Download Driving Digital Marketing PerforMance With the Right

Driving Digital Marketing
Performance With the Right
Platforms, People, and Processes
integrate to accelerate Digital Marketing value
CONTENTS
3
5
6
14
17
18
19
Introduction
Leadership Committee
Key Findings
Expert Commentary
About the CMO Council
About Acceleration
About Our Partners
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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integrate to accelerate Digital Marketing value
INTRODUCTION
With more than $1.5 trillion spent on marketing and communications worldwide, there are significant
incentives for global enterprises to improve the way they allocate, optimize and justify spend.
Consider consumer adoption rates of digital engagement channels:
• 75.6% of the US population is online
• 2/3 of web users will use social networks
• 70.8% of web users will watch online videos
• 88.1% of web users over the age of 14 will browse or research products online
• 83.9% of these researchers will make at least one purchase
Without question, marketers are at that apex of this digital evolution as organizations are rallying
around technology. Functional marketing silos are being imploded and tightly connected for
improved collaboration, integration, workflow and use of critical data using advanced marketing
automation platforms.
Determining the optimal way to go to market has never been more challenging. A multitude of
new media channels and online/mobile avenues of market access are fragmenting media buys.
Channels of distribution are multiplying, requiring broader, more diverse and customized marketing
support. Sophisticated customer information gathering and database marketing techniques are
seeing big shifts of marketing resources into areas that allow for improved behavioral targeting and
personalization to optimize response and revenue potential.
Market pace and velocity requires more efficient and intimate online customer engagement, quicker
product uptake and viral affirmation through social and shared interest networks, as well as greater
prominence and cost-effective prospect acquisition through web sites and contextual search
optimization, web content delivery, and pervasive mobile connectivity with customers.
Today’s marketing planning process requires better data integration and analytics, more
accurate forecasting and predictive modeling, higher levels of marketing group participation and
accountability, as well as the deployment of closed loop campaign performance dashboards. This will
be driven by a wider embrace of marketing automation platforms processes, continuous business
activity monitoring and intelligence gathering across all customer touch points, interactions and
transactions.
Customer expectation in the digitally driven world demands targeted, relevant meaningful
engagement at every turn. As more customers consider defection from brands because the
information, content, services, promotions and engagements lack relevance and resonance,
marketers must look to data-driven strategies that deliver the right message to the right customer
at the right time...and in the right channel. Marketing must forge and reinforce the ties between
technology, customer data and customer experience.
Given the significant shift and re-allocation of marketing dollars into interactive digital media
channels, the CMO Council has set up a dedicated research center focused on measuring and
tracking the effectiveness, relevance and value of online marketing programs and spend. This new
entity, the Digital Marketing Performance Institute (www.onlineperformance.org), will examine
and advocate the need for more unified and integrated approaches to managing and optimizing the
fragmented interactive marketing discipline.
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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integrate to accelerate Digital Marketing value
The report and insights that follow are the first salvo into this ongoing dialog. Digital marketing
will continue to evolve at this rapid, frenetic pace. New engagement channels will emerge.
Solutions like email and CRM platforms will take on the din of “traditional digital marketing
tools”, as new more glamorous channels like social media in all of its forms from Facebook to
Pinterest and back again to YouTube continue to captivate customers.
The first, and likely most critical step to establishing a long-lasting digital strategy is to develop
a integrated infrastructure that allows for flexibility and answers key goals for the business.
Chief marketers are in need of consultation, guidance, and direction when it comes to helping
them specify, implement and adopt digital marketing architectures, strategies, practices and
solutions. They are challenged to staff and resource digital marketing programs, integrate
offline and online campaigns, as well as unify disparate marketing functions, data sources,
and go-to-market processes. More importantly, they have to be effective at making a business
case to management on how digital marketing investment and migration will drive business
performance, increase customer lifetime value and retention, as well as create more adept and
adaptive organizations.
Big data-driven, marketing automation is no panacea. It is filled with pitfalls, problems and
potholes. Understanding the requirements and mapping and modeling the journey takes outside
expertise and knowledge from an unaligned resource.
This report looks to help marketers take that first step towards leaping over the competition
and ramping up the value from digital marketing investments. It is truly about accelerating
the process to more efficiently reach a point of success. What this report truly outlined is that
everyone in the process – Marketers and C-Suite management alike – are ready for take-off.
Marketers are armed with a box full of pins. What is missing is the right pincushion that can tie
all of the technologies and the data together.
