have one or the other, your customer experience will fall flat.  

Give ‘em the ol’ razzle-dazzle

You’re now armed with your magic potion and you’ve got the right pieces to pull a rabbit out of your hat, but you can’t make magic yet. What kind of experience would it be for consumers without a little razzle-dazzle?

Brand experience starts from a consumer’s first brand interaction. According to PwC,  in the U.S., even when people love a company or product, 59% will walk away after several bad experiences, 17% after just one bad experience. Even more interesting is that 65% of U.S. customers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising, and 73% of customers point to experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions.  

Experience is everything! You can’t simply create a variety of communications that aren’t connected for your leads and customers. They expect the right message, with the right channel, at the right time, and personalized to them. Disney, for example, has been doing experience marketing for years, and marketing automation has made it better. Once you book a trip, mail comes with your wristbands, emails come with travel plans, and when you arrive they meet you at the airport with their Magical Express. At every step of the way, you experience the same personalized and on-brand messaging and feel, regardless of the channel.

Take the time to create a plan. Customer lifecycle or journey mapping is one great way to build out your strategy by understanding how your leads and customers move through the path to purchase and on to loyalty. This also allows you to record what each of your departments or channels is currently doing. The more time and thought you put into this phase of the process, the better experience you will end up with for your leads and customers, so don’t skimp here. 

So, you now have your magic potion, you can pull a rabbit out of your hat and you understand the importance of a little razzle-dazzle. You’re ready and armed with the right tools, talent, and strategy. The stage is set, the audience is seated. Now it’s time to make some magic. 

Looking for some magic assistance?

Did you know that 63% of companies using marketing automation outsource all or part of it? It’s okay not to fully understand the marketing automation platform you have or the strategy behind creating amazing experiences with it. At LC, we offer he expertise you need, whether staff augmentation services for onboarding, set-up or training, help on strategy development, or full-service start-to-finish planning and execution. Our team has been in the trenches and understands the challenges and opportunities that exist. Visit our Email Marketing & CRM Services page to learn more about how we can take your brand from now to next.

Interested yet? Schedule a FREE email and automation platform audit now.

When the pandemic struck, LC needed to quickly adapt its office-centric company culture to a remote environment. Heather Batchelor, executive vice president of human resources, shares the creative solutions that kept company culture thriving and led to Crain’s Chicago naming LC one of the “Best Places to Work” in 2021.

High fives, happy hours, face-to-face meetings and wearing real pants to work— this was how things got done before the pandemic. When Laughlin Constable’s offices closed in March 2020 along with the rest of the world, we had no idea how long it would last— and certainly none of us would have guessed we would still be at home one year later— but we were faced with the challenge to continue doing what we do best: deliver exceptional work to our clients fueled by collaboration and creativity.

Our agency thrives by working together, across disciplines and experience levels. We learn from one another constantly. In order to continue to foster this culture while working remotely, we quickly adapted to embrace technology and creative solutions to stay connected while being physically apart. The changes made helped us maintain our strong company culture and remain connected to our valuable employees so much that LC earned recognition as one of Crain’s Chicago Business “Best Places to Work” 2021.

We rely heavily on video conference calls for team meetings which not only work to keep teams in touch but have been exceptional at integrating new hires that joined the agency over the past year. Many new team members have shared how much this has helped them get to know fellow Griffins, work closely on projects and feel a part of LC’s standout culture. All-agency town hall meetings were held weekly at the start of the stay-at-home orders to share exciting client work, provide important COVID updates and company news and even take time to have some fun with our very own version of Family Feud. Our CEO Mat Lignel holds virtual open office hours each week for any Griffin to “drop in” to share ideas, voice concerns or just offer a quick hello.

Other ways we stay engaged include a private Facebook group for Griffins to share work-from-home memes and quotes, and by hosting digital bake-offs, music challenges and lookalike contests with prizes to help maintain our creativity and competitive nature. Of course, beyond the virtual trivia or pre-pandemic weekly breakfasts and happy hours, our Griffins care about our practical perks too, which include unlimited paid time off and a competitive benefits package.

Certainly, for all of us, this pandemic has brought on many different challenges that have reinforced what we are grateful for and taught us to learn and adapt to new ways of doing things. Overall, it has highlighted what is really important to our agency, and that is creating an environment, whether in-person or remote, that supports and encourages our team members to create and do great work together.