Going forward I’m going to be keeping a more regular diary about the projects I’m working on as Head of Campaigns and about the way the Campaign Delivery team approaches ad operations and digital delivery. ;xNLx;;xNLx;Gemma Screen, ;xNLx;Head of Campaigns for Sift Media
In the summer of 2010 I joined Sift Media as Campaign Manager. At this point we were just a team of two managing the delivery of all campaigns sold.
At the end of 2010, Campaign Manager Rob decided to move on to pastures new. We evaluated the team structure and I became Head of Campaigns to lead the team moving forward
Since joining forces with The Digial Partnership in December 2010 we’ve seen a wider breadth of advertising across our portfolio, higher calibre of adverts on our sites, reduced chance of over-exposing ads and increased click through rates.
Our new Campaign Manager, Cloe joined the team in January 2011
Towards the end of 2010 Sift Media had a shift around which saw Sales and Editorial teams working more closely together. At the same time Campaign Delivery moved out of Sales. Now we sit within Digital Delivery – a much better fit.
At the beginning of 2011 I decided our client feedback survey needed a complete overhaul. As a publisher, we needed to reassess what we wanted to get out of it. In Q2 of 2011 we started work on the new feedback survey and the information we really needed from our clients to help us grow.
For the first time our survey invited critical feedback from our clients – a risky move and not always comfortable reading but something which has proved itself invaluable. In an even riskier move, we promised a full analysis of the results which we would share with our clients.
When the results from the survey started coming in, it was pretty clear that improving client reporting was a priority. In July 2011 we expanded the team and brought a Campaign Analyst on board dedicated to reporting on and optimising our campaigns.
We welcome Dave Macrory to the team as our Campaign Analyst.
The feedback survey highlighted that some clients were experiencing a very different service to others. We went through a “Customer Journey Mapping” exercise, detailing our service levels at their best and at their worst. We mapped out every touch point and put together a best practice for what our clients’ experience should be every time.
As promised we published the results of our survey in a report which showed the strengths and weaknesses of the service our clients received. The initial results were shared with the clients who completed the survey. In October 2012 we published this report on the Sift Media site for all our clients to see.
After some pretty impressive man hours from everyone involved, all our sites and 150+ campaigns were moved to Google DFP. The benefits were almost immediate. Reporting was quicker, optimising display simpler and we were able to get screenshots for clients at the click of a button. The days of hitting refresh until we spotted that all important banner were behind us. Now our clients get a much more consistent service.
In 2011 a lot of work went into ensuring the campaigns sold were realistic and achievable. We focussed on delivering campaigns to a high standard and avoided over promising and under delivering. By December 2011 we had reduced our client refunds by 81% compared with December 2010. Now THAT’s an achievement!
In January 2012 I spent a week in Denver working with the sales and editorial teams who work on Accountingweb.com and Goingconcern.com. A productive week spent evaluating best practices for client services, campaign delivery and engaging audiences through advertising.
We’d heard many interesting things about RTB (Real Time Bidding) but were unsure of the benefits for SiftMedia as a B2B publisher. We dipped our toe in the water, siphoning off a small amount of our remnant inventory. Results are still to be seen – perhaps RTB isn’t quite ready for B2B yet?
We sent out our client feedback survey in March this year to all clients who had worked with us over the past six months. We used the same questions as last time and got a great level of response.
We’ve started analysing the survey results. Already, clients are much happier with their reporting - great news. By the end of Q2 analysis will be finished and we’ll circulate internal reports to each publishing unit and work with them on the findings. In the summer we’ll repeat this exercise and publish the results for clients to view.
One of my goals this year is to pursue examples of "excellent customer service" and find ways for us to integrate these into the service we provide to our clients. As part of this I've been speaking with Nicola Langley - Customer Experience Manager for Virgin Media who has shared with me her best practices for devising customer service strategies, implementing these effectively and getting valuable feedback from your clients. More to come on this next month as I integrate these best practices with actions from our recent client survey results. Full write up is on the Sift Media blog and on MyCustomer.com
It's not always clear to see if we as a publisher have got it right. How much are other publishers doing when it comes to Client Service? What about the structure of the teams and how they function internally? There are some great resources like www.AdMonsters.com out there but sometimes a face to face chin wag is invaluable.
