A real emphasis has been placed on the collection of first-party data.

Pairing a first-party data strategy with a one-to-one marketing strategy will help your teams remain aligned to ensure messages are both targeted and personalized. This needs to happen from the very first interaction at the point of ingestion.

Join data experts as they share their perspectives on the importance of clean, complete, and connected data to optimize your CRM.

Register and attend “How to Leverage First-Party Data for a Winning CRM Strategy,” presented by AtData.

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“When we talk about customer orchestration, we’re talking about much more than just a buyer’s journey,” said Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of martech consultancy Digital Exhaust, at The MarTech Conference.

Here are some guidelines for building a CJO strategy.

Technology is not a strategy

Too often, organizations put the cart before the horse and get technology without knowing what they are going to do with it.

“Technology can only enable the strategy that you’ve already designed,” said Hidalgo. “So if you’ve bought technology in the hopes of orchestrating the customer journey and you’re struggling with that technology, the chances are that it’s not the technology’s fault. The chances are that you don’t have a defined strategy.”

Consider the full spectrum of customer interactions

“Orchestration is also not funnel or conversion metrics,” Hidalgo said. “And it’s not an initial purchase path.”

A customer journey includes all the paths to purchase. The problem is that those paths don’t go in a straight line or easily discernible funnel, even though that is a common way in which marketers refer to it.

“Think more broadly in terms of that full customer spectrum,” he said, explaining that 90% of customer lifetime value exists after an initial purchase.

“A lot of that customer journey happens after the initial purchase, but there’s also a whole bunch that we need to be concerned about before the initial purchase, because that’s where we can really start to engage in meaningful interactions,” Hidalgo said. 

Mapping the customer journey

Customer journey orchestration is a strategy enabled by technology, said Hidalgo. It has to extend across the organization and can’t just be delegated to a single team like customer service.

Here are the general areas or “macro stages” a customer journey orchestration strategy should include.

To stay on top of these stages, you need real collaboration in the organization because different teams have to be included in the strategy.

“We know throughout all of these things, there’s ebbs and flows, there’s different people involved, there’s outside influences…that are impacting your customers and that are going to change how they interact with your products, that may change their buying process, that may change what they’re going to do from a renewal or a retention perspective,” said Hidalgo.

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Get to know your customer

The stages of the customer journey correspond with roles in the organization. Follow up with these key people and discover what they know about customers at the specific stages.

Customer feedback, surveys, interviews and customer data are also sources to help find out about customers directly.

“There’s a lot of different ways to get to know our customers,” said Hidalgo. This especially applies to B2B customers, where longer conversations about their customer journey are appropriate.

“Speak directly to [customers], ask them what their end-to-end journey looks like,” he said. “From the time you engage with our brand, now you own our product or service and you’ve renewed with us — what does that look like? Who was involved?”

Dig deeper: Questions to ask vendors before buying a customer journey orchestration solution

Connecting customer journey orchestration to experience

“Without orchestration, you can’t deliver customer experience,” Hidalgo stated.

Once you know about the stages of your customers’ journeys and their needs at each stage, you can build digital experiences that meet those needs. This includes the website, mobile app, social media, service chats, paid media and other digital and offline touchpoints.

“When I’m talking about orchestrating, I’m not talking about you as an organization demanding a customer do these things so that you can sell your product or service,” said Hidalgo. “What I am saying is, understand that journey so you can orchestrate that engagement.”

A customer will always control their journey, he said. The reason marketers need to have a customer journey orchestration strategy is to be able to provide a better experience during that journey.

Register and watch The MarTech Conference here.

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Gartner cites recessionary fears, inflation and a talent gap as stoking concerns in the enterprise that have knock-on effects on marketing and marketing technology investments. Perhaps unexpectedly, although media allocation is flat, spending on digital channels actually showed a slight decline.

The state of martech spend. The bad news for the martech space is that no less than 75% of CMOs feel under pressure from other parts of the enterprise to cut their technology spending. The consolation is that 63% plan to resist the pressure, to some degree at least, and grow their martech spending. But almost one quarter, 23%, do expect to make cuts.

CMOs do propose to increase social advertising spend, but among the categories likely to take a hit are search advertising, SEO and digital OOH.

