The need for renovation
To a customer, there is one company — not separate departments. In fact, 64% of consumers and business buyers say companies need cutting-edge digital experiences to keep their business. Therefore, we must look beyond marketing teams to drive superior engagement across the entire consumer journey — and the notion of a “marketing stack” is merely a label. High performers integrate their marketing stack across all functions of the business from advertising to customer support.
Keeping customers in the flow
By using a complete marketing stack with features that include personalization, contact management, and merchandising and commerce capabilities, a business can break down the siloes that build up between teams. Using a single source of truth for customers throughout the business enables the entire organization to work together to innovate, execute, and drive customer value.
See how these four teams can reimagine their relationship with marketing technology to create personalized connected experiences customers want.
1. Sales
For companies with a large sales organization or partner networks, delivering connected consumer experiences can be a challenge. While corporate teams deliver on-brand marketing campaigns, they often fail at scaling to the “last mile” of personal engagement that only local partners and teams can deliver on because they manage the consumer relationship. This can lead to disconnected experiences and can result in customers feeling as though two different companies are engaging with them. With functions like distributed marketing, your marketing teams can empower your sales organization to build 1-to-1 messaging experiences, that they can share with partners, and will help to close deals faster.
2. Information Technology (IT)
As brands add more technology to the mix, they need to employ a new layer of staff — systems administrators (also known as a marketing operations team). Best-in-class marketing stacks are evolving every day and it’s critical that every organization has a power user and someone who is keeping a watchful eye. They’re easily the largest IT systems within today’s businesses and will remain so far into the future. As such, they must be treated with proper management and oversight. High-performing IT and marketing teams collaborate to ensure they unlock new capabilities that will engage their users and ultimately drive demand.
3. Merchandising and Commerce
Robust decision and message orchestration tools embedded in your marketing stack enable marketing, merchandising, and commerce to work cross-functionally to create individualized experiences for your customers. Teams leverage decision engines to orchestrate a consistent and relevant experience for every single customer, regardless of the channel, touchpoint, or device, in real time. Your customers, budgets, and organizations will benefit from having these teams closely aligned on these efforts.
4. Human Resources (HR)
HR has evolved from a hiring-and-firing-focused position to have a huge impact on employee experience. The new HR department must embrace technology to expand its role in the organization. Internal data is available on just about everything, from how employees are performing to how often they visit certain areas of the office. Harnessing that functionality from the marketing stack and leveraging tools like customer journey orchestration can assist the HR team in making strategic decisions. In this way, HR can leverage a robust marketing stack to design personalized and meaningful experiences for employees.
Bringing it all together
Marketing is part of every step of the modern customer journey. And your “customer” can include your corporate partners and colleagues, as well as your end-user. That’s why your choice in marketing technologies should be integrated across your business to support the customer lifecycle. A robust marketing stack means your brand is better suited to create personalized, omnichannel experiences that customers want. Now, it’s no longer just a marketing stack. It’s a customer journey stack.
Real-time personalization that transforms the customer experience is the marketer’s top goal. However, we still struggle with where to get started. Watch this webinar to learn how digitally mature companies assemble the building blocks of architecture, data strategy, contact strategy, content strategy, and design system to become a customer-centric company.
