Marketing and IT… Partners in crime or are they like water and fire? In this video Billy Boyle, co-founder and president operations of Owlstone, talks about the two and how they can become succesfull partners in Marketing Automation. “The two just need each other to bring marketing to another level”, he states. “One can’t live without the other.”
Though frequently at odds, marketing and IT executives agree that harnessing Big Data is imperative to building a customer-centric corporate culture, according to a study by the CMO Council, in partnership with SAS.
They also agree that a lack of CMO/CIO alignment, rigid silos, unclear responsibilities, and a lack of leadership impede an organization from using Big Data to its full potential, the survey of CMOs and CIOs found.
Big Data is important to achieving a customer-centric culture, according to the study:
Below, additional findings from the CMO Council study, titled Big Data’s Biggest Role, Aligning the CMO & CIO.
Access to in-depth data, and the ability to translate it into insights, is a competitive advantage according to 70% of marketers: 30% say it is critical, and 40% say it is part of the overall picture.
However, most respondents view the flood of incoming data as part obstacle and part opportunity: 61% of CMOs and 60% of CIOs say so, admitting they have a long way to go still in using Big Data properly.
The main challenge, according to 52% of marketers (and 45% of IT professionals), is that functional silos block aggregation of data from across the organization, making it difficult to truly achieve customer-centricity:
Moreover, 39% of CMOs say the corporate culture is not aligned around the needs of customers.
A likely explanation for the lack of total customer focus is that no clear ownership of the customer exists. Among marketing executives, 18% say that ownership rests with the CEO, 17% say the CMO, and 19% say sales. IT professionals assign ownership to the CEO (20%), CMO (19%), and sales (17%).
Organizations that report they have achieved total partnership between CMO and CIO also have clearer ownership of the customer.
In such organizations, marketers (24%) and IT professionals (30%) say the CEO owns the customer. Furthermore, marketers and IT executives in “total partnership” organizations are highly satisfied with their company’s ability to engage the customer (42% of marketers, 31% of IT execs).
Some long time IT observers and CIOs see the chief marketing officer as a threat to the CIO as nonsense.
But is he or she?
We’ve seen this clash before, observes Enterprise CIO Forum community manager John Dodge.
In today’s market marketing teams are under more and more pressure to perform and get results. ROI is a magic word in marketing now-a-days, while budgets and resources are under pressure as well. In the meantime customers are holding back and getting less and less faithfull to just one brand. So, pressure is on for the marketing department, because you can only do so much to get better results.
There are several trends today which cause this higher pressure, says a paper by DMA and SAS.
How can marketers keep their head up in all this turmoil? How can they identify the best strategy that will deliver the best returns on from marketing investments?
Wilson Raj, Global Customer Intelligence Director at SAS shed his light on how to improve ROI on your marketing investments during a webinar sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association and SAS. Optimization is the keyword, he says.
Marketing has come a long way. People have been selling things and services since early man. But how we market these things has changed a lot through the years and ages.
Modern marketing hasn’t been around that long, it started at the early 20th century, according to Marketo. As we entered the modern industrial age, the amount of goods became greater than the number of available customers, and so did the competition because suddenly had a choice. Modern marketing was born.
In time, with the emergence of new technology, marketing had to adapt. First, radio shook up how companies did their marketing. Then television made a huge impact. Then the Internet revolutionized not only how people did business but also how they live.
To illustrate technological advancements that have changed the course of marketing, Marketo put together an infographic based on its The Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation.
Dr. Robert Shaw is a renowned businesswriter on marketing. He also is a consultant on the field of marketing, particularly Marketing performance measurement and management and Database marketing.
In his work two key elements come forward.
In this ten minute interview, conducted by Mayer Becker, Shaw sheds his light on ‘Leaner, faster and better marketing’.
Elements of user interface that you control are vital to the success of your marketing platform adoption & ROI. You are developing the materials in order to be a simple, effective shortcut for your marketers while you provide them a healthy freedom within a framework. Your goal is to make available a path to success in record time. Saving your participants time will save your budget. Making the items easy to navigate and locate will be one of the top contributers to user adoption success.
Perhaps your marketing organization, like so many we work with have a marketing dashboard. At two recent conferences where the topic was marketing dashboards we asked attendees whether their dashboard enables them to the following:
Most every participant indicated that their dashboard is not addressing these three questions. If this situation sounds familiar, then it may be time to do some fine tuning. Below are three attributes we use to evaluate a dashboard’s ability to facilitate decisions, improve marketing, and prove marketing’s contribution.
Alignment
One of the first things we look for when reviewing a dashboard is the degree of connection between marketing activities and investments and business outcomes. This signals how well marketing is aligned with the business needles the company is trying to move and whether marketing will be able to communicate its impact and contribution. For example, let’s say one of the metrics on the dashboard is brand awareness. That might or might not be a good metric. And even if it is a good metric for the organization, if the relationship between brand awareness and the outcome it is expected to impact is unclear, then the dashboard needs adjustment. Members of the C-Suite are invest in marketing initiatives that will help the company acquire more of something, faster, less expensively, for example, more customers, more market share, more business with existing customer; faster conversion rates, and faster product adoption. Does your marketing dashboard show marketing value, contribution and impact on find, keep and grow, and answer the questions of more, faster, and at what cost?
Outcome-based Metrics
The next thing we examine is the metrics themselves. Most of the time what we see is data around marketing activity and leads. Rarely are the metrics actionable. If the metric isn’t helping you make course adjustments or strategic recommendations it might be interesting and you may want to track it, but it probably isn’t one you want to send up the flagpole. Think about the dashboard in your car. There are just a very few indicators you are monitoring such as level of fuel, engine temperature, air pressure, and speed. Each of these indicators are tied to some very important outcomes, such as not getting stuck because the tank is dry or the tire is flat or the engine overheated, or not getting a speeding ticket. Each of us uses the dashboard in our cars as a way to make decisions to help manage or mitigate risk. Some of us are willing to push the risk envelope a bit more and keep the pedal to the metal or keep driving even though the gas gauge needle says the car is running on fumes. But we have the metrics we need to decide whether to stop and fuel up or not.
Performance Targets
Lastly, we look to see whether the dashboard compares targets to actual. Many dashboards are missing this critical element. Monitoring, measuring, and reporting results need to be within the context of the target and the commitment made. There are two parts to this dimension:
Summary
If you have a dashboard that makes the connection between marketing activities, investment and results, is comprised of metrics that foster decision and action, and reports performance within context and commitment you are on your way to having a dashboard that will enable you to improve and prove the value of marketing.
The world is in a constant state of change. Technology changes even faster then we can blink our eyes. It isn’t that long ago computers were introduced and look at us now, all working in The Cloud. We all think of ourselves as highly technological developed, but by tomorrow we are out of date. Change comes fast, and will be coming even faster. Lattice Engines created this infographic exploring the most pivotal inventions that have revolutionized sales.
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Last fall, we announced the release of Teamwork 1.1, the latest version of ADAM’s cross-media annotation, proofing, and approval studio tool. Teamwork is specifically designed to work with all types of rich-media files, including text, images, audio, and video. Therefore, Teamwork provides much-needed support for enterprise marketers who are increasingly required to develop and execute multi-channel, cross-media marketing campaigns and programs.In many large companies, particularly global enterprises, review and approval processes have become more complex and time consuming. The proliferation of marketing channels and media formats, the growing need to “localize” marketing messages and materials, and the increased use of “content marketing” have caused the volume of content that must be reviewed to grow exponentially.