It’s necessary to “make a clear value case for martech investment,” said Ewan McIntyre, chief of research for the Gartner for Marketers Practice, presenting the survey’s findings. He also said, using the analogy of a voyage, that what was needed was “not a bigger boat, but a more efficient boat.”

Dig deeper: Digital ad spend growth drops to 7.8% this year

Catalytic marketing. His comments reflected the prominent theme of the Gartner keynote delivered by Lizzy Foo Kune, VP analyst and Carlos Guerrero, VP advisory in the Gartner Marketing Practice. They insisted that, despite pressures to realize growth in an uncertain environment, CMOs should not take the familiar route of increasing activity and taking on more projects.

They also questioned the value of “customer obsession.” “Customer obsession goes too far,” said Guerrero, “to unprofitable extremes that customers find intrusive.” Rather than trying to meet customers in every conceivable channel, leveraging customer data to deliver countless relevant messages, the keynote speakers introduced the concept of “catalytic marketing.” Gartner data shows, they said, that more important than quantity of engagement are experiences that bring about some change in the customer.

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In essence, catalytic marketing is not about “more.” “Progressive CMOs are breaking free from the cycle of more by embracing catalytic marketing and, in the process, shifting from growing marketing’s scope to growing marketing’s success,” said Guerrero.

Why we care. The pressures on marketing and martech investment are clearly real. It’s an environment that demands efficiency and demonstrable ROI. The catalytic marketing concept needs to be fleshed out (an example they cited was L’Oreal’s Skin Genius experience); that’s the positive part of the Gartner message.

The part that might be perceived as negative is the sense that attempting to develop a 360 degree view of the customer and apply it to engagement on countless channels, might be counter-productive, despite everything we’ve heard over the past few years.

About the survey. 410 CMOs and marketing leaders were surveyed in March and April 2023. Respondents were based in North America and Europe, representing various industries and company sizes, with most reporting annual revenue exceeding $1 billion.

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It’s as clear as you want your data to be – this is the time to have a 360-view of your customer. You want to improve their journey and experience and protect their privacy. So where do we go from here?

When identifying a solution, marketers must first identify their pain points, develop a cohesive data strategy and then decide on the right technology.

To learn how some of the most successful marketers vetted and invested in the right technology, register and attend “Data Down the Drain? CDPs Bring Value to an Underutilized Asset,” presented by BlueConic.

Click here to view more MarTech webinars.

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That was the focus of a panel at The MarTech Conference, here are some of the takeaways from that discussion.

AI requires human supervision

As AI evolves, capabilities will expand. Can AI take over a specific business function and run it unaided? Not yet, according to Ricky Ray Butler, CEO of BENlabs, which uses AI to place brands’ products in entertainment and influencer content.

Artificial general intelligence or AGI is the kind of technology that is completely automated, and that’s simply not available yet.

“There is still human supervision [required] when it comes to data inputs or [telling the AI] what the purpose is to have successful outcomes,” said Butler.

“What AI really brings to the table is when it comes to the feedback loop,” he said. “It can structure data and a massive amount of data in a way that the human mind can’t even comprehend or compute. And it can do that at a scale where it can look at millions and millions of videos and monitor, prioritize and then also…make predictions with successful outcomes or or potentially unsuccessful outcomes. We are literally building a brain when we’re leveraging this type of technology to do what the human mind does, but to be able to do it even better and even more accurately.”

Dig deeper: A beginner’s guide to artificial intelligence

Generative AI writing tools need writers

Generative AI writing tools position themselves as writing assistants, not writers, said Anita Brearton, CEO of marketing technology management platform CabinetM.

“[These tools] describe their value prop as productivity,” she said. “They can help you write faster, they can improve SEO in fact.”

They can also help writers get started when all they’re staring at is a blank page. “They’re good for refining texts and creating some A/B versions of texts,” Brearton said.

Generative AI continues to improve in order to help creatives make text-based and visual content.

“I think we’re entering a very disruptive phase for creativity for designers, illustrators, video producers and writers,” said Paul Roetzer, CEO of the Marketing AI Institute 

A marketer’s point of view is more important than ever

As AI gets adopted for more marketing functions, marketers using these tools are needed to guide the technology and point it toward specific marketing objectives.

