Advance digital, mobile and database tech solutions are making it easier for marketers to target and engage consumers, but getting the most out of these investments remains a challenge
Here’s a look at four important factors key to making the most of your technology spend, and creating a successful integrated marketing plan.
1. Getting a Well-Rounded View of Your Customer
“There are so many ways to reach people, but getting a 360-degree view of the customer and picking the right channels and messaging is the challenge. Integration and basing these decisions on data-driven insights is the solution,” says Bill Pena, vice president, tech services, 89 Degrees.
Pena says his ecommerce clients are looking for data warehousing for real-time web personalization. This data integrates with other tech solutions to tailor messages and ads for users based on the products they have clicked on and their purchase histories.
For example, retailers can leverage data warehousing and integrate that with campaign tools to build out a loyalty platform. This allows for centralization of the client’s campaign management, and allows them to better define segments and audiences.
From there they can offer those specific audiences loyalty rewards or offer campaigns that are personalized to their previous purchases, engagement in emails and social communities.
2. Making the Most of Mobile Creative
Mobile is the channel where the largest and most visible increase in marketing is taking place. With more emails expected to be opened on mobile than PC in 2014, the growth of online retail and smartphones and tablet optimization, marketers are learning that traditional ad agencies may not be as expert in attracting consumers on mobile devices as they are through traditional channels.
“The mobile agencies that are going to succeed will need to be experts in the technology, but also understand that there is unique creative that you need to be up to speed on to be effective in to be able to do mobile advertising effectively,” says Christian Gomez, managing principal, M Tech Advisors.
The emergence of mobile video technology will also be a focal point moving forward, and marketers figure out how to best leverage it.
“Video, the specific type of video, how it’s done and how it’s linked to purchase options will be critical in driving response,” Gomez says.
3. Targeting With Relevant Content
It may be a cliché, but content is king and without the right content, audiences will ignore your message. The trick lies in creating real content that is useful to an audience as opposed to giving them advertising in disguise, as today’s consumers are astute and can tell the difference between the two pretty easily.
“Content is worth nothing if it doesn’t engage and provide useful information to the targeted individual. If you can’t get people to engage with your content, all that targeting and technology doesn’t mean a thing—people are loaded up with information clutter and will discard anything that’s not of use,” Gomez says.
4. Keeping Customer Data Secure
With increased usage of mobile and digital tech solutions comes an increase in potential security issues, and the last thing marketer want compromised is their customers’ personal information.
There is an enhanced scrutiny from clients in every industry—even non-regulated industries—around areas such as data security and risk assessment.
“Even if it’s not credit card numbers and addresses, even if it’s just email addresses we are concerned about that. I think it’s very reasonable and I’m glad the industry is focusing on security this way—above and beyond government regulation—because it’s going to be for the benefit of the marketing industry as a whole, with the confidence people have in sharing their information,” Gomez says.
The problem lies in that criminals could theoretically start with someone’s marketing contact information and either data mine or social engineer their way to doing real damage, so it pays to make sure partners and solutions take security very seriously.
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