Omnichannel Rising Why do insiders insist that marketing campaigns now have to be omnichannel if they are to prove successful? What’s on omnichannel’s horizon?

ONE TOUGHQUESTION

OCTOBER 2016

Sponsored by

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There’s no doubt that the push to omni-channel is driving change across the mar-keting landscape, and not just with how and where products are marketed. Omni-channel’s tentacles can be felt in every facet of marketing, from the need for deep customer data acquisition to staff-ing to e-commerce to security. The num-ber of platforms continues to evolve, with messaging, virtual reality, and augment-ed real ity currently gaining traction.

Given the ever-changing omnichannel landscape, for this “One Tough Question” eBook we asked marketing leaders to an-swer the query: “Looking out over the next couple of years, what are some of the key innovations, challenges, and trends on the omnichannel marketing horizon?”

Our 11 participants reflect a broad swath of the modern marketing environ-ment. They offer a variety of perspectives on what lies ahead. Their responses cover every thing from the need for a center of excellence and becoming more technical-ly adept to the importance of including mobile payment and security measures within omnichannel programs.

“Marketing is constantly evolving,” notes Ron Corbisier, CEO and president of Relationship One, citing changes in the “tools and techniques we use to reach our audience, our increasing ability to capture quality user omnichannel data, and the speed at which we must adapt and respond to our customers’ needs.”

Read on for more industry thought leadership on what’s coming down the pike for omnichannel marketing.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

4 Ron Corbisier CEO and president, Relationship One

10 Mike Iaccarino Chairman and CEO, Infogroup

10 Christine Coyne VP, specialty pharmaceuticals, BTG

5 Joe Shields Senior director, global strategy and program management, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals

11 Brooke Niemiec CMO, Elicit

14 Mike Andrews Chief scientist, Forensiq, at Impact Radius

13 David Bowen Director, product management for commerce, EPiServer

8 John Nash VP, strategy and market development, RedPoint Global

7 Brendan O’Kane CEO and MD, OtherLevels

6 Amrit Kirpalani Founder and CEO, NectarOM

12 Ivy Shtereva Product marketing manager, Yes Lifecycle Marketing

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As marketers, we have been focused on customer experience (CX) for a long time, but our ability to deliver on it has been hindered by organizational and technical barriers. A fundamental shift — and challenge — over the next half decade will be for organizations to move into a CX-centric world.

At a minimum, there are three foundational requirements for being a CX-centric company.

The first is committed leadership. Customer experience is built upon a holistic view of cus-tomer information, including marketing, sales and service, and a unified approach to customer interaction. That requires breaking down organi-zational barriers. Executive buy-in and owner-ship are required to drive collaboration between internal teams and foster the breakdown of data, technology, and process silos.

Second, delivering the right customer experi-ence at the right time in the right channel requires technology that is integrated. It also requires that data structures in various systems — systems like marketing automation platforms, CRM, service management platforms, ERP, and ordering and fulfillment — be complementary. CX-centric organizations must build a unified technology strategy that includes sharing information across

tools. Because CX concerns intelligence, access to a centralized repository of internal and third-par-ty data used to drive customer interaction and react to customer need is critical.

Third, executive leadership and unified tech-nology must be coupled with process and change management driven at the departmental level. For the transition to a CX-centric organization to be successful, companies need to build a CX center of excellence composed of core departmental disciplines, including marketing, sales, service, IT, operations, and overall legal, regulatory, and com-pliance areas. Any department that has influence over or interaction with customers — at any point in the cycle — should have a seat at the table.

The CX center of excellence is responsible for driving the strategic approach to customer jour-ney mapping, organizational change management, internal enablement of CX-related technologies, and proper governance for maintenance.

