Digital Trends: An Industry Focus on Digital Marketing in 2015

On the Dig­i­tal Europe blog we’ve been look­ing at devel­op­ing trends and upcom­ing devel­op­ments in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. If you’ve not yet seen our pre­dic­tions for 2015, you can take a look here.

While I expect to see these trends pro­gress­ing across the board, there is no one size fits all approach to mar­ket­ing. With that in mind, I’m tak­ing a look at a few key indus­tries and con­sid­er­ing how our key trends of mobile, per­son­alised cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, cross-chan­nel and data-dri­ven mar­ket­ing will impact them over the com­ing year.

Finan­cial Services

First up is finan­cial ser­vices, an indus­try which is strug­gling to keep up with the flex­i­bil­i­ty required for advanced per­son­al­i­sa­tion, despite heavy investment.

In recent years, Finan­cial Ser­vices Insti­tu­tions (FSI) have invest­ed heav­i­ly in brochure­ware (pre-reg­is­tra­tion or log-in) sites to boost sales. How­ev­er, the major­i­ty of dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions hap­pen with reg­is­tered cus­tomers in an authen­ti­cat­ed space such as the trans­ac­tion­al area of your online bank­ing. These authen­ti­cat­ed spaces cur­rent­ly have very lit­tle flex­i­bil­i­ty to deliv­er per­son­alised and engag­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, some­thing we know is vital. In 2015, FSIs will become sig­nif­i­cant­ly more exper­i­men­tal on the web, deliv­er­ing con­sis­tent per­son­alised expe­ri­ences to both brand new and authen­ti­cat­ed cus­tomers. If done well, these changes will lead to improved cross-sell and up-sell from dig­i­tal channels.

Retail

In retail, the online and offline expe­ri­ence will con­tin­ue to merge. Many retail­ers have already invest­ed in build­ing the abil­i­ty to con­nect the online and offline cus­tomer jour­neys. As this picks up pace in 2015, tech­nolo­gies such as BLE (Blue­tooth Low Ener­gy) and sophis­ti­cat­ed ePOS (intel­li­gent point of sale soft­ware) will allow retail­ers to col­lect dig­i­tal inter­ac­tion data in the phys­i­cal space. Online, offline and in-store behav­iour will com­bine to cre­ate rich, engag­ing expe­ri­ences for retail cus­tomers with phys­i­cal loca­tions tak­ing a cen­tral role in dig­i­tal data collection.”

The same the­o­ry will apply to cus­tomer ser­vice, says my col­league Michael Plimsoll:

“In Store knowl­edge is val­ued by con­sumers and brands alike and in 2015 ever more of this exper­tise will appear online. Real time, online inter­ac­tions with staff as well as intel­li­gent algo­rithms will allow con­sumers to access the same lev­el of cus­tomer ser­vice and rec­om­men­da­tion as they would expect in store. A cross chan­nel approach will enable brands to bet­ter cross sell and up sell.

As for the sup­ply chain, as ven­dors ship more on their own behalf, con­sumers will ben­e­fit from greater flex­i­bil­i­ty across chan­nels with order­ing, deliv­ery, pick up and returns tak­ing place both online and in store.”

Auto­mo­tive

I am look­ing to the auto­mo­tive indus­try to con­tin­ue dri­ving dig­i­tal inno­va­tion. It is already at the fore­front of con­sis­tent brand expe­ri­ences and dig­i­tal con­tent man­age­ment. In 2015, they will be using data to increase the effec­tive­ness of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing through­out the entire cos­tumer lifetime.

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of deal­er show­rooms will allow com­pa­nies to gain insight into the cus­tomer jour­ney as well as deal­er effec­tive­ness. Inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships with dig­i­tal brands will extend the val­ue of the brand beyond the vehi­cles them­selves; it will inher­ent­ly make the auto­mo­bile more dig­i­tal. As a result, auto­mo­tive com­pa­nies will devel­op ways to har­vest and analyse new­ly gen­er­at­ed data.

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion

Under­stand­ing the val­ue of the data we have is impor­tant to all mar­keters, but the unique­ly placed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion indus­try will begin to view this data as a resource in itself.

Com­pa­nies have long been using dig­i­tal to increase oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and to up sell and cross sell their prod­ucts. How­ev­er, they also own a trea­sure trove of dig­i­tal data – from TV view­er­ship to mobile app down­loads — which will increas­ing­ly become a source of revenue.

It’s clear to me that data-dri­ven and cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing is set to have a huge impact on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in 2015, no mat­ter the indus­try you are in. If you’ve not done so already, it’s time to dive in.

Now it’s over to you – take part in our 2015 dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing sur­vey and become part of the Dig­i­tal Intel­li­gence Brief­ing 2015 report.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1910701/eb55e49268b0