Digital transformation marks a radical rethinking of how an organization uses technology, people and processes to fundamentally change business performance, says George Westerman, MIT principal research scientist and author of Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. While it’s a standard business practice for private sector companies to maximize technology, public sector organizations have taken more time to fully embrace its power, including those in workforce development.
Two critical areas that are important for workforce organizations to be successful are relationship-building strategies and targeted outreach. These two components could benefit from using digital transformation strategies to create more efficiencies.
Relationship building in workforce development is a long-term strategy that involves bringing partners to the “table” to collaborate and solve complex issues facing a community. To help meet their goals as well as your performance measures, targeted outreach in workforce development means strategically reaching those market segments of job seekers, youth and employers to engage with your organization as a customer of your services.
While relationship building and targeted outreach need different strategies, there are three key technology trends that can be leveraged to help execute them successfully: 1) email marketing; 2) marketing automation; and 3) customer relationship management.
Third-party email marketing vendors (like MailChimp and Constant Contact) help you execute marketing materials like direct mailers, postcards and newsletters, but within a digital format versus hard copy. Email marketing supports broad communication to your different target audiences to inform and engage them (e.g., job seekers, youth, employers and various community partners like economic development). Many workforce organizations are leveraging these technologies currently, but are not using marketing automation in combination with their strategies.
Marketing automation takes email marketing to another level as it uses a set of rules to send out a series of emails based on behaviors of individuals to get them to engage. For example, a job seeker who visits your website and has an interest in apprenticeship would get a different automated follow-up email than another person who wants to learn more about training funds or an employer needing recruitment services. Automation allows for tailored messages based on a prospect’s online behavior; these messages are more likely to be opened versus those that are simply generic in nature. Marketing automation also allows for sending emails at various time intervals to remind customers of information needed (e.g., case managers tracking employment rates 4th Quarter after exit). Automation is key to targeting various market segments that you want to engage and it creates operational efficiencies with customer communication eliminating additional staff time.
Customer relationship management supports a workforce organization to better manage and monitor relationships with both customers and partners to avoid duplication of efforts; enables collaboration across those organizations housed within and outside of an American Job Center; and gives leadership the ability to easily monitor the efforts of those tasked with customer and partner interface.
You can see why all three of these functions would be invaluable to a workforce organization – but not if you have to manage three different platforms. Digital transformation strategies encompass the evaluation of what technology platforms can be streamlined to create an exceptional customer service environment and operational efficiencies.
If your organization is currently using various platforms and vendors to achieve these three critical functions, it’s likely that you are having to manage multiple databases and tools. This is why B2B Engage® is designed with all of these functionalities in one, single platform designed for workforce organizations to:
- synchronize data by automatically pulling results from e-mail campaigns into job seeker and employer contact records to see if emails have been opened;
- view when the last outreach was made to a contact, review what was discussed and follow-up with next steps for engagement;
- create automated emails that are tailored based on the interest of potential job seekers, employers or partners; and
- receive reminders and triggers so that staff and partners can implement the next steps in the relationship-building process.
Let Business U help you eliminate unnecessary costs of using third-party eMarketing vendors that fall short in providing these three functionalities that build efficiencies and expand reach with potential job seekers and employers. Avoid hidden charges for adding contacts in your database or sending more emails and campaigns than allotted. Business U never charges you for the things that make you successful in support of your workforce mission – building relationships and effective outreach.
For a test drive or to learn more, contact us.
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