“The issue right now is the AI doesn’t have your knowledge of your product, it doesn’t have a knowledge of your customers, it doesn’t have knowledge about the internal politics of your company,” said Pam Didner, VP of marketing for consultancy Relentless Pursuit. “[AI doesn’t] have knowledge about even the road map that you are going to produce for your company. So AI can write very well, but you still need to add your own point of view. That’s where a human comes into play.”

Leaders need to know about AI when hiring

When AI is adopted by organizations, leadership needs to know how work has changed so they make the right hires.

“ChatGPT woke everyone up to AI, so we’re all testing the tools,” said Roetzer. “There’s pressure on CMOs and CEOs from boards and investors to figure out AI. Everybody needs to have a plan, and you have a whole bunch of leaders who don’t understand the underlying technology that now have to make decisions around staffing.”

He added, “We need to rapidly accelerate the comprehension of what AI is and what it’s capable of doing, what its limitations are. But, also [we need] to come to grips with where it’s going.”

Register and watch The MarTech Conference here.

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Maybe it wasn’t exactly 10 minutes, but it sure felt that way. Since then, I’ve received countless solicitations from companies offering all kinds of AI-generated solutions. 

Will the ability to send better emails/content written more quickly by AI change the lives of B2B marketers for the better? Not yet. In fact, the greatest performance impact will not be seen in creation but in execution. 

The promise of AI’s ability to deliver mass personalization and unique experiences is only realized if we focus on gaining better insight into the audience, specifically their preferences. Here’s why.

Faster doesn’t always mean better

The ability to create more content faster will only result in lower performance. Up to 89% of decision-makers said the content they encountered through the buying process was high quality, according to a 2019 Gartner research.

Buyers were almost at the point of saturation in their cognitive ability to consume more information. Simply put, more content will not result in increased consumption or understanding. The supply of content is at maximum, according to buyers. And that was four years ago. Imagine what they would say now. 

This insight led to the discovery of the “sense-making” seller, a person with the important attributes of connecting the right information to the right person at the right time. They also possess the ability to filter out unnecessary information, giving the decision maker only the information they need in order to take action. 

It’s one thing to have a human listening and understanding buyers’ needs during the sales process, but it’s another when trying to do this at the top of the funnel with marketing assets.  This is where the opportunity for AI in B2B lies. 

AI as the ‘sense maker’ for marketers

We’ve now built ABM stacks that typically encompass dozens of marketing technologies that pump out endless contact and engagement data. Still, the performance of those leads remains poor. Why? Because we don’t have a sense-making filter to align and route the right marketing asset to the right person for the right reason.

AI personality profiling tools represent an opportunity to be the sense maker for marketers. By understanding the distinct behavior of audiences, marketers can better:

• Align content based on individual preferences.
• Understand what intent “signals” are real.
• Create messaging that appeals to specific segments of the market. 

Understanding buyer behavior offers value beyond just outbound marketing. It extends to routing and aligning business development resources. It can help sales managers understand how to align their teams based on prospects’ preferences with their engagement activity. 

Understanding personal motivations and engagement behavior gives insight into what leads hold the most potential to move forward. It can identify which targets to avoid and the most fertile ground to build relationships. 

AI sense making in action

Here’s an example. A professional services firm was getting high attendance for its webinar series, but very few attendees converted into leads. After analyzing the audience, they found that over 50% of their attendees had one dominant personality type. 

Their webinars were rich with data and research, with their content mostly white papers. That was the problem. Their audience was made up of mostly strategists and consultants. Their behavior was to learn the information to inform others. Their content preferences were for “light” content that traveled easily and could stand independently without an explanation. Think infographics and animated videos. 

After they shifted to lighter follow-up content, lead conversion post-webinar increased by 35%. This group had a personality profile of an “influencer,” or those who use the information to inform others. They were not the “lead” but pointed to the opportunity. 

The organization started tracking sharing versus downloads and followed the content to the intended audience. They found that more content was not the answer. It was personalized content aligned with how the audience wanted to use it. The “sense maker,” in this case, was the influencer attendee who was routing the relevant information to the right person at the right time. 

AI tools unlocked the insight into understanding their behaviors and motivations. A better understanding of the audience improved the performance of their outbound efforts. 

And that is where the ROI will be found. If you’re truly interested in impacting performance, find the solutions that will provide insight into buyers. You don’t need more content. Buyers already told you they have what they need four years ago.

The post Why AI will make the greatest impact on B2B audience insight, not on content appeared first on MarTech.

