Much has been written about the challenges marketers are up against in 2023.

From economic volatility and growing technological complexity to changes in data privacy policies and exponential improvements in AI (yes, ChatGPT, we’re talking about you – again!), this year has been a heady mix of uncertainty and excitement.

This is especially true for marketers, who have had to course-correct on-the-fly, retro-fitting strategies and tactics to accommodate ever-shifting business goals.

If nothing else, this has forced marketers to rethink both the art and the science of the campaigns they plan, build and execute. 

Unpacking the art and science of marketing

The old adage that marketing comprises both science and art in equal measure still holds true. To better understand this, let’s first unpack what exactly we mean by “art” and “science.”

• The art of marketing is essentially all about reaching customers, and creating brand experiences customers love. Think content, channels, creativity, and connection. 

• The science of marketing can certainly involve creativity, but it’s primarily about the “how” and “why” of what you’re doing. That’s where science comes in. Think data, IT and technology, and measuring revenue impact.

Brands that have perfected the blend of art and science

When it comes to real-world success stories of brands that are effectively blending the art and science of marketing, the following brands stand out:

Reformation and the “text message heard around the world.”

Sustainable fashion brand Reformation harnessed the power of SMS to engage their mobile-first, Millennial and Gen Z audience while staying true to their brand voice.

By marrying provocative, deliberately non-promotional creative with smart targeting, the brand created the “text message heard around the world,” which achieved a 96% CTR and 963x total program ROI in just six months.

BrandAlley, advocacy data and supercharged growth

The cost of acquisition vs. retention is a conversation that’s become particularly relevant in the face of tightening marketing budgets and smaller teams. 

To bring down acquisition costs, BrandAlley (with the help of Mention Me) married advocacy data with personalized content to fuel customer loyalty campaigns that reward customers who generate revenue for BrandAlley via referrals. This is a powerful example of the art and science of marketing working hand-in-hand.

Ochsner Sport’s personalization journey

As Switzerland’s largest sporting goods retailer, Ochsner Sport has felt the pressure in recent years to up its personalization game. They achieved this by doing two important things – balancing the art of building a cross-functional personalization program with the science of using data-driven insights to unlock true customer centricity. 

Hear from these brands first-hand

SAP Emarsys will showcase these brands and many more at its Omnichannel Masterclass, which forms part of this year’s Power to the Marketer Festival.

See how leading brands and innovative marketers are elevating the art and science of marketing. 

Join the Festival

Power to the Marketer Omnichannel Masterclass June 7- 8

Day 1 is all about the art, and you’ll get insights on topics like:

• Mastering SMS to reach new audiences
• Perfecting customer loyalty to increase retention
• Redefining the value exchange for better customer data

Day 2 is all about the science, and you’ll learn about:

• How IT and marketing can drive CX innovation together
• Leveraging data to drive customer referrals
• Building a cross-functional personalization program

To join the omnichannel masterclass event or to learn more about speakers and topics, visit the event registration page.

The post 3 brands that have mastered the art and science of marketing appeared first on MarTech.

We’re all familiar with the concept of providing connected, engaging CX across marketing, sales and customer service channels. Over the last couple of years, the importance of supply chain transparency has become key to CX too. But what about the need to verifiably identify yourself as part of the registration process for services — financial services, for example — that really need to know that you are who you say you are?

Why we care. We care because there are widely used identity services out there (used by branches of government) that are far from friction-free. Anyone who has spent time trying to take photographs of physical documents and upload acceptable versions of them to a website understands this.

From the marketing perspective, anything that encourages users to abandon registration and look elsewhere for more easily accessible services is a bad thing. Think of this as reflecting the changes we’re seeing in the buyer’s journey (both B2B and B2C). Buyers are looking for ease, speed and as much self-service as possible.

Onfido acquires Airside. The international automated identity verification platform Onfido seeks to smooth the sign-up process by using scanners to gather and match documentary and biometric information. Today it announced the acquisition of private, digital identity sharing technology platform Airside Mobile.

Airside, through its Airside Digital Identity App, allows users to carry their digital identities on their smartphones. Once verified, the identity can be used to access many services without the need to re-verify. For example, the app is used by major airlines and the TSA to fast-track passengers through airports.