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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Leadership committee
Tim Suther
Lynne Brum
Mark Phibbs
Andisa Ntsubane
Senior Vice President, Chief
Marketing Officer
Acxiom
Senior Director, APAC Marketing
Adobe
Markus Kramer
Global Marketing Director
Aston Martin
Michelle Waldgeir
Vice President, Marketing
Astrum Solar
Drew Panayiotou
Senior Vice President, US
Marketing
BestBuy
Rich Brayer
Vice President, Marketing
Car-X Auto Service
Richard Stamets
Strategic Marketing Executive
Specialty Solutions Group (a
Chartis company)
Steve Carchedi
Chief Marketing Officer
GE Healthcare–MDX
Nicholas de
Kouchkovsky
Chief Marketing Officer
Genesys (Alcatel-Lucent)
Charlie Cole
Former Vice President, Online
Marketing
Lucky Brand
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
Vice President, Marketing and
Corporate Communications
Metabolix
Director, Marketing and
Communicatons
Microsoft-South Africa
Robert Solomon
Senior Vice President, Chief
Marketing Officer
Outrigger Enterprises Group
Lapo Paladini
Senior Vice President, Chief
Marketing Officer
PerkinElmer
Robin Saitz
Senior Vice President, Solutions
Marketing
PTC
Suaad Sait
Chief Marketing Officer
Rackspace
David Friedman
President, Marketing
Sears
Isaac J. Turk
Director, Database and Marketing
Analytics
SiriusXM Radio, Inc.
Roger Menz
Vice President, Global Marketing
Sony Music Entertainment
Gina Testa
Vice President, Graphic
Communications
Xerox Corporation
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Key Findings
By the year 2017, Gartner predicts that the chief marketing officer (CMO) will outspend the chief
information officer (CIO) on IT. Gartner points to projected increases in marketing budgets in the
neighborhood of 9 percent, while IT budgets are predicted to increase by almost half that rate at
4.7 percent as a key contributor to this shift in technology budget control. The analysts also believe
that the real proof is that marketing—from operations through campaign execution—has become
increasingly technology dependent, and that the rise of big data will continue the push toward a
dominant digital marketing future.
What is missing from this story of marketing dollar domination is the rationale driving the
organization to rally around digital marketing investments. In reality, digital marketing investments
to date have already been sizable, and while that amount is arguably less in total spend compared
to the large advertising budgets of the past, new digitally directed marketing investments are
being made with an intentional effort to realize the opportunities in efficiency, engagement, and
intelligence that digital marketing holds. Many marketers are looking beyond the investments
of today and are focused on what will be required to leapfrog the competition and gain a true
competitive edge in tomorrow’s age of an even more demanding, mobile, and highly digital
consumer.
To add some body around this digital marketing dialogue, the CMO Council, in partnership with
digital marketing consultancy Acceleration, engaged in a thought leadership initiative to better
understand where and how marketing technology budgets were being applied specifically to digital
marketing platforms and applications, and where the opportunity lies to accelerate performance
and business outcomes through digital marketing. Dubbed “Integrate to Accelerate Digital
Marketing Value,” the six-month program includes interviews with digital marketing leaders who
are pushing the bar upward in the strategy, measurement, and outcomes of digital marketing
investments. The program also surveyed more than 200 senior corporate marketing leaders to gain
a better understanding of the platforms, people, and processes that comprise their winning digital
outcomes.
What we found was a changed environment for marketers—one that has not necessarily been the
norm for some time. Like never before, the C-suite is looking to digital marketing as a strategic
imperative, allocating budgets and resources to fully exploit and leverage the opportunity. With
this heightened expectation and support also come key challenges that marketing must begin
to address. Specifically, marketing’s reluctance to fully leverage IT as a partner rather than a
handyman simply on site to maintain the older systems must come to an end.
Marketing must also take a step outside of the cocoon of point solutions and communicationscentered applications to focus on those data-driven engagement platforms that work to deliver a
more personalized, relevant, and intelligent experience for each customer. It will only be through
this bond between technology and data that real advancements for the business and marketing
can be achieved. And while marketing currently has C-suite support to execute, the window to take
that next leap forward will not be open forever. It must be capitalized upon now, before the next
evolution of technology takes marketing by storm.
