Why Real-Time Data Should Matter to Marketers

To strategize, plan and execute a campaign today, you need consistency across all digital and off-line channels, relevant and engaging content, value—at the appropriate time—and the excitement around the campaign elements to spark continuous cycles of interaction. And while all those elements are evolving as common practice, the New Deal is that it all requires real-time interaction management and enterprise marketing technology, according to Forrester Research.

The power of the customer context, based on real-time data can no longer be underestimated in this challenging marketing environment. As we know, consumers are distracted, time starved and a bit turned off by advertising so its every more important to gather and mine customer data in real-time to generate communications that are a true fit with the target audience.

Here are four steps to building a contextual marketing engine, according to Forrester.

1. Define your strategy
2. Reorganize your processes to spark the cycle
3. Adapt your enterprise marketing technology portfolio
4. Accelerate innovation with analytics

Once the right data is in hand, the context for consumer messages can change. You can hear case study examples—Pizza Hut, Ann Taylor, Nivea, Walt Disney and others—and more on this topic during a Chief Marketer free webinar on June 25 at 1 PM ET titled, “How Marketers Should be Using Real-Time Data Today.”

Forrester’s “The Power of Customer Context” report uses the example of Nike who with its Nike Plus created a self-sustaining ecosystem for branded interactions using real-time data.

“Nike dropped mass media spend in the U.S. by 40% a few years ago yet expects to grow the company by $9 billion in three years. Nike uses health data from devices such as the FuelBand to nudge consumers back to its digital platform, Nike Plus, day after day. The platform uses social sharing and fitness contests to generate more interactions, creating scale that rivals paid media.”

In fact, 58% of respondents to an eMarketer study attributed more than 40% of their marketing budgets to real-time marketing and 36% reported seeing more than half of total revenue generated from real-time marketing.