The State and Drivers of Data Marketing

What matters most is the optimization of the customer experience, relevance and (perceived) customer value as a driver of business value. Data-driven marketing certainly is not (just) about advertising and programmatic ad buying as some believe. Nor is it just about campaigns. On the contrary: if done well, data-driven marketing is part of digital marketing transformations whereby connecting around the customer across the customer life cycle is key.

Very succinct vision of what data-driven marketing is, it's all about the customer experience.  The advent of "big data" was nothing more than gathering extra data about the customers.  Gathering data is only the first step of the process, albeit a time-consuming one.  The good news is after the hard work of gathering the data has been completed, the harder part starts.  Once you have data, making sense of the data and creating actionable outcomes to enhance the customer experience becomes the goal.  This is very hard work.  It takes plenty of analysis and insight to reach this goal.  But the companies who will do this the best will be the ones that succeed in the digital age.

Among the key takeaways of the data-driven marketing report by the GlobalDMA:

• 77% of marketers are confident in the data-driven approach and 74% expect to increase data marketing budgets this year.

• Data efforts by far focus on offers, messages and content (marketing) first (69% of respondents). Second ranks a data-driven strategy or data-driven product development. Customer experience optimization unfortunately only ranks third with 49% of respondents.

• Among the key drivers of increased data marketing: first of all a need to be more customer-centric (reported by 53% of respondents). Maximizing efficiency and return ranks second followed by gaining more knowledge of customers and prospects.

I believe the first step in the process is understanding where the puck is going to be and skate in that direction.  Marketers are understanding this data revolution is coming and they are saying the right things in surveys.  The real question will be how to get there.  It's easy to identify problems, it's hard to implement solutions.  The marketers who will show they are adept at change will thrive in this new paradigm.  

Customer analytics is something I have focused my entire career.  In the casino industry we have had the optimal opt-in mechanism for many years and have collected amazing amounts of data about our customers behavior.  We have used this to create targeted marketing campaigns to our customers, so I believe in the direction the entire industry is taking.  Always start with the customer.  It will lead to creating better experiences and more profitable results.

 

Why CEOs Say Yes to Marketing Automation

Ten short years ago, it was rare for a company to have a marketing automation platform in place. Since then, it’s become ever more clear that acquiring marketing automation (and applying the expertise to make it hum) is a huge competitive differentiator. SiriusDecisions research indicates that 80% of the organizations with the highest-performing demand waterfalls (based on the number of won deals per 1,000 inquiries) have implemented marketing automation platforms. This tallies with other research; the 2015 report “Rethinking the Role of Marketing” from Gleanster and Act-On found that Top Performers were 20% more likely than the average organization to use marketing automation technology..

I think it is still rare for most organizations to have a marketing automation platform, but what is even more rare are companies who are taking advantage of their platform.  The promise of marketing automation is very enticing as this article articulates.  The benefits of a well-run marketing automation program is an extreme competitive advantage.

1. Marketing Automation Lets You Put the Customer in the Center of Your World.

List management. Marketing automation lets makes it easier to segment your lists by field values (explicit data such as title, department, industry, company size) and by implicit, inferred factors (often actions) such as web pages visited, eBooks downloaded, emails clicked on. It also lets you sync chosen data back and forth with a CRM system.

Well beyond the realm of salespeople, marketing automation lets you manage your customer base on a level of personalization that is not possible otherwise.  Some say these platforms make the relationships with customers less personal, but that is a fallacy.  With the amount of personalization and targeting capable with these platforms, the customer gets a more personalized experience with marketing automation.  

The amount of time manual processes take to manage the customer, it is impossible for these processes to really give the best experience to the customer.  There is just not enough time in the day.  However, a marketing automation platform can create customized communications based on all of the data described above, including behavioral information, geo aware messaging and preferences of communication channels.

Campaign management. Automated programs can save time (which is money, yes) and take a little human error out of your programs. You can set them up to replicate successful lead nurturing or onboarding programs, for example, and they will run exactly as programmed, no matter who misses work on Tuesday. You can add prospects as they enter your world (perhaps through a form) and exit them (perhaps to another program, or to sales) as you learn more about them, or as they become increasingly qualified. You can set up trigger emails (thank-yous, congratulations, expiring trials) and landing pages that make offers or fulfill requests, showing how responsive you are.

Campaign management is a difficult process if you have different programs pulling lists, then fulfilling communications and measuring results.  The amount of time saved by having a platform where everything is integrated and can trigger off the behavior of the customer is very powerful.

6. Marketing Automation Takes Care of the Established Customer

The platform gives you a structure you can scale in your retention strategy. Start with using a nurturing educational strategy to support onboarding. Move on to keeping your customers in the loop, educating them about new features, showing them new plays with old features, and keeping them abreast of changes in the industry that affect them. Take the same techniques you use to notice when a lead is warming up and apply them to noticing when a customer is looking at an upsell … or needs attention to prevent churn.

