Is it possible to scale exponentially while getting more personalized with each and every customer? It is with machine learning and the power of data.
Flip through any business journal or year-end earnings report and chances are the phrase “digital transformation” will be front and center. From choosing doctors, travel getaways, or a new wardrobe, business is more social than ever, and digital platforms make for easier window shopping. Customer engagement has been upended. Organizations know they can no longer compete just on price or product. The new competitive battlefield is the customer experience. This translates into delivering a superior experience versus your competitors.
When is it Time to Scale Up?
At some point, all successful businesses begin to ask themselves if it’s time to upgrade a legacy system. If your teams are beginning to miss revenue targets, notice high churn rates, or spend too much time parsing through data, it might be time for a platform upgrade. But scaling can be tricky. Recent studies reveal the top three hurdles to digital transformation cited by marketers are:
- 62% cite a lack of team members with the right technical skills
- 43% report a lack of tools to harness data into real-time action
- 40% identify data consolidation as the biggest challenge
The team of experts at Marigold has identified four signs our clients most frequently cite as growing pains and when they recognized the need to think critically about how to grow their businesses.
Sign #1: We Need Better Connections With Our Audience
Now that we have a dedicated customer base, it’s time to cultivate long-lasting relationships. It’s not enough to understand their behavior right now. We need to anticipate how customers will respond to our marketing efforts and how their preferences will evolve over the customer lifecycle. This need to connect to our audience has not changed. But the tactics and technology have. I require industry-standard technology that keeps my team ahead of the curve — and it must scale with not only my team, but our company. Once sales and marketing data are consolidated, we can better support both brand and consumer marketing initiatives.
Sign #2: We Need More Reliable and Actionable Data
The next level of growth is about improving the customer experience to beat our competitors. If we are building more in-depth profiles of our customers to drive repeat purchases, our data must be accurate and flexible. Our focus is on building integrated brand experiences across desktop, mobile, SMS and app engagement. I am looking for a cross-channel solution that complements our omni-channel marketing efforts.
Most importantly, we need a system to transform data into action to help us adapt our efforts — sometimes mid-campaign — and ensure we are doing everything we can from a strategic and tactical standpoint to connect with our target audience.
Sign #3: We Need to be More Efficient
Budgets are tighter and and teams are leaner, yet our goals have only increased. We need to reduce the amount of legwork our teams do and continuously demonstrate ROI to the executive suite. With the impact of inflation on the cost of goods and rising labor costs, we are looking for tech solutions that increase efficiency. We must manage multiple marketing channels and better connect with our consumers on a one-to-one basis. I need streamlined processes that allow for easy workflow across tools and team members. Effective and easy collaboration is critical to our success.
Sign #4: We Need to Be Proactively Compliant with Data and Privacy Policies
Our teams are getting larger and may not always be in sync with one another. We need a consistent system for collecting customer data and using it responsibly. Our customers need a simple way to update their settings whenever they want. Our brand has always been vigilant about privacy, but how do we continue to generate leads in a way that is responsible and transparent across desktop, social, SMS and our apps? What are our peers doing? What are the industry norms? We need this to be easy.
What Can the Marigold Solution Do For Your Brand?
For over three decades, Marigold’s enterprise brands, Cheetah Digital and Marigold Engage by Sailthru, have been helping businesses scale with automation, machine learning and sophisticated analytics. We can help your teams:
Launch personalized campaigns faster and more efficiently: Enhance your personalization strategy with a toolset that combines dynamic content, personalization, and optimization to make every engagement contextually relevant.
Collect more usable customer data: Put all your customer data in one place that is visible to everyone in your organization. Generate higher-quality data with interactive digital experiences that add value to the customer relationship. The better your data, the more personalized and efficient your campaigns can be.
Build a holistic approach across acquisition and retention: Leverage your consolidated data to use machine learning and predictive analytics to understand where to meet your customer: on what platform, device and what time of day. Build a stronger relationship and connection to your brand by offering more of what your customers want before they even know they want it.
Conclusion
Marigold is the solution made for marketers. Our technology and expertise can take your business to the next level with more coordinated and consistent messaging that increases your customer’s engagement and spending levels. If it’s time to level up your business, then it’s time to explore a more powerful and sophisticated solutions provider.
Contact us for a demo and more information about how to achieve personalization at scale.
Written by Anjali Augustine based on research and analysis from Tony Vala-Haynes and the product marketing team at Marigold.