Download Five ways digital marketing will change in 2015

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Five ways digital marketing will change in 2015
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Introduction: Read about the trends that will
challenge marketers in 2015
It’s sure to be a tumultuous and exciting year as consumers become ever more connected and powerful,
data becomes more prolific, and marketers seek revolutionary new ways to win the ongoing affection of their
best customers.
In 2015, marketers will increasingly turn to technologies that automate and measure customer interactions. And while
there may be a number of platforms and suites to choose from, marketers can’t simply buy technology and expect
nirvana. They’ll need to strike the right balance between business strategy, automation technology, service, data
expertise, and advanced analytics in order to execute successful cross-channel campaigns.
And they will face many challenges along the way. A new global survey from Experian Marketing Services shows that
organizational silos are hindering a single customer view and exacerbating data quality issues. In fact, 32 percent of
marketers surveyed cited data linkage issues and 31 percent cited their company’s current technology as barriers to
cross-channel marketing success.
The predictions made by Experian Marketing Services’ executives in this piece help to illuminate these and other
challenges facing marketers this year and beyond. They illustrate the need for a cohesive engagement strategy, a
nimble delivery platform and accurate revenue attribution, as well as the right partner to help maximize the data,
insights and technology tools required to execute meaningful campaigns that engage customers every time. I hope
you enjoy reading the piece and also find it useful as you plan your 2015 marketing strategies.
Matt Seeley
Group President, North America
Experian Marketing Services
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This is the year that marketers will align their data to
create more thoughtful customer interactions and improved
consumer experiences across channels.
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#1: Challenges of the CMO
One of the biggest impediments companies face when striving to become customer-centric (and truly customer
obsessed) is the existence of organizational silos. In fact, we’ve found that 31 percent of marketers believed these silos
to be a top barrier to cross-channel marketing success. This year, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) will need to lead
the way in aligning teams around the customer, rather than the channel. The agnostic consumer uses whatever device
or channel that is most convenient to buy, source and seek information — making it even more critical for brands to
ensure that every experience/interaction is a good one.
This can be challenging, but organizations that don’t break down departmental silos will find themselves being
replaced, quickly, by those that do. Today’s savvy customers expect consistent and relevant experiences every time.
They are not interested, and simply don’t care, if your email marketing team is separate from your mobile marketing or
e-commerce teams. If you aren’t committed to giving your customers the seamless experience they expect, there are
no doubt, several brands that will.
In 2015, smart organizations will develop structures and processes that disable power wars and recognition battles
within their own walls. Those that do will accrue a critical added benefit: the ability to collect and synthesize data to
extract the most purposeful customer insights; driving campaign success and ultimately encouraging longer-term
brand advocacy.
Today’s CMO certainly understands the need to collect and successfully aggregate data across internal groups,
channels and sources, but this year the challenge becomes even more formidable. Device proliferation continues
to ramp up and marketers need to consider not only traditional data sources, but emerging ones, like wearable
technology and other connected devices, too. If their corporate structure impedes the ability to aggregate, analyze and
action data they will lose the competitive advantage.
CMOs must lead their companies to truly embrace their customer. This also means embracing their data to enable
and action an integrated and authentic engagement strategy. We do this right, we’ll earn and sustain our place in the
hearts and minds of our customers in 2015 and beyond.
Ashley Johnston
Senior Vice President, Global Marketing
Experian Marketing Services
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In 2015, smart organizations will develop structures
and processes that disable power wars and recognition
battles within their own walls.
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#2: Solving the data quality conundrum
The sheer volume and sources of data available to companies increases exponentially each year. This data influx
is further complicated by the fact that data quality strategy is often dictated by individual departments and can be
inconsistent across the organization – it is rare that there is a central manager to ensure quality data.
All of this means that information comes to marketers with different standardization and accuracy levels. Marketers
can attempt to clean it up using software on the back-end, but that’s an inefficient approach that won’t correct a large
percentage of errors.
The lack of a central data strategy also hurts a marketer’s ability to achieve a complete view of each customer.
Disparate databases spread customer account history across many areas, making accessing information for effective
cross-channel campaigns difficult. This also impairs analytics and profiling because a complete and accurate data set
isn’t available.
While it would be optimal to have a centralized data quality function in every corporation, that’s not always feasible.
To get around this, marketers need to do three key things in 2015:
•Work with other departments across the organization to formulate and execute a plan to ensure the highest quality
data. Ideally, this is accomplished via a single, standardized database or source of information that all departments
can leverage and that is kept updated in real time.
•Validate data directly in the channel where data is being collected, whether at the point of sale, on the Website, via
social media or via another method.
•Enhance customer files with additional insight from third-party providers to gain increased insight for analytics and
marketing intelligence.
Today’s marketers have the ability to monetize data better than many other parts of the business. In 2015 they can say
to leadership, “Here is a hard and fast, data-driven business case for why marketing should either own or heavily guide
this company’s data management strategy and execution.”
Tom Schutz
Senior Vice President and General Manager
Experian Data Quality
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Work with other departments across the
organization to formulate and execute a plan to
ensure the highest quality data.
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#3: Targeting your ideal audience every time
We are moving from a media-driven advertising world, where marketers built their plans to match a publication’s
demographic, to an audience-driven one, where marketers can purchase their ideal audience across any type of media.
For example, marketers trying to reach 18-34 year old males probably wouldn’t buy many ads on Gourmet or
Bon Appetit’s digital platforms. Logic dictates they’d funnel their dollars into publications like Details or
Men’s Health.