“We plan to take Airside’s proven approach to the airline industry and apply it to other sectors requiring high customer assurance, such as financial services — providing a single, trusted view of each customer’s identity,” said Onfido CEO Mike Tuchen.

The post ‘Sign-up’ is part of the customer experience 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.

Click here to view more MarTech webinars.

The post Create tailored customer experiences for each generation appeared first on MarTech.

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.

Click here to view more MarTech webinars.

The post Uncover the ultimate strategy to increase ROI and lead gen appeared first on MarTech.

How do you measure the effectiveness of your loyalty management system? The Forrester Wave Loyalty Technology Solutions, Q1 2023 report is here with an answer. Gathering the industry’s most significant loyalty technology solution vendors, this report shows us which providers matter most. What are the main criteria that Forrester evaluated its participants on? And what can this report teach us about the characteristics of the top loyalty software providers? Let’s dive into it.

What is a Forrester Wave Loyalty Technology Solutions, Q1 2023 report?

The Forrester Wave Loyalty Technology Solutions, Q1 2023 is a thorough, 28-criterion evaluation of the most significant loyalty technology solution providers on the market. It provides insight into the most successful initiatives and critical features that enable their capability, evaluating the 12 most significant players and dividing them into leaders, strong performers, contenders, and challengers. It’s a guide for B2C marketing decision-makers looking for loyalty program software tailored to their brand’s needs.

Top loyalty management software providers – Key features

Based on the criteria in Forrester’s assessment, here’s a rundown of Comarch’s loyalty program features that we believe are shown to turn a loyalty solution into a success:

Zero-party data

Data obtained directly from users is the most valuable type of information about customers (due to the trustworthiness of its source). And without knowing your members, creating an effective loyalty program has a low chance of working. That’s why the best customer loyalty software focuses on gathering this information via member attributes, pop-up quizzes, questionnaires, contests, and online polls.

Also important is having a plethora of methods to collect zero-party data and the ability to adapt the customer data model and data sources at any point in time by business users – no IT knowledge  required. These tools enable assembling any data point to target members with more personalized promotions.

Rewards/benefits management

The best loyalty program software uses personalized incentives to boost customer engagement – but the rewards themselves are not enough to stand out from the competition. A high-quality solution is also about the complete customer experience and the ability to recognize their special status or engage them through non-financial benefits such as gamification. Supporting every possible rewarding mechanism, from cashback through points and rewards programs with a large variety of rewards and burn functionalities for members (cashback, vouchers, lotteries, auctions, charity donations, or gifts), gamified engagement to tiers and statuses.

Emotional loyalty measurement

Behavioral loyalty metrics are not enough to fully understand customers’ behavior. Loyalty program platforms need to combine them with the measurement of emotional loyalty to understand the “why” behind the numbers. – as Comarch Loyalty Management does. CLM uses multiple metrics for stipulating the levels of customer satisfaction.

Referral program management

Key loyalty software features include strong customer referral program management that capitalizes on existing members’ positive experiences. This functionality lets you create a customer referral program that stands out – allowing segmentation of referrals, incentivization of both new and existing users, as well as fake account prevention. It’s characteristics like those that make Comarch’s solution the 4th best on the market, according to Forrester.

Community engagement

The strength of a vendor’s customer community translates to the strength of their solution. Comarch focuses on fully digitalizing our growing client base by implementing a Learning Management System backbone structured around three main pillars:

1. Loyalty Marketing Academy: An e-learning course for marketing practitioners focused on gaining knowledge as well as designing and running loyalty marketing programs.

2. Customer community: An online space exclusive for Comarch customers that features 50+ product and strategy-related channels (discussion groups), recognition for most active contributors, and industry-oriented sessions moderated by Comarch and industry experts.

3. Partner community: A closed community and portal dedicated to different types of official partners.

“As Head of R&D of our loyalty products, I’m thrilled with Comarch’s recognition in Forrester Wave. Loyalty is becoming mainstream and growing fast. We need new business models and simplified delivery/integration in martech ecosystems. In these difficult times of financial instability, it’s essential to focus on customer loyalty through great experience, personalization, and providing significant value to loyal consumers. Our AI-based marketing platform and wide range of business services makes it much easier for marketers. We’re here to support you at every step of the journey, from building strategy to day-to-day operations.”