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key findings
Management Support Boosts Digital Enthusiasm
If we look back five years, the support for the CMO—let alone support for spending in digital
marketing as a strategic business driver—was more of a wish than a mandate. In the 2007 study,
“Define and Align the CMO: Taking a Measure of the Chief Marketing Officer,” the CMO Council
asked CEOs, presidents, and board-level executives where and how marketing was impacting,
influencing, and driving the business.
While marketing officers held high levels of influence and clout in decisions around branding,
marketing planning, and operations, digital marketing (or eMarketing, as it had been dubbed then)
was viewed as a more tactical or executional decision. And at the time, this seemed perfect for the
CMO as marketing had yet to earn a high level of clout within the C-suite, being largely seen as a
branding or advertising functionary.
Those savvy corporate leaders had started to apply a new measure to the top marketer spot,
demanding higher levels of business acumen, financial knowledge, and a digital marketing
preparedness that would allow a CMO to recommend, identify, and implement new media and
digital marketing solutions. As CEOs and board executives were asked to rank the requirements
of tomorrow’s CMO, the top four requirements were:
1. Have strong business acumen.
2. Possess exceptional measurement and analytical abilities.
3. Be the connective tissue of the organization—bringing together far-flung disparate tools,
solutions, and resources.
4. Have superior technology and Internet expertise to specify, deploy, and quantify the
business impact of new and emerging digital solutions.
Today, marketers have gained credibility and influence, having added the measurement, visibility,
and operational rigor to marketing that the C-suite had once deemed as lacking. Further, marketing
has elevated the digital marketing conversation from one that was largely tactical into a strategic
focus that is embraced by C-level executives.
When asked to what degree digital marketing had become a topic of conversation and focus for
interaction with C-level executives or line-of-business (LOB) owners, 20 percent of marketers state
they have a mandate and the budget to execute while 42 percent say they have strong interest
and active support at the LOB level. But while 23 percent admit that management is still trying to
understand where digital fits into the overall business, it is clear that digital marketing is a hot topic
around the C-suite table.
This clear support has been largely driven by the belief that digital marketing will play a
transformative role over marketing as well as the business at large. Specifically, management
is looking for increased marketing performance and clear ROI through more efficient digital
media channels; better customer engagement that is more robust thanks to the adoption of
personalization campaigns that leverage customer insights and analytics; as well as a call for
marketing and engagement to match the current demands of customers who expect live, ondemand, and always-on engagement opportunities with brands and companies.
“Consumers want transparency across the channels, and that requires technology and channel
management and strategy; that’s something we value highly and monitor carefully,” says Robert
Solomon, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Outrigger Enterprises Group. As
a busy hotelier and resort destination, marketers like Solomon must implement applications with
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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key findings
the ability to extract actionable and insightful information, especially those that illuminate crosschannel behaviors to deliver the ultimate customer experience. This reinvention of the experience
through data in a timely, profitable, measurable, and efficient fashion has only amplified the desire
and excitement of senior management.
Especially enthused are LOB heads, who are likely seeking ways to amplify the new product
launches that were slow to roll out in the depressed economy, but were rolling out with a vengeance
over the past 12 to 18 months. When asked which digital marketing processes and functions had the
most appeal, management and LOB leaders pointed to:
• Customer data integration, analytics, and personalization of market interactions (62 percent)
• Website performance improvements and richer online engagements (61 percent)
• Lead acquisition, conversion, and upselling/cross-selling of customers (60 percent)
• Behavior-based insight gathering for more effective segmentation and messaging (41
percent)
• Search marketing and online advertising optimization (39 percent)
Accelerated performance across go-to-market activities and increased visibility into demandgenerating campaigns will only strengthen the resolve of LOB owners to throw their support
behind digital investments. However, this may also be perpetuating a more fragmented digital
infrastructure as different segments of the business gravitate to individual point solutions in the
digital portfolio.
Application Fragmentation Threatens Digital Acceleration
While a steady stream of senior support is boosting marketing’s resolve in seeing the digital
transformation through, the rapid evolution of technologies, disconnects between point solutions
and legacy infrastructure, and increasing complexity across technology can threaten the integration
of digital marketing across the enterprise.
More than one-third of respondents indicated that their current state of digital marketing adoption
and integration was a random collection of point solutions and not very integrated across the
enterprise. And as 44 percent of marketers see their own digital strategies as still being at an
exploration level, with teams continuing to evaluate all options, few are leading the pack in
expertise or integration.
