In the past five years the world of marketing has changed so much that it is virtually unrecognisable from what went before. Today, marketing’s scope has expanded considerably and data, analytics and digital technology are all enabling marketers to unleash precisely targeted campaigns with impressive accuracy and content. But are there too many tools now available, and are marketers running the risk of drowning each other out with their own noise?
It’s a question that perhaps explains the emergence of a new trend amongst marketers, known almost paradoxically, as ‘unmarketing’. The idea may seem counter-intuitive to the current generation of marketers, many of whom have been raised on the principle of carefully identifying and targeting specific customers. By contrast, this new approach argues that we should stop marketing at people for the sake of it and actively engage with them instead. It’s an idea that is based on the principle of embracing contextual engagement and understanding that it is customers, not products that drive revenue.
Despite what some iconoclasts say, this doesn’t mean that the day of the traditional marketing campaign is dead. It simply implies that an evolution in the way customers want to be interacted with is upon us. Don’t forget, contextual engagement means that when a customer comes to you through whatever channel they choose – call centre, mobile app, web or in store – they expect you to know everything about them, including their demeanour and their interactions. This information may be gathered from behavioural data online or even a traditional marketing campaign and should be relevant right up to that moment in time.
At this point, the marketer needs to identify what might be the best business case for this customer at that specific moment. As much as anything, it is also about striking the right balance between the customer’s needs and a business’ objectives, like growing revenues, managing risks, delivering good service and retaining profitable customers.
The challenge for this approach lies in developing technology that is efficient enough to analyse the volumes and velocity of data required, and to also return the most productive decision about an offer sufficiently quickly. Just like normal conversations, the moments of truth in contextual engagement have to happen in real-time, or the moment is lost. As we all know in today’s world, you may not get a second chance. Technology is, however, catching up quickly, and the delay between capturing the data and taking an action is significantly narrowed. Today, next-best-action decisioning engines are already capable of returning an appropriate decision in seconds and learning from every customer interaction. If the context has been completely understood in real time then these tools can ensure that the next best action will be the most productive possible.
Indeed, you may decide that doing absolutely nothing at that moment of time can actually be the best possible decision. The point is, marketing is increasingly becoming a two-way street and instead of using the vast array of tools available to target customers, marketers should learn to listen and to be more strategic about the way they engage.
What’s clear is that CMOs are gaining greater control of IT budgets, making it possible to implement these new smarter contextual engagement approaches and spark the growth of the unmarketing revolution. However, it is also important to ensure that the IT strategy mistakes of the past aren’t repeated and breaking down silos between channels and departments is critical if these new strategies are to work. Contextual engagement depends on a marketing decision engine hub that takes account of all channels, reflecting how customers see no distinction between mobile, web, call centre and instore when they interact with a brand.
Embracing this new age of ‘unmarketing’ has, inevitably, already met some natural resistance from traditional quarters in the marketing industry that insist hitting targets to push out products is what matters the most. Clearly, it’s still early days for the trend, yet major brands are already reporting on the real benefits that contextual engagement can bring. For example, a leading communications service provider, that serves millions of subscribers has almost halved monthly customer churn from 2 percent to 1.2 percent since adopting next-best-action decisioning technology. With this in mind, isn’t it worth asking whether your organisation is ready to embrace the ‘unmarketing’ revolution?
By Robert Tas, CMO at Pegasystems.
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