Last month, we published a report with Econsultancy called “The State of Consumer-First and Omnichannel Marketing” that surveyed more than 400 marketers from around the world on everything from AI to GDPR compliance. A big focus of the report was on how marketers are aspiring to, but falling short of delivering, true consumer-first experiences that both respect privacy and delight with coordinated, cohesive messages across channels and devices. Dan Rosenberg, our chief marketing & strategy officer, recently talked to TechBytes editor Sudipto Ghosh on our research and how marketers can make martech-adtech integration a goal for 2019.
Why did you decide to publish the report “The State of Consumer-First and Omnichannel Marketing?”
We decided to call out our consumer-first philosophy as a market theme at the start of this year as we saw the rise of adblocking, mistrust of advertising and impending GDPR legislation as symptoms that we are not delivering the best advertising experiences to consumers. We believe that consumers can love marketing again, but first we need to understand what is turning them off from the ads they see and figure out how to both respect them with the right approach to identity and data privacy and delight them with personalized experiences coordinated across channels and devices at the right frequency and sequence, accounting for their recent and past behaviors and actions. Our report, in partnership with Econsultancy, examines how global marketers are responding to this dual challenge and opportunity so we can help them identify how to rise to the occasion to put consumers first.
Why should a CMO read the report? How does it help CMOs build or buy a technology stack?
CMOs should first read the report because the respondents that took the survey are their peers — more than half are senior-level marketers from around the world. It’s a true window into how their peers are thinking about marketing best practices, media channels, identity, omnichannel and emerging opportunities such as artificial intelligence.
The report can help them plan key functions by highlighting the gaps in their current technology stack. We consistently found in the results that marketers want to do so much more but are being held back from being able to execute. For instance, the ability to dynamically segment audiences was identified by 67% of respondents as one of the top three capabilities they hope to have over the next five years when it comes to improving the advertising experience for consumers. But they are not actually prioritizing the data quality improvements or technology integration required to enable this capability — reduced data loss and latency ranked lowest in the report when it comes to the perceived benefits of integrated technology. Dynamic segmentation through an integrated platform lets you connect the right message to the right consumer more quickly and seamlessly across touchpoints. In general, any data loss, which can occur when data management is siloed from media buying, decreases the accuracy of audience segments, often resulting in consumers being shown an ad for something obviously irrelevant to them or, on the other extreme, something they already bought — one of the reasons for their frustration with advertising.
What metric should one rely on to decide on the ‘satisfaction level’ of technology for Marketing and Advertising?
Our mission is to empower marketers to delight their customers and drive real business outcomes. The metrics will be different depending on their goals, but we commit to helping marketers identify the true KPIs that will drive true outcomes such as sales.
Read the full interview here.