– says Łukasz Słoniewski, Head of R&D – Loyalty & Marketing Solutions at Comarch.

The Future of loyalty marketing

The Forrester Wave: Loyalty Technology Solutions Q1 2023 report gives us insight into the direction the loyalty landscape is headed. Considering the challenges and needs faced by B2C marketing decision-makers, this evaluation shows the most critical pain points of customers looking for the best loyalty management software for their business. Forrester sets the bar high – its conditions for being included among its top loyalty vendors list are extensive and often, in our opinion, difficult to meet, but that’s what makes this profile so worthwhile. With the features, functionalities, and offerings mentioned above, Comarch is constantly pushing to not only fulfill but also exceed those expectations.

The post Top loyalty management software solutions: Forrester report appeared first on MarTech.

Over half a billion chats were conducted on Bing Chat since it launched 3-months ago, Microsoft corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi said.

Why we care. We’ve been keeping a close eye on generative AI integrations throughout the martech space. Bing Chat attracts many users who come to Bing to carry out searches and get questions answered. The API and new functionality will expand the possible applications for marketers. Exporting and sharing Bing Chats, for instance, makes it easier for marketers to collaborate.

What’s new. There are four main points to what is new with Bing Chat:

• Developer access to build third-party apps on top of Bing Chat.
• Removal of the waitlist for Bing Chat by going from a “Limited Preview” to an “Open Preview.”
• Gaining more visual answers for Bing Chat with rich images and videos.
• Offering a multi-session experiences with new chat history and persistent chats within the Edge browser, as well as the ability to export and share Bing chats.

API. Microsoft said soon, developers will be able to build third-party plug-ins into the Bing Chat experience. This is also something Bing hinted was coming weeks ago. In the screen shot below, you can see an example of OpenTable helping you find and book a reservation with a restaurant. This is something OpenAI’s ChatGPT already supports.

Improved experience with more visuals. Bing has updated the answers within Bing Chat to be more visually appealing by improving the formatting and layout, adding more rich images and rich videos, and also by adding charts and graphs when relevant. Also, Bing Image Creator is available in all languages, which means over 100 different languages, talk about getting more visual.

Microsoft also redesigned Edge to show chats in a better and more visual format. This includes streamlined look, rounded corners, organized containers and semi-transparent visual elements, the company said. Here is what it looks like:

You can even go from the Bing Chat interface into the Edge sidebar interface, so you can browse the web and continue your chat.

You will also be able to ask Bing Chat for answers by uploading images as part of your chat. After you upload an image, Bing Chat can search the web for related content.

In addition, Bing Chat in Microsoft Edge has improved summarization capabilities for long documents, both in PDF and HTML formats.

Chat history and exporting. Microsoft has been talking about adding chat history for some time now and now Microsoft is rolling it out for Bing Chat. You can use Bing Chat and be able to pick up where you left off, then you can return to previous chats in Bing’s chat history.

There is a “recents” tab on the right side to pickup where you left off. You can also see a “saved” tab for chats you saved for later.

Microsoft is also adding the ability to export and share your chats from Bing Chat or Edge sidebar. You will be able to share your chats on social media or move them into tools like Microsoft Word, if you so desire.

Additional reporting by Barry Schwartz

The post Bing Chat opens up to more users and developers with API, expanded visual answers appeared first on MarTech.

Simply put: Your competitors are stalking your customers.

Recent Gartner research shows corporate leaders identify “fear of a recession” as their number one challenge to meet growth in 2023. Moreover, CEOs and other senior business stakeholders revealed that they want CMOs to renew their focus on customer acquisition, retention and engagement.

How can marketing leaders respond as both intense customer competition among brands and internal pressures pile up? “During recessions, it’s more important than ever to remember that loyal customers are the primary enduring source of cash flow and organic growth,” John Quelch and Katherine E. Jocz wrote in 2009.

The threat of recession is a real challenge for B2B CMOs. Anticipating how customer behaviors change during a significant macroeconomic shift is difficult. Marketers cannot sit on the sidelines and hope for a solution. They must take a direct and proactive strategy to align their organization around customer retention. 