Moving to a CX-centric organization is not a sprint — it’s a marathon. Progress may be slow at first, but with leadership and guidance it is achievable. In the end, your customers will be satisfied with the results, and so will you with your bottom line. ■

Progress may be slow at first, but with proper leadership and guidance, it is achievable. Your customers will be satisfied with the results, and you will be with the bottom line Ron Corbisier

CEO, Relationship One @corbisier@relationshipone

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First, marketing professionals must rethink what constitutes a “channel” and whether hiring dedicated channel experts still makes sense. Now that content can be sent to or accessed instantly by smartphones, wearables, and cars — even medical devices — traditional rules about screen size, adjacency, and frequency may be irrelevant. Customer experience and service design have blurred the lines among channels, making it more difficult to plan, execute, and measure them individually. Expect this trend to continue to the point where customers surround themselves with self-personalized communications and services ecosystems made up of other humans, technolo-gy, and physical spaces.

Next, marketers must continuously monitor the changing roles, values, and sources of content. Over the past two decades, the internet has fun-damentally changed product promotion, yet some marketers can’t shake their bias toward advertising and “messaging.” People crave authentic stories and connections, while many brand managers continue to simply hammer on product features that customers may not value. Savvy customers see today’s “content market-ing” and “native advertising” as wolves in sheep’s

clothing, like matte releases and advertorials from a different era. Content needs inherent value, as well as value that comes from context, whether on social platforms, in a customer service call, or on product review sites.

Finally, while they shouldn’t lead with new shiny objects, marketers must continuously gain a working knowledge of many new technologies and accompanying human behaviors, such as artificial intelligence including chatbots, virtual and augmented reality, IoT and connected de-vices, and the Uber-ization of everything. Lateral thinking can help translate these tools to create value in the context of one’s business, whether in healthcare, retail, or specialty chemicals.

The practice of marketing has evolved to em-phasize different biases over time — first advertis-ing, then relationship management, then customer service, then systems integration, and now user- centered design. Since a single person or team can’t know everything, will marketers take on a “general contractor” role in organizations?

Will they be experts in framing the precise busi-ness or customer problem, then assemble the best team of right- and left-brained specialists to solve, execute, and measure? Or are we already there? ■

Content needs inherent value, as well as value that comes from context, whether on social platforms, in a customer service call, or on review sites

Joe ShieldsSenior director, global strategy and program management, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals @AstraZenecaUS

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Advances in consumer expectations and the need to differentiate and deliver on omni channel’s promise are forcing marketers to become more technically adept than ever before.

Marketers are being challenged by their teams, C-suite counterparts, and competition to become highly technical. The question is: Without learning to code, how can they develop the skill sets to lead in this new paradigm?

While marketing’s spend on technology and technology-enabled services is growing nearly twice as fast as it is on other functions, more than half of marketers don’t feel equipped to make effective technical decisions. Yet many marketers are finding their ability to rely on their own teams, IT organization, and third-party vendors creates a business risk that their CEOs & CFOs expect them to mitigate.

I’ve found the following to be most helpful:

1. Understand the sources of data challenges: Obvious data- integration steps don’t always cause execution challenges. For example, profile identification — how do you know it’s the same customer online as it is in the store? Or how do you get an accurate

representation of a customer’s behavior across owned, earned, and paid channels?

2. Recognize the must-haves versus nice-to-haves when creating solutions: As you begin to deploy new technologies or upgrade existing systems, focus on actual re-quirements. For instance, the definition of real time varies — understanding what is required for your specific use cases and the capabilities of your chosen solutions can have a material impact on cost, resources, and execution.

3. Hire technical team members: A go-to team member(s) who can be your right hand when it comes to technical decision-making will help keep things honest with your internal counterparts, as well as with vendors. To the extent this person understands the nuances of data, technology integration, and marketing, it’s a great bonus.

It’s an exciting time in marketing and technol-ogy. Marketers who prove adept at growing their technical understanding will not only survive, but flourish. ■

It’s an exciting time in marketing and technology. Marketers who prove adept at growing their technical understanding will not only survive, but flourish Amrit Kirpalani

Founder and CEO, NectarOM @amritkirpalani@nectarOM

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Though email will always play a role in brands’ relationships with their digital customers, the key innovations and trends to watch will surround the rise — and increased effectiveness — of second- generation messaging channels.

