Is your marketing organization stuck in time?

by Marissa Aydlett, senior vice president marketing, Braze

In the wake of GDPR, marketers can be forgiven if they’re tempted to take the digital equivalent of pulling the covers over their heads and hoping that if they’re very, very quiet, the regulatory monsters will go away. But take comfort from the cartoon that Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker quoted at this year’s Code 2018: “Just because I hate you doesn’t mean I don’t love you.” Your customers value your services, and when you speak to them like friends as opposed to targets, they’ll be quick to return the favor by giving you their loyalty—and even their advocacy.

Yes, the Privacy Paradox that Meeker outlined is real: Customers value low-cost (or free) digital services powered in part by their own data. They ultimately spend more time on those services, which in turn triggers regulators’ interest in ensuring that consumers’ personal information is not misused. But Meeker tells us we’ve got to get out from under the covers: “It’s crucial to manage for unintended consequences… but it’s irresponsible to stop innovation and progress.”

Let’s face it: Humans are complicated. When sharing data to access a service they value (like yours), there’s an expectation that you will keep up as they respond to messages differently by channel, and as circumstances in their lives change. Technology systems are also increasingly complicated, offering marketers choices of their own. Your team can use technology as a canvas for creativity to orchestrate brilliant experiences that let consumers know they’re understood. As a marketer, when you’re confident of your customers’ identity—as in,who they are today, in the here and now, not yesterday or last week—you can take liberties with the personalization of messaging without fear of a misstep.

That’s the power of unbounded data. With decades-old systems that aren’t connected, your vision is limited to discrete views or snapshots of your customers that quickly grow stale. Stream processing fuels insight drawn from analysis of data within self-selected windows of time, knowing that the picture of your customer is always true to who they are at that moment. Let’s call it just-in-time marketing. It’s a fresh approach to strategic thinking based on the speed to market enabled by technology.

Are your teams ready to accommodate this always-on approach to strategy and consumer experiences? Committing to cross-channel messaging with a just-in-time mindset means that collaboration skills and processes are no longer nice to have, they’re table stakes. These days, if internal teams vary in their ability to test and learn, to iterate strategically in the here and now, your silos are showing out here in the real world. And make no mistake, your customers will notice and take you to task. If your marketing organization is stuck in time, your business will get left behind.

At Braze, our new brand campaign is meant as a call to action to join consumers in the here and now. Customers are interacting with brands when they want, how they want. Every second that you hesitate, the value of your data deteriorates. Because, ready or not, shift happens.

Check out the Braze Cross-Channel Difference Report and learn how you can boost engagement by more than 800%.

https://digiday.com/?p=293225

More from Digiday

Why several U.S. ad forecasts predict a better 2024, and not just because of political spending

Three major ad forecasters are predicting improved U.S. media spend totals for 2024, citing improved business conditions.

Media Briefing: Publishers search for new ways to grow (and authenticate) audiences, overheard at the Digiday Publishing Summit

“[Advertisers] already pay data providers for data. So why not pay the publisher?”

Research Briefing: Publishers’ revenue sources are top of mind at Digiday Publishing Summit

In this week’s Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine which revenue streams were top of mind for publishers at the Digiday Publishing Summit, how TikTok is getting even more marketing spend from brands and retailers despite facing a potential U.S. ban, and how Disney is rolling out DRAX Direct, a direct integration with the industry’s largest DSPs, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research.