6 Stages of Digital Transformation: “Strategic”

Thanks for join­ing me for this third instal­ment of our series on the six stages of dig­i­tal transformation.

Through­out the series, we’ve been exam­in­ing the six dis­tinct steps—from “Busi­ness as Usu­al” to dig­i­tal­ly “Inno­v­a­tive and Adaptive”—as laid out in the 2016 Altime­ter Study “The Six Stages of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion.”

We began by look­ing at the tran­si­tion from “Busi­ness as Usu­al” to “Present and Active,” as cer­tain teams with­in com­pa­nies recog­nise that old par­a­digms are no longer effec­tive, and begin to con­duct small, iso­lat­ed exper­i­ments in dig­i­tal-first out­reach. Then, in the sec­ond arti­cle, we took a clos­er look at the “For­malised” stage, in which dig­i­tal exper­i­men­ta­tion becomes more direct­ed as mar­ket­ing depart­ments seek to build holis­tic cus­tomer pro­files, and to inte­grate func­tions from host­ing to ana­lyt­ics into a sin­gle mar­ket­ing platform.

As more depart­ments with­in the organ­i­sa­tion become aware of the suc­cess­es to be gained by attain­ing dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, these teams may recog­nise that even more pow­er­ful insights can be gained by col­lab­o­rat­ing with one anoth­er. Dri­ven by dig­i­tal-first train­ing and active empow­er­ment from the exec­u­tive lev­el, the com­pa­ny may then embark on the “Strate­gic” stage of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, in which dig­i­tal efforts are for­mal­ly organ­ised accord­ing to a con­sis­tent roadmap.

Con­tent marketing

By this stage of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, experts on sev­er­al teams have achieved increas­ing con­ver­sion rates on a vari­ety of dig­i­tal chan­nels, includ­ing mobile and social. The leadership—and the customers—are now ask­ing for more. Expec­ta­tions of real-time respon­sive­ness and con­tin­u­ous, con­sis­tent inter­ac­tions across all chan­nels cre­ate the need to increase con­tent veloc­i­ty, to cre­ate a seam­less omnichan­nel cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, and to mea­sure the impact of con­tent through­out the entire cus­tomer jour­ney, across all touchpoints.

Pub­lish­er Thom­son Reuters, for exam­ple, already had all the pieces in place to deliv­er rich dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences to cus­tomers. The com­pa­ny had com­pelling con­tent, an easy-to-nav­i­gate web­site, and mobile and social prop­er­ties that accu­rate­ly reflect­ed the brand’s voice. What it was miss­ing, how­ev­er, was a sys­tem for tying togeth­er data from each of these chan­nels to make data-dri­ven deci­sions on cross-chan­nel con­tent strategy.

By inte­grat­ing a wide vari­ety of test­ing, ana­lyt­ics, and per­son­al­i­sa­tion tools, Thom­son Reuters was able not only to deliv­er cus­tom con­tent and e‑commerce expe­ri­ences on demand, but to proac­tive­ly antic­i­pate search trends, in order to greet cus­tomers with fresh con­tent tai­lored around their inter­ests, deliv­ered con­sis­tent­ly across all chan­nels. The results were a 50 per­cent con­ver­sion lift in e‑commerce trans­ac­tions, a 200 per­cent boost in read­er reten­tion, and an estab­lished cycle of best prac­tices for test­ing and opti­mis­ing con­tent, nav­i­ga­tion, and lay­out to improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ences even further.

But some dig­i­tal mar­keters go even fur­ther than this. They want not only to deliv­er impact­ful cross-chan­nel con­tent in real time, but also to find out pre­cise­ly which pieces of con­tent are dri­ving con­ver­sions on which channels—and why.

Mar­ket­ing attribution
Now that adver­tis­ing has become a cen­tral aspect of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, some mar­keters may begin to wor­ry that they’re not get­ting the best results pos­si­ble. They may ques­tion whether they tru­ly under­stand why cer­tain con­tent and tac­tics lead to cer­tain results, and whether dif­fer­ent chan­nels may be impact­ing each other’s results in ways they can’t see clear­ly. Mar­keters who can pin­point inac­cu­rate or mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion can help sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the val­ue of each mar­ket­ing invest­ment, and max­imise reach and impact for each media purchase.

