How To Achieve Real-Time Responsiveness in Marketing

Learn from Ankur Jain and Sandeep Sachdeva what speed looks like in marketing and how to achieve responsiveness in real time. 

Last Updated: December 6, 2022

In today’s economy, companies must be able to respond in real-time to provide personalized experiences. However, if experiences are not informed by the most recent customer activity, real-time activation will not likely achieve optimal results. Here, Ankur Jain, Global Cloud Practice Lead at Merkle and Sandeep Sachdeva, SVP – Head of Data Platforms Merkle, share what speed in marketing looks like and how to achieve responsiveness in real time. 

While customers vary in their preferences, speed and responsiveness are becoming more critical for a memorable digital experience. In today’s economy, organizations need the ability to react and respond in real-time to provide personalized experiences. For brands, responsiveness in marketing means they can react to customers’ needs at any point along the buyer journey, driven by a recent understanding of the customer’s profile, behaviors, and intent. In the industry, this illusive concept of “real-time” is often used broadly as a requirement, even though many are unable to capitalize on that effectively.

As we often see from brands, if experiences are not informed by the most recent customer activity, such as recent page view visits on a brand website that shows interest or intent, real-time activation is not likely to achieve optimal results. For example, suppose the customer service rep of a fashion retailer can view the customer’s recent shopping activity down to the last interaction. In that case, they can have a more informed conversation about the cashmere sweater that the customer just returned, allowing the rep to better understand the situation the customer is looking to work through. This gives the rep a better chance to convert the sale or satisfy the need and tailor the interaction to the customer’s interests.

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What Speed in Marketing Looks Like

Let us look at this responsiveness in action. To enable a “great day at the park” experience, in the example of a theme park resort, the brand could communicate with guests at the park the wait time when they are near a ride. The brand can go one step further and inform the guest if the ride is experiencing high or low wait times so the guest can tailor their itinerary accordingly. Similarly, media could also be tailored by weather in each customer’s area to promote the water park on a hot summer day or evening passes if the ad reaches someone in the morning or afternoon. 

In the end, it is about adding value to the customer while uplifting the brand’s value. If this responsiveness is not utilized, a product could be promoted to a customer that has already been purchased. Even worse, promoting that same product and providing better pricing than the consumer paid would create a negative experience.

Customers of the future want to be understood and known and are looking for instant gratification regardless of the channel they engage on. Looking at another example, if a customer receives a custom quote for insurance via an online form, that offer needs to be updated within the customer’s profile across the entire organization. This is to recognize and honor that deal whether they call into the service center, go into a physical location, or download the app to learn more.

How To Make This Responsiveness Happen

Bring data together in a unified data ecosystem

Some organizations still use manual processing and operational complexities in ingesting, unifying, and activating data. While every business wants to deliver more relevant and personalized experiences and optimize channel performance, we still often see some organizations today build siloed data constructs from the ground up. This redundant practice takes away valuable time from the teams managing them and can result in inconsistencies and unnecessary costs. Leveraging the promise of cloud-native technologies and using low-code, no-code automation capabilities with the added value of artificial intelligence (AI) to deduce intent and context on mostly machine-generated good data enabled by engaging customer journeys in real-time is the key. 

Own and control identity graph creation and hosting

An owned identity graph allows marketers to create a 360-degree view of their customer’s wants, needs, and preferences by compiling acquired data with bolstered third-party data to create a single customer profile. The identification process must pull existing observed identity signals from the site and increase recognition by utilizing an enhanced identity graph or database. For brands to be most competitive in today’s business environment, marketers must work with their IT team to gain more control over identity graphs to make the most use of them. This includes how they are built, hosted, and accessed in real-time. 

With these customer profiles (accessible across marketing, sales, service, etc.), business groups can better plan and implement experiences fast and consider the latest interactions the customer has made. 

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Connect your capabilities to connect with the customer

By connecting all capabilities within the marketing technology stack, businesses can leverage a cohesive technology engine that powers speed and personalized responsiveness across all marketing channels and tools. This allows marketers to build and utilize holistic 360-customer profile views that encompass all data and pull in new data as it is collected, strengthening customer relationships and thereby establishing the coveted brand connect. Fueled by a solid data foundation, the entire organization, from marketing and sales to service and beyond, can democratize and utilize that customer data to activate priority use cases more efficiently and effectively. While the transformation to a connected organization that can power speed and effectiveness with data will look different for each brand, the basic reasons and principles behind that remain nearly the same. 

Today, it is about connecting with your customers and prospects in a way that makes those interactions most valuable for them, quickly providing relevant content that answers questions or delivers value to solve a problem or need. Your customers and prospects want experiences they are comfortable with, can interact with, and, most importantly, enable something to talk about.

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Ankur Jain
Ankur Jain

Senior Vice President, Cloud Solutions, Merkle

Ankur joined Merkle in 2016 and leads the Cloud Strategy for Merkle. He is responsible for product innovation and creating go-to-market offerings for Cloud-based solutions at Merkle. He is instrumental behind shaping Merkle’s Cloud-First strategy, jumpstarting the Cloud practice, and formulating strategic partnerships. Prior to joining Merkle, he was the co-founder and CTO of Archipelago IS, a Cloud-based Big Data Analytics services provider. Prior to Archipelago, he worked in senior leadership roles for Dell and America Online. Overall, he has about 20 years of data warehousing, analytics, and Big Data experience Ankur is based out of Austin, Texas and has a masters in information systems, and bachelors in chemical engineering.
Sandeep Sachdeva
Sandeep Sachdeva

SVP - Head of Data Platforms, Merkle

Sandeep Sachdeva is a technology enthusiast with over 25 years of experience in the IT industry. His experience spans several sectors including retail, oil and gas, medical, automotive, manufacturing, and banking and insurance. While he has helped several companies in leveraging data and business intelligence capabilities, he is focusing on Data and Implementation at Merkle. He believes in delivering value to the end customer and their happiness through hardware and software as one point solution. ​
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