This is the second post in a series of blogs looking at how credit card issuers have the opportunity to transform marketing to become truly personalized. In the first blog, we discussed the need for personalized marketing and the constraints that up until now made achieving it difficult. In this second blog, we explore the Marketing Technology (MarTech) landscape and provide guidance on the teams and capabilities you should consider when selecting MarTech solutions.
During a previous market assessment, we stumbled upon Gartner’s Transit Map. Gartner’s Transit Map displays the MarTech space, with each station representing an individual solution, organized into neighborhoods that represent a marketing capability.
WOAH.
At first glance, the map is extremely overwhelming. If you’re considering a MarTech investment, take a closer look. By organizing MarTech solutions (the stations) into neighborhoods (the color-coded rectangles), Gartner provides an overview on the various marketing capabilities and how they fit together. With the right combination of MarTech solutions, organizations can continue executing their typical credit card marketing campaigns to push messages to large customer segments, while also launching trigger-based campaigns that send messages to customers in segments of one:
Before you get lost in the MarTech jungle, think about your organization’s capabilities to distinguish you from the competition. Think about your organization’s long-term marketing strategy and the capabilities you need to achieve your goal. Which capabilities need to be enhanced in order for you to remain competitive? Which capabilities are missing from your organization and preventing you from achieving your marketing strategy?
Next, sit down with teams in other business functions within your organization to see where your needs align. We recommend marketing include advertising, customer service (or any team focused on the customer experience), and IT teams in MarTech discussions because:
Cross-functional collaboration helps organizations maximize the benefits MarTech solutions can have on top-line revenue. Collaboration makes business functions aware of one another’s touch points with customers, making internal hand-offs imperceptible in the customer journey. The organization will avoid redundancy and contradictions in their communications with customers. A positive customer experience will attract more customers and increase loyalty, meaning greater ROI on MarTech solutions.
Dynamic content management, journey mapping, and predictive analytics are only three capabilities among many that are needed to launch successful marketing campaigns. We highlight these three capabilities because they are the capabilities most organizations have yet to invest in adequately. These capabilities enable organizations to respond to customers and market trends with greater speed and relevancy. They will help your organization launch campaigns that target segments of one to complement your campaigns that target larger segments.
To successfully implement these MarTech capabilities, your organization must employ data architecture to centralize customer data from all business functions across an organization. Our next blog will explore how to build data architecture to support real-time monitoring of customer touchpoints, identifying patterns across those touchpoints, and responding to customer behaviors based on those patterns.