Customer Experience: Data Is What Matters!

The cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is the holy grail for max­i­mum adver­tis­ing suc­cess. If it was up to the experts in the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing sec­tor, excit­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ences would have been incor­po­rat­ed into mar­ket­ing cam­paigns long ago. Indeed, the mar­ket­ing indus­try has focused on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence for sev­er­al years, and it will be one of the main focus­es at this year’s dmex­co.

How­ev­er, an immense gap still exists between the­o­ry and prac­tice because few have actu­al­ly tack­led the new cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Why is this the case? Because few com­pa­nies have suf­fi­cient data to meet their cus­tomers’ needs. Accord­ing to a recent Adobe study, only one in five com­pa­nies com­bine dif­fer­ent data sources to obtain a 360-degree view of indi­vid­ual cus­tomers. Mar­ket­ing experts should know by now that unless they real­ly know their cus­tomers, they won’t be able to pro­vide tai­lored cus­tomer experiences.

Silo Struc­tures and Het­ero­ge­neous IT Systems

In many com­pa­nies, the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is threat­en­ing to fail because of the data silo struc­ture. Two-thirds of the com­pa­nies in the Adobe tri­al have been iden­ti­fied as hav­ing data that’s restrict­ed from any type of cen­tral access. Mod­ern tools already exist to sup­port seam­less, fast, and effi­cient coop­er­a­tion in cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing. Giv­en the huge demand for con­tent, which is accel­er­at­ed through more pre­cise seg­men­ta­tion and a more indi­vid­u­alised approach, the coop­er­a­tion of for­mer­ly inde­pen­dent parts of a com­pa­ny is rapid­ly gain­ing impor­tance. Final­ly, this con­tent must be cre­ative­ly and effi­cient­ly dri­ven and opti­mised where necessary.

In addi­tion to struc­tur­al prob­lems, het­ero­ge­neous IT sys­tems can become data pris­ons in dai­ly prac­tice. Almost every Euro­pean com­pa­ny is using dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies to cap­ture and ana­lyze cus­tomer data. This often results in data islands, which pre­vent a holis­tic view of the cus­tomer and des­tine data-opti­mised mar­ket­ing to fail­ure from the outset.

UBS Relies on a Stan­dard­ised Data Platform

One com­pa­ny that has risen to the chal­lenge of data-opti­mised cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the inter­na­tion­al bank UBS. Using Adobe Cam­paign, the finan­cial insti­tu­tion has man­aged to con­sol­i­date data from mul­ti­ple mar­ket­ing sys­tems used by dif­fer­ent inter­nal teams and agen­cies world­wide with var­i­ous report­ing and analy­sis solutions.

Manuel Niess, who is respon­si­ble for dig­i­tal chan­nels with­in UBS’s Group Chan­nels Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices, explains: “We are work­ing towards hav­ing an inte­grat­ed view of our users across all web, mobile, and even offline inter­ac­tions to be sure that our offers are coor­di­nat­ed and con­sis­tent, In this way, we can begin to more ful­ly own our email strat­e­gy and offer more per­son­al­ized con­tent across the cus­tomer journey.”

Smart Data and Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Belong Together

Prac­ti­cal exam­ples like this con­firm: Mod­ern mar­ket­ing tools help com­pa­nies suc­cess­ful­ly cre­ate excit­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ences. Also clear is that these solu­tions need data. Even the best tech­niques can­not run on their own. Com­pa­nies must sup­ply the cor­rect data to dri­ve per­son­alised com­mu­ni­ca­tion across all channels.

Suresh Vit­tal, Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing Strat­e­gy at Adobe, and Andy Gall, CTO of Red Bull Media House will dis­cuss the data-opti­mised cus­tomer expe­ri­ence of the future at the dmex­co Fire­side Chat “The Future of Expe­ri­ence” (14.09., Con­gress Hall, 13:45pm).

Timo Kohlberg, Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at Adobe, will describe the grow­ing influ­ence of data in con­tent mar­ket­ing in the “Lead­ing the Busi­ness Expe­ri­ence Wave by Turn­ing Data and Con­tent into Con­text” sem­i­nar (15:09., Sem­i­nar 4, 10:00am).

Adobe will present spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tion exam­ples from its Expe­ri­ence Busi­ness at its dmex­co exhib­it (A011 B016) in Hall 7.

Adobe experts will be avail­able at dmex­co for per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions. Make your appoint­ment with us now!