The Power of Modern Digital Marketing Automation
Introduction
Modern consumers are Web-savvy, mobile-loving people who typically spend more time online than reading magazines and watching TV. These changes in behavior are fundamentally changing the face of marketing – and in ways that are bringing about the convergence of direct marketing and mass marketing. For example, if you are a direct marketing professional executing targeted email campaigns and mobile marketing strategies, you are likely bumping against mass-marketing movements. Why? Because like you, mass marketers are investing more in online ads than ever before – at the expense of TV commercials and print ads.
Why do both sides of the marketing ecosystem come together in the digital world? Because consumer behaviors and expectations have radically changed in recent years – and in ways that blur the lines between direct and mass marketing. Regardless of what side of the “marketing house” you work for, if you want to reach today’s consumers, you must meet them where they like to play – on the Internet, through their mobile devices, and on social media sites. At the same time, you need to find ways to personalize messages, tailor offers, and engage customers in interactive dialogues that build trust and drive loyalty. This requires sophisticated marketing automation technologies that leverage customer intelligence, optimize interactions across channels, and monitor and respond to changes in customer behaviors.
For example, if you are a direct marketer of outdoor gear and you want to target busy professionals who like to fish, you’d likely have an e-commerce site where they can get their shopping done after hours. Ideally, you would track each customer’s virtual footsteps through your website; combine this data with point-of-sale transaction data, loyalty card data, and demographic data; analyze it all in real time, and generate analytically driven, direct email offers with special pricing for each customer. At the same time, you’d probably want to place banner ads on websites like outdoorlife.com (where mass marketers would likely be posting ads), host a blog about fishing, engage in customer conversations on your company’s Facebook fan page, and set up a Get Satisfaction site where customers could discuss how to use and improve your products. Through these social media interactions, you could engage in public, one-to-many dialogues with your most enthusiastic customers and help them become more effective advocates for your business. In this way, you would (by default) blur the lines between direct and mass marketing.
This paper explores these trends in detail and considers their implications for marketing professionals and their technology choices – both today and in the future.
Log in with Google