Interestingly, those same marketers who lament over a largely fragmented digital marketing
portfolio are also the same respondents who failed to include a key internal resource that could
help establish a more integrated and aligned roadmap—the CIO and IT team. Only 32 percent are
teaming with IT to specify needs and requirements, and even fewer (26 percent) are developing
multidisciplinary task forces to lead the assessment process.
When asked how marketers were teaming with the CIO and IT group to map digital marketing
architectures and roadmaps, 48 percent are seeking insights on existing infrastructure, and 37
percent want to better understand how legacy systems can interface with new marketing solutions.
Again, joint task forces are seldom utilized, as only 32 percent of marketers have teamed with IT
to lead initiatives.
Consider the assessment and teaming practices of those marketers who identify themselves
as being high-performance, data-driven digital marketers. Of these digital gurus, 26 percent
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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key findings
are developing a combined task force to create roadmaps and evaluate solutions. They are also
including the customer in the platform assessment process, as data-driven leaders place equal
emphasis on the customer’s own preferences in engagement channels and research about the
marketing technology landscape. This is compared to the general respondent group who prefer to
turn to internal marketing teams (59 percent) or source best-practice studies and analyst reports
(51 percent).
Best-practice leaders have indicated that this strategic partnership is critical at numerous stages of
the digital development process.
“Our current IT infrastructure has allowed us to go to market more efficiently than before,” explains
Markus Kramer, Global Marketing Director for Aston Martin. “Because there is no real barrier
between the marketing and IT teams, we’ve modeled an architecture that fits our organizational
size and makes it easier to deal with the complexities we face.”
The connection has proven to be especially valuable through the budgeting and planning processes,
especially when marketing must make a business case for the proposed IT investments. Despite
only 24 percent of marketers turning to IT to assist in making a business case for investment, bestpractice leaders are often turning to IT and even reaching further across the enterprise to ensure
value, ROI, and real benchmarks are in place for every investment.
“In determining our digital investments, the business, finance, strategic analytics, and IT teams
collaborate on a business case that is based on estimates and benchmarks across cost per
acquisition through ROI for a given campaign or program,” explains Isaac Turk, Director of Database
Marketing and Analytics for SiriusXM Radio, Inc. “If an area proves to be effective, management is
willing to increase spending in that area until the marginal economics dictate otherwise.”
Marketing may also be missing an opportunity to access data and insights into disparate customer
data resources and to incorporate these insights into existing platform usage. Understanding how
organization resources and customers are using and engaging—or more specifically, are not using
and engaging—with technologies can provide even deeper insights into where investments can be
eliminated or augmented.
Regardless of this lack of partnership, marketers are continuing to make a bold path into continued
investment into digital platforms. Relative to digital marketing success, point solutions lead the way.
A notable 67 percent of respondents have found email marketing the most effective, and they plan
on continuing investments over the next 12 to 18 months.
Launching Beyond the Comfort Zone
While email solutions, web analytics, and even social media monitoring tools have been in the
marketing ecosystem for some time now, respondents indicate that continued investment or
reinvestment will continue. New advancements in the speed, efficiency, and functionality of
these platforms and applications continue to entice marketers to upgrade or advance to the next
great solution that will continue to drive digital effectiveness forward. But quite unintentionally,
marketing has landed in a comfort zone of sorts, continuously looking to improve and refine known
communication, web, and engagement applications and often overlooking critical drivers to overall
business and marketing operations improvement.
Take, for example, the three key questions we asked marketers about the individual digital
marketing solutions available to them that have shown success, and which of these platforms are
integrated and aligned across the organization.
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key findings
Top Five Responses
Currently Deployed
Expect to Deploy
Integrated and Aligned
Applications
1
Email
Social media monitoring
Email
2
Web analytics
Marketing analytics
Web analytics
3
Online advertising
Email
Social media monitoring
4
Social media monitoring
Web analytics
Demand generation
5
Demand generation
Demand generation
Campaign execution
From these three questions, a pattern begins to emerge that may indicate that rather than
branching beyond core functions and digital marketing expertise, marketers are sticking with points
of tactical execution that have been proven over time. The data also suggest that while platforms
outside of this comfort zone are on the marketing radar, they require a new or even more advanced
level of talent or expertise than what is currently available to the marketing function.
The least utilized, least invested in, and least integrated and aligned applications are also those
platforms that are largely dependent on cross-functional collaboration and partnership, that apply
additional measures and metrics to harder-to-manage processes, or are representative of advanced
(and perhaps too advanced) analytics.