The art of attracting and selling to customers is undergoing rapid and unprecedented transformation. To stay relevant and competitive, brands must keep up with technological advances and ever-evolving consumer behavior.

However, adapting to these changes is not straightforward, as each generation has unique needs, values and expectations that brands need to consider when developing marketing strategies.

Join marketing experts from Zeta Global as they reveal extensive research and insights into the newest consumer trends.

Register and attend “The Changing Face of Marketing: Connecting with Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z,” presented by Zeta Global.

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“If you are in a decision-making role you are probably tasked with at least evaluating whether this is a technology that you need to pay attention to,” said Milicevic. “And if you’re a practitioner, you very likely have to come up to speed on how to use it and on whether it’s relevant to your company.”

What is a DCR?

“It’s a technology that creates a secure, collaborative environment where two or more parties can use data for specific, mutually agreed upon purposes while eliminating exposure of that data to other parties,” said Milicevic, citing the IAB.

Why use a DCR?

“The key innovation here is how potentially sensitive customer data sets are handled,” Milicevic explained. “[Marketers] simply need a better, more secure environment to collaborate with potentially sensitive data sets — first-party data sets in particular.”

First-party data is becoming increasingly scarce with the introduction of privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, as well as the phasing out of third party cookies by Google and other privacy actions by major tech companies along the lines of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) program.

Dig deeper: How companies are leveraging data clean rooms as cookies vanish

Who uses DCRs?

DCRs can be used by brands, agencies and publishers. The catch is that these organizations should already have a high level of data maturity — they’ve made prior investments in data technology and have substantial teams to work with the technology. This means that right now the technology favors larger companies.

“Process cost and maturity are two significant gating factors that currently put data clean rooms as a super-premium or ‘luxury’ solution,” Milicevic said.

How much does it cost to use a DCR?

Two-thirds of DCR users have spent a minimum of $200,000 on the technology, and a quarter of those surveyed by the IAB have spent over $500,000, according to Milicevic.

The annual cost can go up over $2 million annually when adding in privacy protection tools and other technology that makes the DCR usable.

What are current and emerging use cases for DCRs?

Current uses for DCRs include

• Data privacy compliance;
• Data anonymization;
• Data cleansing and normalization and
• Data transformation and enrichment.

Emerging use cases include:

• Attribution;
• ROI measurement and modeling;
• Mixed media modeling and
• Predictive analytics.

“In addition to privacy safety and the ability to combine first-party data sets is…being able to do very advanced analytics in a much easier way,” said Milicevic. “If you are a data scientist or have data scientists on your team, you’ve probably heard quite a few complaints about how long it takes to get data into a shape where it can be analyzed. Data clean rooms will reduce this complexity significantly for a lot of advanced analytics.”

Where does a DCR fit in your stack?

Generally, the DCR fits between the organization’s data layer and activation layer.

Here is a basic map that is by no means exhaustive:

At the bottom of the stack is the data infrastructure layer that might include a data warehouse, data lake or similar container. Data governance and identity tools also live in this layer.

Sitting above that is what Milicevic calls the “trust layer,” and that’s where the DCR is. Also in the trust layer are decisioning tools that use data to inform activation found in the layer above it. The activation layer includes all advertising activations and other tools like CDPs that can have activation capabilities.

“What’s particularly attractive about data clean rooms is that they pull out the business logic that used to previously live either in the data infrastructure or activation layers…and now it’s centralizing it,” said Milicevic.

Register and watch The MarTech Conference here.

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Virtual events are great for education, global outreach and strengthening your brand awareness. But what they’re especially fantastic at is lead generation.

In this webinar, you’ll get the perfect cut-and-paste formula for turning your events into lead-generating machines.

Register and attend “Maximize ROI and Lead Gen With This Virtual Events Marketing Formula,” presented by Kaltura.

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Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are here to stay and have become a must-have element of the martech stack.

The latest MarTech Intelligence Report, Customer Data Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide, found that interest in CDPs increased 32% last year. Many respondents listed CDPs as a high-priority technology investment. However, according to Forrester, nearly 90% of marketers say their CDP doesn’t meet their needs.

So where do we go from here?

Register and attend “Data Down the Drain? CDPs Bring Value to an Underutilized Asset,” presented by BlueConic.

Click here to view more MarTech webinars.

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