My Touchpoints: Finding the Right Balance Between Personalization and Marketing Control

Salespeople want the freedom to communicate with customers and prospects in their own voice. Marketing and compliance teams, however, need to make sure those communications follow company guidelines, maintain consistent branding, and don't create unnecessary risk.

OptifiNow's My Touchpoints feature was built to give organizations both.

My Touchpoints enables users to create and send their own custom marketing emails directly from within the OptifiNow platform. There's no need to switch to a separate email marketing application or wait for the marketing department to build every message. The email editor was intentionally designed to be simple—if you can create a document in Microsoft Word, you can create an email in My Touchpoints.

For salespeople, that means being able to respond quickly to opportunities with timely, relevant messaging rather than waiting days or weeks for a marketing request to be completed.

But giving every salesperson the ability to create marketing content introduces another challenge: control.

Freedom With Built-In Compliance

From the beginning, My Touchpoints included an approval workflow designed specifically for organizations where compliance matters.

Users can create their own emails, but designated administrators can be required to review and approve those emails before they are available to send. This allows companies to give salespeople significantly more marketing flexibility without giving up oversight of what is being communicated to customers and prospects.

Over the years, however, we've seen the needs of our clients evolve.

For many larger organizations, compliance is only part of the challenge. Marketing teams also need to protect the company's brand, messaging, imagery, and overall communication strategy.

That led us to develop a hybrid version of My Touchpoints.

A Hybrid Approach to Custom Email

With the hybrid My Touchpoints model, the marketing team creates the overall email asset while still giving individual salespeople room to personalize the message.

Marketing controls elements such as:

• The email design and banner imagery

• Core marketing copy

• Product or company messaging

• Calls to action

• Disclosures and other required content

• Overall branding and formatting

Within that approved email, OptifiNow can insert a designated area where the salesperson is allowed to write their own message.

For example, the beginning of an email might contain a short personalized note from the salesperson, followed by marketing-approved content explaining a product, promotion, event, or company announcement.

Personalization variables allow the message to dynamically address each recipient, while character limits can control how much custom content the salesperson is permitted to add.

The result is an email that feels personal without becoming an uncontrolled marketing asset.

Solving a Problem for Sales, Marketing—and IT

This hybrid approach has become particularly popular with larger organizations because it addresses the needs of several departments at once.

Salespeople get the ability to communicate in their own voice and send personalized messages to groups of customers or prospects.

Marketing teams retain control over the company's brand, messaging, imagery, and core content.

Compliance teams gain visibility and control over what users are allowed to send.

And IT teams don't have to worry about salespeople attempting to send large quantities of custom marketing emails through Outlook or other individual email accounts.

Everything happens inside OptifiNow.

Personalization Without Losing Control

The goal of My Touchpoints isn't to choose between centralized marketing and salesperson-created content.

It's to find the right balance between the two.

Some organizations want users to have broad freedom to create their own emails, with an approval process providing the necessary oversight. Others need marketing to control nearly the entire communication while allowing salespeople to add just enough personalization to make the message their own.

My Touchpoints supports both approaches.

As organizations continue looking for ways to make customer communication more timely and personal, the challenge isn't simply giving salespeople more marketing tools. It's giving them the right amount of freedom while maintaining the controls the organization needs.

That's exactly what My Touchpoints was designed to do.

For more information about OptifiNow's My Touchpoints and Hybrid My Touchpoints features, reach out to your Account Manager or email us at support@optifinow.com.