Bottom Five Responses
Currently Deployed
Expect to Deploy
Integrated and Aligned
Applications
1
Marketing supply chain
management
Marketing supply chain
management
Email
2
Multichannel contact and
service center
Viral word-of-mouth
marketing
Marketing supply chain
management
3
Agency performance
management
Agency performance
management
Mobile relationship marketing
4
Social media monitoring
Multichannel contact and
service center
Multichannel contact and
service center
5
Attribution modeling
Attribution modeling
Agency performance
management
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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key findings
Each of these applications also has a key place in the overall marketing operational picture, adding
management and rigor to often out-of-control processes that can lack visibility and accountability.
For example, integration of a marketing supply chain management tool can reduce operational
overhead and manage and measure the impact of individual marketing campaigns and creative
executions while also applying keen procurement and finance-based measures to the overall
marketing operational process for managing consumables. Yet few marketers really understand
what the nature of their marketing supply chain is—and getting a handle on this situation will
require involving groups as far reaching as finance, operations, procurement, and customer service.
Often, it is easier to focus on the known variables like web analytics.
Turning back to those best-practice leaders driving engagements through data, it is interesting
to note where investments will be made in the next year. According to this elite group, the next
12 months will see investments in marketing resource management applications (27 percent),
campaign and workflow management tools (32 percent), email (38 percent), and social monitoring
(46 percent) re-investments, opting to focus more on those technologies that can advance the
process and deepen customer engagement.
“We learned that it doesn’t make sense to put all of your eggs into one basket; you need to create
various programs, and they need to be measureable,” says Drew Panayiotou, Senior Vice President
of US Marketing for Best Buy. “We use a number of standard metrics, but we need to get better in
how we use them.”
According to Rich Brayer, Vice President of Marketing for Car-X Auto Service, a core challenge to
developing an advanced digital marketing strategy is the sheer velocity at which both consumer
preference and technological advancement are evolving.
“What worked two months ago may no longer work, and we don’t always understand why. We’re
constantly measuring ourselves against standards that may have changed,” Brayer explains.
“Sometimes, it isn’t a matter of having technical knowledge or expertise; it’s a question of whether
we understand what people are telling us and why things change.”
This makes aggregation of cross-functional customer data and intelligence critical to an optimized
digital marketing architecture. Another core component is tapping the right talent to monitor,
analyze, measure, and execute on programs across this integrated system. And acquisition of talent
in this digital age has become more difficult than the acquisition of customers for some marketers.
Coupling Top Technology With Top Talent
Beyond the technology, platforms, or applications, talent often emerges as a key challenge and
roadblock to those marketers looking to take the next step into digital marketing performance and
excellence.
Let’s consider the resources marketing is turning to in the process of assessing and identifying key
digital marketing technologies. Internal marketing resources tend to be the primary experts when
it comes to developing a digital marketing architecture, but marketing executives also admit they
are not wholly satisfied with the outcome and result of this resource. A staggering 77 percent
of marketers said their primary source for evaluating and specifying technologies was their own
internal team, and an additional 46 percent are turning to vendors and solutions providers to
provide platform intelligence. Only 17 percent are turning to expert consultants that specialize in
digital marketing—ironically, the same percentage of marketers who are inclined to turn to their
CIO for insights.
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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key findings
The most common complaint among marketers who find themselves disillusioned with their current
resources is that as technology is speeding forward, talent development is not advancing at the
same frenetic pace. Roger Menz, Vice President of Global Marketing for Sony Music Entertainment,
notes, “While enthusiasm and excitement over new and shiny platforms is exceedingly high,
the level of real understanding and expertise is just not fully developed. And enthusiasm and
excitement does little to sway the minds of management who is looking for a dollars-and-cents
business case to substantiate the dollar and overhead investments.”
As marketing is also reinvesting to spur on continuous improvement in certain key areas, the next
step up in talent is hard to develop.
“Before, you had big CPG companies with people who were proficient in brand management, but
now there’s no training ground for digital; no one is developing savvy digital marketers with any
degree of velocity or volume,” concludes Panayiotou. This frustration over talent development
is evident, as 23 percent of marketers identify recruiting the right talent to run advanced digital
marketing programs as a top concern or challenge already being experienced.
Talent can certainly be trained, however, and as digital advancement continues, more highly trained
and skilled digital gurus will emerge. But this talent must be empowered to fully leverage data and
internal partners to maximize the potential of the technologies in which marketing will continue to
invest. While budget is a clear and very real constraint, a lack of integration and alignment around
far-flung technology platforms can actually do more to confuse, dissect, and separate the digital
marketing architecture.