Retention is the most important part of the database.  The greater the number of sales coming from your established customer base allows for the greatest growth in your business.  Marketing automation at its heart is best for the established customers.  The platform is designed to drive more business from this segment.  Since the majority of most companies revenue comes from loyal customers, having the ability to grow this groups sales is essential to a longterm stable business model.  The marketing automation platform should be at the center of this model.

7. Marketing Automation Spurs Revenue and Growth

These benefits are all pieces of a puzzle that every company using marketing automation puts together in its own unique way. The common denominator is that most companies that apply marketing automation – whether they use every feature or just the basics – will see faster growth and post more top-line revenue.

Well who doesn't want that?

Becoming Customer Centric is a Journey not a Destination

A very insightful article from Timothy Smith of Tahzoo.  Becoming a customer centric organization is not achieved through initiatives, it is achieved through a culture change.  

From my perspective, too many of the current efforts in financial services are internally focused, and are being solely thought about as technology projects. As I pointed out in my webinar, technology is only one part of the solution. Companies need to be thinking about transforming their business and marketing approaches in addition to their technology infrastructure. If companies don’t invest in these other transformations, they may not ever deliver on their customer centricity goals. Time and money needs to be spent on creating organizational alignment, understanding the customer journey, and deploying marketing strategies that reward, recognize and respect customers.

Companies tend to look at their technology in terms of deficiencies instead of what a technology will allow.  Technology should never be purchased until there is a specific business need the technology will solve.  If your company isn't ready to evolve beyond their current technology platform, a better tool will not help your company evolve.  To become a customer centric organization, the culture needs to evolve first and then technology can support the organization as the needs arise.  It should never be the other way around.  Customer centricity does not happen through more data about a customer, it happens when all decisions are focused on the customer.

Are You Ready for an Omnichannel World?

One of my favorite title for an article.  I think it's a funny title to be honest, because it doesn't matter if you are ready, this is the current state of the customer experience.  Customers for a few years have been living in this world and we as digital marketers are finding it hard to catch up.  What's even more scary is the rate at which technology is moving.  If digital marketers don't become more agile, they will always be playing catch up.  The issue may be is that the distance they will have to catch up will widen.

Today’s customers engage with companies in multichannel and multitouchpoint journeys, which they pause and resume over time. For example, according to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB):

• 58% of callers have visited the web before calling, and

• 34% of callers are on the web while talking to a rep

For a customer to complete a single task – buy a product, answer a question, understand a bill – they often require multiple, disconnected interactions with an organization. When a customer needs assisted service to supplement self-service, they typically must start over when they engage with the organization.  In the case of voice, it’s calling a contact center, using an IVR, and explaining their issue. In the case of chat, it’s starting a dialog with an agent without any context to their journey. These time-consuming and disconnected ‘channel shift’ experiences are one of the leading causes of missed sales opportunities and high operating expense for organizations – as well as a major source of frustration for costumers.

I remember back in 2001 having this journey with AT&T landlines.  At that time AT&T was broken into local and long distance.  Well the bills came and they looked exactly the same and this was when online banking was just getting started.  Well I was paying all the bills to long distance, because I believed they were one in the same.  The bill looked exactly the same.  I was quite surprised when they turned off my phone because I hadn't been paying.  I mean, here I was I felt like I was always paying.  When I set up my phone service I didn't call 2 numbers.  

This is something that needs to be front and center.  This is nothing more than creating great customer experiences, just using customer service as an example.  The customer doesn't want to think about telling their story over and over, they want the context of their issue to move with them as they reach each touch point.  This is expected in the digital age.  The only thing really holding organizations back is their structure.  Organizations have to structure themselves to handle the guest through this omni-channel journey.  No amount of software will help if they don't start there.   

Next Generation Customer Experience - business2community

Terry Green writes for business2community:

...we all talk about customer journey mapping but how many of us have actually done it? No I don’t mean sitting listening to a boring presentation about the subject whilst fiddling with my mobile phone or making a half arsed attempt at it with no commitment – I mean really done it like we meant it?

I’ve always said that the key to getting any customer oriented change programme though an organisation is to get the business leaders to walk a mile in the customer’s shoes. Cliched? Yes but no longer enough. The challenge now is to get everyone inside your organisation to see themselves from the customer’s perspective and to understand how it makes them feel to interact with you.

What better way than customer journey mapping?

It is so important for organizations to do this mapping, but I agree with Green, it never seems to resonate with a larger team.  I feel because people going through this exercise tend to treat this as a transactional exercise instead of an emotional one.  What I mean by emotional is customers have an emotional attachment to their journey, they don't feel like what they are doing is a transaction.  

I believe one person should own the customer journey and bring people into the process for specific parts of the journey.  Journey mapping is a very overwhelming experience, but when broken up into pieces it could generate great conversations from the entire organizations.  When taken into pieces, the organization can concentrate on the emotion of a specific piece of the journey without having to get overwhelmed by the entire journey itself.  

It’s only when you have got your people to stop thinking like vendors and truly moved them into the customer’s headspace that you can start their journey towards customer centricity.