But what if, say, 1 percent to 5 percent of men in that age group do in fact visit Gourmet or Bon Appetit? And what if
marketers could purchase that exact segment of visitors, and inexpensively and effectively target them? That’s quite
doable today through the purchase of audience-specific segments.
So it’s no longer about a blanket or scattershot approach to targeting, but about finding your ideal audiences and
engaging them where they live online and beyond. To make this work, marketers must ensure that their consumer
data is accurate, insightful and, most importantly, that customers’ identities are resolved across various channels and
devices. They’re seeking platforms that provide data hygiene, segmentation, modeling, identification and linkage tools
to enable a comprehensive view of consumers that will fuel precise interactions.
Given this trend, we predict that 2015 will be the year that marketing planning systems truly accommodate audiencedriven advertising. In recent years, Data Management Platforms (DMPs) have been all about enabling display
advertising, but now they’re expanding into mobile Web, mobile apps and television ad delivery. Over the next yearplus, marketers will expect the planning screen on their DMP software to show them who is watching a sporting
event on television, on the Internet or on their smartphone at a given moment in time so they can address them
instantaneously and simultaneously.
The year 2015 will be about buying audiences – a/k/a hearts and minds – across channels, devices and platforms in a
precisely targeted and effective way.
Rick Erwin
President, Consumer Insights and Targeting
Experian Marketing Services
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The year 2015 will be about buying audiences – a/k/a hearts
and minds – across channels, devices and platforms in a
precisely targeted and effective way.
Photo: Evanta Ventures, LLC 2015
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#4: Technology as a marketing enabler
This will be a big year for marketing technology and an exciting time for marketers as they rely more and more on
platforms to help them achieve their customer engagement goals. In fact, 36 percent of marketing leaders we recently
surveyed said that integrating technology to automate customer interactions is a main priority in 2015. It’s becoming
less about managing big data and more about platforms that enable marketers to ask – and answer – big questions.
This year, as marketing technology platforms become more flexible and adaptable, companies will strive to get
better at executing real-time, trigger-based, cross-channel campaigns. Platform-generated attribution and predictive
analytics will also transform campaign strategy and execution in 2015.
“Data science” has traditionally been an isolated activity done at the end of a campaign, often with the help of a thirdparty provider. The marketer gets a report, looks at the performance of the campaign and then adjusts their strategy
for the next time. One of the trends we’ll see in 2015 is the integration of real-time analytics into the process – via a
marketing platform – as a campaign is unfolding.
These platforms will need to be flexible enough to accommodate the non-linear ways in which marketers will bounce
between gathering intelligence and generating interactions. In addition, marketers’ focus will shift from products that
satisfy individual requirements and require manual integration to an ecosystem and a platform that can do it all.
This trend will apply to attribution as well, with less reliance on third-party providers helping to figure out channel
effectiveness and more dependence on full-scale marketing platforms that seamlessly deliver this information to
the marketer. In fact, shifting from disparate marketing products and services to a platform where every campaign
and reporting function plays well together in real time will be a prerequisite for marketing leadership and customer
engagement success in the coming year.
Emad Georgy
Senior Vice President, Global Software Development
Experian Marketing Services
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Platform-generated attribution and predictive analytics will
also transform campaign strategy and execution in 2015.
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#5: Experience trumps price for today’s shopper
The 2014 holiday season marked the end of the storewide deep discount era. As we predicted, sale days such as
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Super Saturday lost some of their significance as consumers became saturated with
online and offline deals. In the absence of sales, 2015 will be the year that retailers begin focusing on environment,
experience and brand as the antidote to deep discounts.
Experience had been the retail buzzword for 2014, but it’s concentrated primarily on brick-and-mortar stores. To date,
online retail has focused on efficiency and cost savings as the primary vehicle to acquire and retain customers. But
our research shows that price is not the primary motivation to purchase for the majority of the population. Despite
retailers’ obsessive focus on sale prices, consumers rank environment and brand as more important.
The drive toward price and convenience also ignores that a majority of consumers approach shopping, both online
and offline, as a pleasurable versus utilitarian experience. While to date, engagement has been a metric confined to
the social media space, in 2015 the combination of brand and environment as key motivators for consumers will shift
retailers’ online focus to measuring their level of customer engagement alongside click-through and conversion.
To achieve online engagement, retailers will need to work toward providing consumers with an online experience that
incorporates brand and rich storytelling to demonstrate how the retailer’s products and services enrich the lives of
their consumers.
Understanding existing and potential high-value consumers is key to delivering an enriching experience that
ultimately will lead to conversion. To achieve this, retailers must start by understanding their current and
potential high-value targets. Online experiences must seamlessly cross online and offline channels in order to
keep consumers engaged.
Bill Tancer
General Manager, Global Research
Experian Marketing Services
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Despite retailers’ obsessive focus on sale prices, consumers
rank environment and brand as more important.
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Conclusion: Big rewards in store for savvy
marketers in 2015
As outlined by Experian Marketing Services’ leaders, there are many things for marketers to consider when
planning their upcoming programs, from data to technology to overall engagement strategies. There are also
many potential pay-offs for companies that focus on customer-driven marketing from an organizational,
enablement and strategic standpoint.
We hope that you found these predictions enlightening and that they will help you deliver on your own
customer-driven marketing programs in the year ahead.
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Get all The 2015 Digital Marketer resources at
experian.nl/digitalmarketer.
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© 2015 Experian Information Solutions, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Experian and the Experian marks used herein
are service marks or registered trademarks of
Experian Information Solutions, Inc.
Other product and company names mentioned
herein are the property of their respective owners.
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