Marketing’s Declaration of Independence

With the July 4th holiday behind us and marketers back in action, it’s time to celebrate the independence that’s happening throughout the halls of marketing. It’s clear that marketers have declared independence and the opportunities are becoming more pronounced in 2015, with explosive impact to business results.

This journey to marketing independence has been progressing over time, of course, resulting in less reliance on IT and more opportunity to drive consumer action and conversion across channels than ever before. As we head into the second half of 2015, it’s a great time to take a look at our progression and update our visions as we continue navigating top priorities to accelerate success.

A Foundation of Automation

The main foundational theme driving marketing independence is automation. With automated capabilities and programs, marketers continue to gain independence from key marketing challenges that have plagued us since the dark ages (yes, way back before smartphones reached the 75 percent consumer penetration range). With this increased freedom and range of automation impact comes responsibility and more opportunities for data-drive optimization.

Actionable, Real-Time Data

With more consumer interactions to drive continual data gathering across channels, there has never been more immediately actionable data. We are no longer in a world where marketers can wait for IT resources to define segments and pull lists. Today, marketers need tools and platforms that put data into instant use to deliver relevant, right time and right place messaging that drives fast consumer actions.

Immediate actions are driven off real-time data that is based on location, device, external events, behavior and more. Data drives each and every digital experience and fast action is key.

With nimble, fast action data, marketers also require transparent performance metricsdata that delivers insight into what programs and data points are driving interactions and conversion points. Marketing independence relies on data and analysis insight to make decisions on program optimizations. Gaining access to get performance data that will guide ongoing optimization leads to the right data at your fingertips to experience true independence and lead innovation over time and optimization.

New and Differentiated Cross-Channel Experiences

Across industries, new consumer experiences are disrupting established businesses and driving up expectations for more relevancy and context. We see consumers actively participating in defining their expected experiences, with clear expectations for increased value and alignment with their wants and needs.

Weaving communications across the consumer lifecycle and across various channels brings marketing automation to the forefront of business differentiation. The path to consumer action may include any or all of the following communication modes, requiring a careful balance and interdependency with the ability to optimize cross-channel impact while not overwhelming consumers:

• Promotional, triggered and transactional emails
• Mobile applications and push notifications
• SMS and MMS messaging
• Video content
• Social data gathering, social sharing and social content integration
• Web Interactions
• Customer Service Interactions
• Data gathering across channels in exchange for customized experiences
• Offline experiences in store and at events or venues

True marketing independence comes from harnessing data to deliver automated cross-channel experiences and meaningful micro-moments driven by consumer wants.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate our independence, marketers! We have moved past the days of linear communication and an overreliance on IT resources. Today, we can build new data-driven consumer experiences that deliver more value to consumers, differentiate our business value and lead to more action.