Conclusion
Like never before, marketers have reached an inflection point for digital marketing. The choice will
be to continue to hover in the comfort zone of technologies and applications, happily continue to
perfect and reinvent core digital applications, or to take the next evolutionary leap to intentionally
map and develop an integrated digital marketing program that seamlessly binds technologies with
customer data.
This architecture must be one that allows for the ebb and flow of talent, can adapt to new
advancements in individual solutions or functions, and has specific points of metrics and
measurement to allow marketing to monitor and continuously improve the marketing process
and the customer experience. Without this roadmap, marketing will continue to make monstrous
investments into disconnected point solutions that can only hope to stand alone, being connected
by the sheer force of will exerted by marketing leadership.
If marketing is to truly fulfill the business mandates set forth by management, the digital marketing
outlook must do more with customer data; prime the sales pipeline with qualified leads; provide
multi-channel, robust customer experiences that can be tracked across all cross-functional touch
points; and adapt quickly.
In this current state, marketing has an abundance of pushpins at its command, but it seems to
be missing that ideal pincushion to house, organize, and eventually optimize placement. Like any
good structure, digital marketing requires the right underpinning that can withstand even the most
shocking and dynamic changes. And as advancements in technology promise efficiencies, greater
productivity, and improved visibility into the business operations of marketing, management
will respond with even greater support—and possibly even greater budgets—to continue digital
marketing’s advancement and prominence.
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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key findings
The key issue at hand today is not which email platform to deploy or even how to aggregate social
data. The key issue is identifying the right resources and structure to support all of these point
solutions in a strategy to integrate and align digital marketing across the organization. Once this
architecture is mastered, organizations have the opportunity to advance beyond the competition
and assume the role of a segment, industry, or business leader.
The Keys to Data-Driven Excellence
Seven percent of respondents indicated that they excelled at leveraging data as a
core foundation to their digital marketing programs. These data mavens have similar
characteristics that have helped drive them to this position, ranging from the level of
partnership with IT in developing strategic roadmaps to the insights and intelligence that
are gathered from customers to help support digital marketing investments. Here is a brief
overview of the hallmarks of these digital data-driven leaders, derived from the responses
provided in this survey.
Hallmarks of Data-Driven Digital Marketing Leaders:
•
They enjoy a high level of approval, conversation, and strategic support for digital
marketing adoption.
•
These leaders have formed a taskforce with IT to lead and develop integration
plans and strategies. They are also leveraging IT to provide insight into
application use and adoption.
•
Instead of primarily turning to internal voices, data-driven leaders turn to their
customers (30 percent) to determine their customers’ preferred methods of
engagement and digital communication.
•
In the next 12 months, they will implement marketing resource management
applications (27 percent), campaign and workflow management tools (32
percent), email (38 percent), and social monitoring (46 percent) re-investments.
•
They are laser-focused on the delivery of timely, relevant, and targeted
communications (72 percent).
•
Their measures of success include metrics around conversion and closure rates
(35 percent), upsell and cross-sell opportunities (10 percent), and response rates
(55 percent) as compared to the general information gleaned from campaign
impact and effectiveness measures (52 percent), and web search and analytics
(39 percent).
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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EXPERT COMMENTARY FROM
Among winning marketing organizations, the promise of digital marketing has arrived, yet architecting
and integrating the underlying foundation is not easy to envision or develop. Nonetheless, embracing
the digital dimension of your brand relationship with customers is the imperative. The real issue lies in
marketing’s ability to move forward in a real effort to leapfrog the competition and truly build business
momentum through digital marketing performance. But where is the best place to start? In the next 18
months, we recommend focusing on three key areas that—when combined—will provide you with the
agility and strength to succeed in building your brand with powerful digital marketing technology.
1. Invest. Make key investments today to be ready to execute your competitive strategies.
Expand your digital capabilities ahead of the curve with best-practice techniques, extensible
tools, and flexible expertise.
2. Enrich. Cultivate your cross-channel metrics and interactions while protecting your highvalue digital customers.
3. Establish. Avoid the appealing but dangerous social-internship pitfall.
Moving forward on these building blocks brings marketing organizations mid-term advancement and
long-term competitive advantages. The key benefits and outcomes include clear accountability of
marketing investments, customer-driven intimacy, and increases in lifetime value of the brand’s digital
consumers.