We now have all the results for out client survey broken down by individual publishing unit. Over a 2 week period I'm sitting down with each of the Publishing units to discuss where improvements can be made and the extra support that they need to provide our clients with excellent service every time.
Latest blog post from our Campaign Analyst David Macrory looks at the changing nature of purchasing display online
As Sift Media continues to grow and focuses more efforts into online advsertising, the time has come to expand the Campaigns team so we can continue to support and deliver these ad campaigns. We've restructured the team slightly, based on some of the lessons learned from Immediate Media and BBC Magazines and are now recruiting an extra Campaign Planner
We're excited about bringing new Campaign Planner, Emma Cox in to the team.
As Sift Media grows with an increasing focus on online, we’ve noticed a huge increase in the amount of design and production work we’re being asked to do for clients. Whether its designing a whitepaper, building banner creative or even a microsite!
Following feedback from the sales managers and a mentoring call with Virgin Media, we've decided to change our feedback surveys to help us respond to client feedback more quickly.
Throughout 2012 I've been in regular contact with Nicola Langley, Customer Experience Manager for Virgin Media. Learning how we can continue to improve our own client experience.
In October 2012 we welcomed Vicky Dowdeswell to the team as a new Campaign Planner. Vicky is super organised and fully embraces our pursuit of service excellence when it comes to managing client campaigns
Throughout November I've been working with the AOP and other publishers to improve the industry's mobile advertising proposition. Read more about why our MD thinks 2013 will finally be the year of mobile in the linked blog.
With more than 150 ad campaigns live at any one point its important that we're managing our clients as effectively as possible. Sometimes this means a change so on 1st November we started using Salesforce, a new CRM system to help us to deliver a more joined up, more efficient service across the organisation
Our fun loving Campaign Analyst Dave decided to leave Sift in favour of the bright lights of London in December 2012. A sad day but we're thrilled to bring Katherine Brand on board as our new campaign analyst. Katherine wowed us with her awesome analytical thinking and love of spreadsheets and data :-)
The new client feedback survey is ready to go and will be in full force by 1st of January to improve our client experience throughout 2013.
2011 was a year of changing things around and shaking things up. 2012 was spent refining these changes and making sure the new processes were working as they should be. Here's our latest blog on our client service resolutions for 2013
So 3 weeks into our new transactional feedback surveys and 90% of our clients are rating their overall service as good or excellent - that's higher than our KPI! A brilliant start - let's keep it that way!
Read the latest blog post from Campaign Analyst Katherine Brand on Clearing up the confusion around email Click Through Rates
Campaign Planner Vicky Dowdeswell gives us an update on the latest Google changes in her blog.
We launch a new, mobile responsive site to further engage our existing and potential clients. The Marketing team have carefully considered exactly how our clients use the Sift Media site and what we can do to make this more valuable and improve UX.
As part of our new site launch, our fabulous Marketing team have also created a video to help explain what we're all about. We're pretty pleased with it!
With over 150 different ad campaigns live at any one time, delivered over 9 premium sites and more than 50 different products, sometimes you have to take a step back to review these processes
Sift Media launches a new campaign optimisation guide to help our clients get better value from their campaigns.
In February 2013 89.47% of our clients rated their overall experience as good or excellent.
After several months of refining and developing our mobile strategy, Sift media held an internal training day for all employees to communicate our mobile proposition
Attending Admonsters' OPS London is one of the highlights of my year. Showcasing best practice from publishers across the industry and giving valuable insight into their ad operations processes and their approach to client delivery.
Sift media are delighted to be part of the AOP's premium mobile initiative.
April's client satisfaction results showed 92.59% clients rated their service as good or excellent.
Read my latest blog post explaining the nuts and bolts of Sift Media's new mobile advertising proposition
Digital marketing is fast becoming the dominant focus for many businesses. It forms the foundation for enhancing user experiences, reaching customers on new devices and providing greater insight to drive marketing ROI. To support our clients with their digital strategies, Sift Media, in partnership with our sister company Sift Digital are conducting a survey to analyse and share with you insights on the digital marketing landscape and how to make digital marketing work for your business.
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