Why? Email has become a hard-sell channel. Owing to the massive amount of email offers consumers receive, many of them have come to tune them out. Second-generation channels, on the other hand, involve more of a soft-sell appeal: Since they’re inside the app, site, or browser, they lend themselves more innately to personalized offers and more genuine engagement between the brand and its audience. The two top channels of the next era of messaging are the rich inbox and mobile or desktop web push.

The Rich Inbox. Rich inboxes are “email-like” inboxes — within a mobile browser or desktop browser — that are available to all users with no user opt-in involved. Because they’re on every us-er’s interface, rich inboxes are a high-value avenue for driving interactions with users who are already active on a brand’s site or app (for instance, a

website where they are prepared to engage with an offer, reminder, or other personalized content). Browser Push Functionality. With web push, brands can send messages to opted-in users as notifications in the desktop or mobile browser, rather than just inside their site or app — giving marketers the ability to engage users even when they’re not on their platforms.

With an intelligent messaging toolset, brands can also segment their user groups in a more targeted way than is possible with traditional marketing automation — enabling users to receive offers and content based on criteria such as the depth of their engagement with specific content or product categories. That not only increases the potential for individual end users to interact with the material, but it also provides greater insight into which messages created the most clicks or which areas of the site received the longest read times. Paired with long-term testing, that can help brands increase retention, drive loyalty, and increase revenue. ■

Because they’re on every user’s interface, rich inboxes are a high- value avenue for driving interactions with users who are already active on a brand’s site or app Brendan O’Kane

CEO and MD, OtherLevels@OtherLevels

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Marketers of consumer brands are becoming increasingly sophisticated in micro-segmenting target audiences and creating holistic experiences that extend their brand well beyond traditional measures. But delivering those experiences at scale in an omnichannel environment involves a degree of complexity that few marketers can ac-commodate. This is where their omnichannel ini-tiatives often fall short, since their brand strategy envisions a level of customer engagement sophis-tication that simply cannot be operationalized.

Marketers aspiring to master omnichannel marketing — and deliver personalization at scale — must find ways to incorporate a high degree of relevance tuned to their individual customers, where the next-best message is evaluated in real time and delivered through the most relevant channel at that time. This challenge can only be solved through new innovations that allow mar-keters to intelligently operationalize their brand strategy using a data-driven approach that sup-ports highly granular levels of precision at scale to enable hyperpersonalized customer engagement.

Further complicating the issue for marketers is an inability to interact bidirectionally with their

customers, where the interactions are intelligently orchestrated based on consumer behaviors at the moment of engagement. This requires innovation in managing data as a backbone, where real-time matching and data integration creates a progres-sive and unified view of a consumer across a fragmented set of inputs — from channels, de-vices, and business functions to third-party data sources. To address this requirement, marketers need a solution that can create a dynamic unified customer view based on detailed data coming from multiple channel and device interactions, as well as accounting for real-time or near-time processing aligned with the point of need.

Given the increasing complexities that come with omnichannel execution, marketers need significant innovations that let them drive person-alization at scale: deeper customer understanding and fine-tuned alignment at the point of interac-tion. The ability to activate robust customer strat-egies at the individual level, through a combina-tion of data and intelligent orchestration, is key. The next wave of innovations at the marketing level will help marketers realize value from the channel portion of omnichannel marketing. ■

This challenge can only be solved through new innovations that allow marketers to intelligently operationalize their brand strategy using a data- driven approach that supports granular levels of precision

John NashVP, strategy and market development, RedPoint Global @JohnJCNash@RedPointGlobal

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Mike IaccarinoChairman and CEO, Infogroup

Christine CoyneVP of specialty pharmaceuticals, BTG @BTG, @CRoseCoyne

As virtual reality and augmented reality come into play, keeping business data accurate and constantly updated will be game-changing. Take Pokémon Go: The location-based game created exciting opportunities for businesses across industries and countries. But fully ben-efiting from increased foot traffic from such games requires business data to be spot-on. Hours of operation, website, and physical location — down to longitude and latitude — have to be painstakingly accurate.