Lead­ing PC man­u­fac­tur­er Leno­vo estab­lished a Glob­al Busi­ness Intel­li­gence team to har­ness cus­tomer data for more effec­tive mar­ket­ing. After ear­ly suc­cess­es with inte­grat­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing, stake­hold­ers and mar­keters alike began to ask if seem­ing­ly small con­tent tweaks and opti­mi­sa­tions could lead to sig­nif­i­cant lifts in conversion.

By analysing data com­bined from six sources—including web, post-pur­chase sur­vey, CRM,

call cen­tre, email, and live chat—the Leno­vo team built its own pre­dic­tive seg­men­ta­tion scor­ing mod­el, which enabled them to cal­cu­late, in real time, the like­li­hood that a giv­en vis­i­tor would make a pur­chase via a giv­en chan­nel when pre­sent­ed with a giv­en mes­sage and con­tent struc­ture. This enabled the com­pa­ny to tai­lor its online con­tent more pre­cise­ly than ever before, cre­at­ing a 12-fold return on invest­ment (ROI) in only six months, a 495 per­cent lift in opti­mised con­tent, and a 26 per­cent improve­ment in glob­al sales—all because of many tiny changes in content.

Empow­ered by attrib­ut­able click-throughs, guid­ed by data-dri­ven con­tent strate­gies, mar­keters may seek to use these insights in pre­scrip­tive ways, to build for­ward-look­ing roadmaps for cam­paign devel­op­ment and deployment.

Cam­paign orchestration
Once mar­keters have seen the impact of dynam­i­cal­ly adap­tive con­tent, the next log­i­cal step is to auto­mate the opti­mi­sa­tion process, and launch entire cam­paigns in which con­sis­tent mes­sag­ing and pre­sen­ta­tion are iter­a­tive­ly improved and utilised for max­i­mum cross-chan­nel impact. Hence, the need for cam­paign orchestration—the cen­tralised cre­ation, automa­tion, and orches­tra­tion of con­sis­tent omnichan­nel cam­paigns, in which each piece of con­tent hits the cus­tomer with exact­ly the right mes­sage at pre­cise­ly the right time.

UBS, the finan­cial ser­vices organ­i­sa­tion head­quar­terd in Zurich, Switzer­land, already had a world-class web­site, offer­ing 50,000 pages in mul­ti­ple lan­guages, high­light­ing finan­cial news, blogs, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing offers, videos, and details about the bank’s cred­it cards, mort­gages, and oth­er offer­ings. The company’s intranet also pushed out more than 100,000 pages of infor­ma­tion to employ­ees. This enor­mous traf­fic vol­ume gave UBS the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve high­ly tar­get­ed con­tent to both exter­nal and inter­nal users—but the bank’s exist­ing web con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem made updates and automa­tion cumbersome.

UBS adopt­ed a cen­tralised ana­lyt­ics and con­tent deliv­ery solu­tion that enabled the com­pa­ny to track sites and assets, gen­er­ate mar­ket­ing reports and per­form A/B tests on the fly, and dynam­i­cal­ly sur­face con­tent from its enor­mous library accord­ing to the needs and attrib­ut­es of each vis­i­tor. The platform’s built-in ana­lyt­ics auto­mat­i­cal­ly track and attribute click-throughs, dri­ving high­er-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences that mea­sur­ably boost con­ver­sions. The sys­tem also stream­lines the updat­ing process with shared tem­plates and assets, and pro­vides an unpar­al­leled range of insights on cus­tomer activ­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ca­tions across all dig­i­tal channels.

Once a com­pa­ny has reached this “Strate­gic” stage of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, data silos are a thing of the past, and teams are active­ly shar­ing data and insights across cam­paigns and depart­ments. As those teams col­lab­o­rate on new strate­gic roadmaps, dig­i­tal-first think­ing begins to impact the company’s invest­ment choic­es, as well as plans for future strate­gic initiatives.

Few com­pa­nies have pro­gressed beyond this stage of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. In the rar­efied organ­i­sa­tions that push onward into the “Con­verged” stage, dig­i­tal strat­e­gy begins to shape

not only mar­ket­ing research and tac­tics, but the fun­da­men­tal infra­struc­ture of the organ­i­sa­tion as a whole. It’s with this stage—and the final “Inno­v­a­tive and Adap­tive” stage—that we’ll cov­er as we con­clude this series in the next and final arti­cle. See you there!