1.
Make Investments in Digital Capabilities to Ensure Readiness
Software as a service (SaaS) offerings and the era of “big data” have presented new options, yet
the fundamentals remain. To achieve a successful return from your investments in digital marketing
technology, you must have strength in the cornerstones of your infrastructure, which should include:
• Technology tools
• Data accessibility and protection
• Business processes
• People (staff and extended experts)
New marketing requirements demand even more flexibility and quicker deployment of offensive and
defensive marketing strategies. When achieved, this creates the competitive edge in digital brand
experiences. New revenue and time to market become the key measures.
Without a reinforced and solid infrastructure, areas of vulnerability will become readily and painfully
visible. The typical weaknesses in this area are 1) disconnects in point solutions, 2) untamed customer
data due to a matrix of ownership with agencies, and 3) inflexible and under-powered technology and
lacking expertise within your company.
The solution is to plan for your broader, longer-term capabilities, including: 1) implementing
technology tools and data integration/management, 2) developing efficient workflows, and 3)
committing to talented experts who will connect with and turbocharge your existing team and
agencies. At Acceleration, we call this Enterprise Architecture Planning. It requires collaboration
between key marketing executives and their C-level counterparts to articulate their digital marketing
vision, and then we design the infrastructure plan that will support the execution of the CMO’s vision,
with each phase proving a positive return.
© Copyright CMO Council. All Rights Reserved. 2012
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2.
Cultivate Your Cross-Channel Customer Relationships at Higher Levels of Trust
Marketing often looks through one of two strategic lenses—acquisition or retention programs. But
the real opportunity is to look at these two situations through the eyes of unified and augmented
customer data to drive performance across both strategic situations.
The retention situation: Digital customers are created across multiple touch points. Although email
is your workhorse and easy to measure, your personalized website internal ads or your Facebook
initiative may be contributing to the most valuable new customers.
The good news: It’s likely that your current web analytics tool set can be extended to provide an
Integrated media measurement environment. The outcome will be the equitable allocation of costs
and relationship value to the collection and sequence of interactions, often referred to as attribution
modeling.
The acquisition situation: Digital marketers are aggressively moving toward buying audiences in real
time. This means that data is the new fuel of digital marketing. This has everyone, from ad networks
to data providers, scrambling to own that data and use it to their advantage. That means nearly every
third party serving an ad or widget on your site is attempting to gather and reuse your customer and
visitor data, either secretly or openly. Not only is this data and value leaking from your business, but
it also increases the legal risks relating to new legislation (UK Cookie Law and USA Do Not Track
Legislation,) which controls the approval, collection, and use of data.
More good news: Best practice and legal compliance are now affordable and enabled through a new
category of digital marketing technology called customer data management. Acceleration offers
expert consultation to establish an environment of procedures and automation to protect your digital
customer data assets and—most importantly—your brand.
In summary, we recommend that you are equipped with state-of-the-art customer digital data
management, privacy management, and cross-channel optimization. While much of this can be done
internally, many organizations find that they lack expertise in their resources to be able to ramp up
quickly. For many of our own clients, we have filled that void, applying these solutions in practical
and tangible ways. The key is really to make the commitment to accelerating customer engagement
through customer data and activating the right technologies to make these strategies a reality. The
best news is that it can be done.
3.
Establish Your Enterprise Environment for the Business of Social—Fast Moving and
Cross-Functional
The most common mistake we have encountered in the social media management era is famous
brands hiring interns to handle their social initiatives. This has been disastrous, and we often find
that instead of working to optimize social engagements, we must help our clients recover. Honestly,
our preference is to help you avoid this mistake all together and identify a far more effective path
forward to achieve success with the business of strategic social media.