The latest Gartner CX Management survey identified customer retention as the best strategy to simultaneously meet internal goals and customer expectations. Here’s how to get there.

Leverage CX tools

Looking to set up your retention efforts for success? Using customer experience (CX) tools and assets (i.e., personas, journey maps and Voice of the Customer (VoC) data) to understand customer needs during economic shifts is necessary. 

The customer insight function within CX must identify and define the changes in customers’ markets and needs as they happen. 

Focus your retention efforts in the right direction by:

• Improving customer data collection and analysis. 
• Identifying and involving peers across the organization.
• Doing an inventory of existing data sources.
• Identifying your most pressing customer data needs.
• Systemizing outputs to identify gaps in delivering value to your customers across their life cycle.
• Committing to continuous listening through VoC for shifting customer expectations.

Take the following B2B manufacturing example. Customers may appreciate recommendations for product substitutions that allow them to continue operations when their preferred items are out-of-stock, more expensive or delayed. 

Understanding this customer need allows the manufacturing company to provide support throughout challenging economic times and help marketing leaders improve customer perceptions and meet internal goals simultaneously.

Dig deeper: Customer experience for the modern marketer

Select best-fit metrics

Selecting the right metrics for retention strategy success adds another layer of complexity to executing CX activities during a recession. CMOs should select metrics that best support an effective customer retention strategy, such as online rating scores, loyalty program participation, sales increases, and on-time delivery.

Using the same manufacturing company example, on-time and in-full customer delivery metrics were a minor concern during the looming recession due to the frequency of their orders. As the recession set in, the manufacturing organization decreased their orders, transforming the importance of the on-time and in-full customer delivery metric since fewer total orders were being sent. Metric selection and observation of customer changes are critical to customer retention success.

(CX) patience is a virtue

Gartner research has discovered a significant increase in meeting both customer perceptions and internal goals simultaneously when organizations have customer experience initiatives in place for five or more years.

During an economic downturn, CMOs face the strong temptation to reduce or cancel CX programs when customers’ buying behavior may change. There may be pressure to shift resources from customer-facing research into advertising, the marketing tech stack or other initiatives. 

But the better approach is to keep, not reduce or cut, customer experience initiatives focused on end-to-end customer insight throughout the customer journey. When you halt or reduce CX initiatives, you will quickly lose touch of changes in customer needs and expectations. Keeping an “always on” approach to CX is critical to maintain and benefit from improved customer understanding.

Insights do not equal actions. CMOs must work with the rest of the C-suite to focus commercial strategy on customer retention efforts. Put customer concerns and needs at the center through the expanded use of tools that listen, understand and improve CX. 

While economic uncertainty is inevitable for all organizations, a direct, planned and monitored approach will allow B2B CMOs to be successful as economic storm clouds approach.

Dig deeper: 3 recession-defeating marketing strategies

The post How B2B CMOs use CX to thrive amid economic uncertainty 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.

Click here to view more MarTech webinars.

The post How to connect with Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z appeared first on MarTech.

Evaluating the true ROI of a customer data platform means understanding how the technology improves key business metrics and enables working more efficiently.

That’s why BlueConic commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact study that measures both the profit and operational efficiency gains that can be unlocked with BlueConic.

On May 4th, guest speakers Forrester’s Joe Stanhope, VP, Principal Analyst and Julia Fadzeyeza, Principal Consultant, will join BlueConic’s CMO, Patrick Reynolds, to explore current CDP market trends and discuss the findings of the TEI study, including how BlueConic helped customers achieve:

• Up to 90%-time savings on segmentation, customer journeys, and reporting tasks
• Increased profit of $5.4M from improved conversion rates, new data monetization revenue streams, and strategic partnership growth
• Faster, higher-quality decision-making and support for future growth

Forrester’s TEI Study: How BlueConic Customers Reduced Operational Costs by Up to 90% Time Savings

Thursday, May 4 | 11AM ET | 5PM CEST

If you can’t join us live, be sure to register anyway so you can receive a link to the recording.

The post Forrester Total Economic Impact study reveals increased efficiency for marketers appeared first on MarTech.

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.

Click here to view more MarTech webinars.

The post Discover the ultimate marketing strategy for increased ROI and lead generation appeared first on MarTech.