4 Ways Your Marketing Team Needs to Evolve in 2015

Blog
Bryan Brown
‎Vice President Product Strategy
Silverpop

More than 80 percent of consumers today are using social, local and mobile technologies to do some combination of browsing, researching and buying products. Yet 73 percent of companies rate their multichannel customer experience as “OK,” “Poor” or “Very Poor.”

Yet despite the need to deliver a seamless omnichannel customer experience, many of today’s marketing departments remain poorly positioned to do so. Often, for example, customer data across email, mobile, web, social and other channels is siloed. Making matter worse, in many cases the marketing personnel in charge of these channels are equally siloed from one another. As a result, companies lack the cross-channel customer insights they need to deliver relevant, timely, personalized content.

This marketing fragmentation extends to the different tools and products teams are using. Since the marketing function isn’t connected in terms of data, technology or communication, companies continue doing channel-by-channel marketing despite the fact that the modern-day customer journey demands they do otherwise.

This is starting to change, though. Market pressure from customers is beginning to drive companies to look for better ways to perform multichannel marketing campaigns that create a superior overall experience for the customer. As marketers shift to creating more automated programs driven by customer behaviors as opposed to product-driven, calendar-based campaigns, the need to integrate data and technologies from multiple sources and work across groups within the department is growing.

To increase your chances of success in 2015, here are four ways I recommend you look to transition your marketing department in the year ahead:

1) Shift your hiring.

You’ll need a combination of right-brain and left-brain types to thrive in a new marketing landscape in which not only is creativity key, but also the ability to think strategically and map out sophisticated automated programs that respond to your contacts’ behaviors and anticipate their needs.

2) Think multichannel personalization.

Some marketers have made the shift to delivering individualized emails, but are still serving up the same generic content on their website, within their mobile app, via SMS and/or on social. Think about how you can start providing more personal connections between your brand and your customer on every channel.

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3) Reach across the aisle.

Your customers may not think about having an “omnichannel” experience with your business, but chances are high they’ll notice if the way you interact with them lacks contextual understanding of who and where they are. So, start aligning your teams around building more consistent, rewarding relationships with customers across channels.

4) Tap new technologies.

Seek out new ways you can use innovative technologies to bring collaboration and workflow to agile marketing, helping solve the disconnect between siloed technology and marketing teams. The goal should be to use these tools to manage your team and your work around the customer experience, rather than leaving the customer journey as an afterthought.

By taking these steps, you’ll be in a stronger position to plan, design and execute multichannel campaigns in 2015. And you’ll be on your way to providing a better customer experience, increasing loyalty and driving more revenue for your business.

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