There are critical strategic areas in social media that you must take into consideration for effective
campaign development through ROI measurement. In all cases, social media campaigns require the
coordination of multiple resources, both internal and external to the organization. Effective social
media campaign operationalization is a multidisciplinary, multi-departmental effort inclusive of these
components:
• Promotion and social advertising platforms, such as Buddy Media, Unified, SocialFlow,
Adobe Social, and SocialTwist
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integrate to accelerate Digital Marketing value
• Community management platforms, such as Lithium, Sprinklr, ExactTarget SocialEngage,
and Salesforce.com/Radian6
• Measurement and analytics, such as Adobe Social/SiteCatalyst, other web analytics
platforms, various web services/APIs, data sources, and custom dashboards creation
• Monitoring and engagement of communities, such as social/PR communications agencies
like Fanscape, Likeable Media, Cake, Emanate PR, and WhisprGroup
• Strategic listening via platforms and advanced analysis services
• Creative, editorial, and branding
• Voice of the customer (VoC) integrations with customer service operations
• Data management platforms with social CRM tie-back to enterprise customer data
warehouse
To define a framework and begin incorporating the relevant components listed above, we have
recommended to leading brands that they start by:
1. Performing strategic market assessment and research for potential social levers
2. Extending the research to influencers with traditional and digital PR
3. Developing an editorial calendar, timeline with content, and distribution strategy
4. Investing in both paid and corporate-owned media support plans, PR, email sponsored
stories, social ads, and paid search driving Facebook interactions
5. Designing the tracking method for measurement and analytics
6. Setting up preliminary and ongoing strategic listening to guide and refine the social
presence and framework
7. Most importantly, engaging and hiring the right talent to manage and execute your social
business
These steps are not necessarily revolutionary. In fact, many of our clients express that identifying the
technologies or assembling the right components at the right time is often the most daunting part
of the process. The simple truth of digital marketing is that it cannot exist and evolve without a solid
architecture and strategic framework that can tether technologies together with data to deliver on
the promise of a rich, robust experience for both brand and customer. Where so many organizations
begin to float adrift is when that digital marketing strategy only takes the execution or function of the
technology into account.
The experts and consultants at Acceleration work with brands around the world to architect,
orchestrate, and implement marketing technologies that enhance the brand and boost the business.
Considering the sheer velocity at which digital technology and customer experience are racing
toward each other, marketers cannot afford to wait for a framework to grow organically. It must be an
intentional, strategic, and mandated decision to move forward. At Acceleration, we believe you can
move forward…and move forward fast.
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integrate to accelerate Digital Marketing value
About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought
leadership, and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand
decision-makers across a wide range of global industries. The CMO Council's 6,000 members
control more than $300 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex,
distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic
interest communities include more than 20,000 global executives in 110 countries covering
multiple industries, segments, and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in
the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. The CMO Council's strategic interest
groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), LoyaltyLeaders.
org, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance
Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). More
information about the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org.
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integrate to accelerate Digital Marketing value
About aCCELERATION
Acceleration has 12 years of technical expertise in designing and delivering digital marketing
solutions that provide quick improvements plus long-term ROI. The company architects digital
marketing and publisher ad solutions, implements and integrates optimal technologies, and
orchestrates efficient operational delivery to keep companies up to speed with multi-channel
consumer engagement and ahead of the competition. Acceleration has a breadth of prominent
technology vendor partnerships across analytics, mobile, social, email, and advertising systems,
as well as an extensive client base featuring many of the world's largest digital marketers and
publishers. Acceleration has experts located on four continents with local and global capabilities
to deliver proactive digital solutions. Learn more at www.acceleration.biz.
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integrate to accelerate Digital Marketing value
OUR PARTNERS
The only fully integrated North America-based global newswire, Marketwire Inc. is a fullservice partner to IR, PR, and MarCom professionals seeking premier distribution, media
management, multimedia, and monitoring solutions. Marketwire's customer-centric
corporate philosophy focuses on being the best by infusing every aspect of its business with
the following core attributes: precision, adaptability, innovation, and simplicity. Marketwire
delivers its clients' news to the world's media and financial communities. With a reputation for
technological leadership, Marketwire offers innovative products and services—including social
media, search engine optimization, dashboard mobile financial, news dashboard coverage
reports, exclusive access to networks such as the Canadian Press Wire Network, Easy IR, and
Easy PR workflow solutions, and more—that help communication professionals maximize
their effectiveness while ensuring accuracy and best practices. Having merged companies
(Market Wire and CCNMatthews) in April 2006 and enjoying a combined history of 25 years
of service, Marketwire is now majority-owned by OMERS Capital Partners, the private equity
arm of one of Canada's largest pension funds.
Anyone on your team can build, send, and analyze surveys. Our goal is to make difficult
things simple so you can focus on research rather than software. Qualtrics Research Suite
has become a standard for organizations of all kinds to engage in any type of data collection,
including market research, voice of the customer, employee feedback, customer engagement,
website feedback and point-of-sale surveys. Organizations use this data to make better
business decisions that increase brand recognition, customer loyalty, employee satisfaction,
and overall revenue.
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