Without up-to-date data, consumers may visit a location to hunt the Pokémon when the location is closed, for instance, or show up at the wrong address. Negative experiences leave a bad taste in the consumer’s mouth that are then associated with your brand.

In the next five to ten years, more virtual reality–related opportunities will present themselves, but only businesses with the best data will fully capitalize on the opportunities to leverage these new technologies. ■

The advent of apps for mobile have posed both opportunities and challenges to pharma marketers. These apps can provide relevant real-time content to users and important customer data to marketers at the same time. They can serve as a convenient tool in your customers’ back pockets to use as a reference guide and source of information.

One of the challenges with apps is the substantial of support required to keep them current and relevant. Apps must be managed, funded, tested, and continuously updated to follow consumer trends and real-time data. In my experience, while apps can certainly help to evolve customer behaviors, there is a bit of a downside in letting go of the important face-to-face customer interaction.

Looking out over the next few years, these apps will require additional funding and we will need to find a way to better coordinate them with any personal selling efforts to be sure that customer intimacy stays strong. ■

“ One of the challenges with apps is the substantial support required to keep them current and relevant”

“ Hours of operation, website, and physical location — longitude and latitude — must be accurate”

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Omnichannel marketing has evolved tremen-dously from its early days as a strategy to align email and direct mail. This evolution is and will continue to be driven by three factors: the proliferation of channels and interaction points that comprise the true omnichannel experience, the explosion of customer data that is collected during each interaction, and the increasing customer expectation for personalization.

The early days of omnichannel marketing meant direct mail and email. But omnichannel now also encompasses websites, display ads, SMS, mobile apps, SEO, loyalty programs, social media, and more. While the ability to cover this many channels often necessitates a division of responsibility, it can result in siloed channel management that gives customers a less-than- integrated experience. To avoid that, it is imper-ative to align strategy across all channels and to create distinct yet complementary roles for each channel to play.

Big data will present new challenges in the future of omnichannel marketing. Most compa-nies are now facing a data deluge rather than a shortage. Their new struggle is how to turn it into

something manageable. There are many specific techniques to manage big data, but going forward they will boil down to the general principles of organization and simplification.

Big data is only unmanageable when it is unstructured, disintegrated, and unnecessarily detailed or complex. It becomes useful once it is distilled into its most important components, and where tons of individual data points are analyzed and synthesized into meaningful patterns and serviceable models.

Finally, personalization is now a customer expectation. However, the number of individual interactions and the volume of data captured at each interaction multiply into an unreasonable quantity of personalization options. The trick will be to know when to get personal. Having 1:1 communications all the time is neither a neces-sary nor a realistic goal. Mass communication will sometimes make sense (when everyone needs to know the same thing, for instance); at other times a heavily personalized experience is re-quired (when a customer is close to purchasing). A strong testing approach can help find the right mix of personalization for each interaction. ■

Most companies are now facing a data deluge rather than a shortage. Their new struggle is how to turn it into something manageable

Brooke NiemiecCMO, Elicit @curiousbrooke@elicitinsights

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As consumers’ digital needs continue to evolve, brands must keep up. One area in particular that’s seen a rise in popularity is mobile payment. In a world of Venmo, PayPal, and Visa Checkout, online transactions using such platforms have be-come the new cash, not only between brands and consumers but also consumer to consumer.

As payments are becoming increasingly digital, largely to accommodate the growing number of mobile consumers, brands should first focus on optimizing their mobile purchase process. They should implement one-click checkout options on their e-commerce sites by allowing customers to store payment options in their online account or through web integration with various payment platforms. Second, to support their mobile mar-keting efforts, brands should adopt technology like mobile wallets to allow mobile storage and live updates of purchase incentives like coupons, loyalty cards, promotional offers, and more.

Mentioning mobile payment options and adop-tion of mobile wallets in brands’ digital campaigns is both easy and effective. Highlighting mobile

wallets like Apple Wallet and Android Pay within promotional emails, for example, empowers sub-scribers to instantly download and save any rele-vant offers or coupons to their smartphone while allowing brands to update these digital offers in real time. Since mobile wallets can store other important information that consumers regularly access — including loyalty cards, event passes, plane tickets, and hotel reservations — marketers can use this technology to keep their brands top of mind and easily incentivize purchase.

