It’s safe to say that most — if not all — marketers are feeling the heat of a quickly changing landscape, whether it be personalization expectations, the increasing (and counter-intuitive) demands of data security and governance, or even the waning CMO title. They’re scrambling to find their place in this new world, but still using technology and strategies from years past: a stack made up of solutions that can’t talk to each other, lakes of unused data, channel-focused initiatives, and so on. And while a great many have been able to survive by the skin of their teeth, this year won’t be so lucky.
A downward marketing spiral
Let’s start with the personalization problem. Expectations around the customer experience have reached all new heights: people want every digital interaction they have with a brand to feel as exclusive and as tailored to them as a face-to-face conversation. This means marketers need solutions that don’t just meet, but exceed those demands. And yet, 95% aren’t personalizing at this 1:1 level.
Take a minute to think about that. Part of why Netflix is so successful is because of how little thought a consumer has to put into their actions in order to have a good experience. The platform offers a ton of content, more than anyone has time to explore in its entirety, but that’s okay. Their focus on personalized recommendations make selecting your entertainment a breeze. Imagine what you could do as a marketer if you had that kind of power. Or, better yet, imagine the growth you’d be missing out of if you didn’t.
A major culprit is the continued use of dated tech stacks and strategies, including tools that are unable to communicate with each other, lakes of unused data, and the deployment of channel-centric over consumer-centric experiences. As marketers try to find their footing in this new world of fickle consumers with all-or-nothing attitudes, they’ll need to identify and remedy these challenges head-on, rather than continue to try and work around them.
To add insult to injury, an underperforming stack can do more than just prevent marketing outputs from realizing their full potential. A stack with components that can’t talk to each other means the people running those components don’t talk to each other. It’s silo within silo.
A better tomorrow
These problems aren’t lost on marketers, and neither is all hope. In fact, nearly 9 in 10 say they’d love to have access to training, or resources to improve their management of and execution against data.
That’s why we’re starting with the foundation. In this report from Blueshift and research company Kelton Global, it’s revealed why exactly that the vast majority of marketers are positioned to fall behind the curve, as well as what the innovative few are doing to achieve growth.