Catering to today’s on-the-go consumer is a marketing must. Mobile will only continue to grow. To come out on top, marketers must con-stantly be on the lookout for new technology that makes engaging mobile consumers easier. Things like responsive design and mobile optimization are the bare minimum when it comes to mobile strategy. To remain relevant, brands should be bold and quick to adapt to trends like mobile payments and mobile wallets before their compet-itors do. By betting on innovation, marketers will reap the rewards. ■

To remain relevant, brands should be bold and quick to adapt to trends like mobile payments and mobile wallets. By betting on innovation, marketers will reap the rewards Ivy Shtereva

Product marketing manager, Yes Lifecycle Marketing @YesLifecycleMkt@Ivy_Shtereva

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A successful e-commerce site makes relevant per-sonalized content a priority, not an option. Think of it this way: When consumers can walk into a physical store and easily find and purchase every item on their list, the shopping trip is considered successful. Brands need to make this frictionless in-store experience happen online. Personaliza-tion is the key component in doing so.

The time available to capture a consumer’s attention is getting shorter. With that in mind, it’s crucial that brands display consistent content and products to visitors based on all the insights known about them and their current situations. This means taking note of external factors like previously viewed and purchased products and articles they may have read — even the weather in a consumer’s current location has relevance. The reason that doing so is important is that it’s been proved that when customers show increased engagement scores with a brand, conversion and revenue KPIs follow.

Today, it’s essential that e-commerce sites display highly effective content alongside the products being sold as well as throughout their digital experiences across all channels. This can

only be done, however, by using an e-commerce platform that combines content, marketing, and commerce all in one. Using a robust platform can help e-commerce sites create high-quality prod-uct and editorial content that fits with customers’ lifestyle interests and personalized interactions with consumers during every step of the purchas-ing process.

Relevant and consistent omnichannel expe-riences win (and will continue to win) custom-ers’ hearts and minds. The more that marketers engage and inspire a customer individually, the better chance they will have of seeing the custom-er move down the conversion funnel. ■

Brands need to make the frictionless in-store experience happen online. Personalization is the key component

David BowenDirector, product management for commerce, EPiServer @dmbowen@episerverus

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Why is security often a big consideration for folks unwilling to move into the cloud?

Omnichannel can really only work with sol-id fraud protection in place. Without it, data is corrupt. Even worse, the corruption is different across channels, further confusing marketers and hurting their campaigns.

Mobile device hijacking, for example, generates streams of false data 24/7, as opposed to desktop, where it’s typically limited to a particular ses-sion or open tab. There are also different “attack vectors” in video versus display, for instance, that differentially corrupt data across channels, mak-ing it that much more difficult to have a success-ful campaign.

That’s why it’s important to have a fully featured digital marketing platform with built-in fraud fighting. The result is accurate data that produces much better outcomes for omni- channel marketers.

On the horizon, just as we — as marketers — are learning how to fight fraud more effectively over time, it’s likely fraudsters will step up their game as well, perhaps even getting better at creating believable and monetizable, yet false, omnichannel profiles. Therefore, it’s important

for us to stay vigilant and be proactive in order to counter such emerging threats.

Although fraud and cloud security are tangen-tially related through bad actors, cloud security per se seems irrelevant for omnichannel market-ing. Still, security is often a big consideration for folks unwilling to move into the cloud, whereas in reality the cloud can actually be the safest place to be.

The best cloud providers have standardized and certified built-in security measures that often go way beyond what any bespoke “on-premise” or co-located installation can provide. And it’s not just hardware and software that’s involved — often employees are the biggest risk. So, big cloud providers can often cover all the bases much better than any individual company with infra-structure needs can. ■

It’s important to have a fully featured digital marketing plat-form with fraud-fighting built in. The result is accurate data that produces much better outcomes for omnichannel marketers Mike Andrews

Chief scientist, Forensiq, at Impact Radius@forensiq