MarketingSherpa: Describe your organization’s digital marketing goals a bit in your own words. What is your role in those objectives?
Nick Worth, Selligent: At Selligent, our digital marketing goals are centered on providing brands with the tools they need to better engage their customers in the moment. The days of batch-and-blast are numbered. Instead, digital marketers need to migrate to consumer-first marketing, where brands deliver value with each communication, across every channel, in each micro-moment.
As CMO at Selligent, it's my job to let digital marketers know that transitioning to consumer-first marketing doesn't have to be daunting. By arming marketers with the right tools and strategy, they can excel in this new marketing reality created by the hyper-connected consumer.
MarketingSherpa: Describe any digital marketing challenges and/or opportunities that you’ve personally experienced in the past year.
Nick Worth, Selligent: Keeping up with the pace of new channels, technologies and consumer behaviors are the biggest challenges for Selligent as a provider of omni-channel marketing solutions, and also for digital marketers looking to initiate, maintain and grow engagement with their customers.
It's impossible to predict what new developments will change how consumers interact with brands, but it is possible to have the right solutions and processes in place that enable you to adapt and respond to those developments. In the end, marketers must be focused on delivering value with each customer engagement, across every channel. If they are loyal to that goal, they will make the effort to implement any changes that are necessary. The biggest challenge for many marketers is to break out of what they know to embrace the opportunities presented by the inevitable change in our industry.
MarketingSherpa: What has been your most valuable asset in digital marketing?
Nick Worth, Selligent: Being able to understand and engage a customer, in the moment, is the most valuable asset a digital marketer can have. At Selligent, we enable marketers to connect to all the different types of online, offline and third-party data required to understand the context of each customer and then … deliver campaigns across channels based on that context. Consumers are willing to give up data in return for more personalized and valuable experiences, but that puts the onus on the marketer to follow through and meet their expectations. Understanding customer context is the first step in building an effective marketing campaign, as it drives content, channel-execution, timing and more. Engaging customers in the moment is an ambitious objective, but it can be accomplished if a marketing organization puts together the four necessary ingredients for success: a clear set of goals, the right team to drive the change, access to the appropriate data and the right solution to power the engagement.
MarketingSherpa: How can marketers use digital to be customer-centric?
Nick Worth, Selligent: Consumers are living their lives online, so it's impossible to be customer-centric without taking digital channels and data into account. At Selligent, our consumer-first marketing approach takes customer-centricity a step further. Historically, marketers have engaged customers based on their sales goals and promotional calendar. Selligent is enabling marketers to turn this paradigm around to create programs that automatically respond to customers based on their current context. Marketers need to go beyond simple and predominantly static CRM data to leverage dynamic feeds like location, device type, social sentiment and more. Only then can marketers put the customer first with every communication.
The good news is that new tools like open time personalization are making this happen. For example, instead of sending a static offer based on customer data at the time of send, marketers can now use dynamic content that can automatically update when the message is opened. In that way, marketers don't need to worry about promoting an expired sales event or out-of-stock product. Taking it even further, travel companies can now send weather forecasts that automatically refresh each time the message is opened. Access to real-time data makes all of this possible, which leaves marketers no excuse for engaging customers with out-of-date information or offers.
MarketingSherpa: What was your big picture takeaway from digital marketing this year?
Nick Worth, Selligent: The always-on consumer is forging their own path to purchase, creating countless unique journeys and upending the long-established and finely tuned plans of direct marketers. But the very same technology advancements that have created the hyper-connected consumer give marketers an opportunity to engage more deeply than ever before. Instead of shrinking from this shift [of] linear to fragmented journeys, marketers need to embrace the opportunities afforded by hyper-connected consumers. If you're willing to embrace change and adapt, it's never been a better time to be a relationship marketer.
MarketingSherpa: What are some trends that you see coming up in digital marketing?
Nick Worth, Selligent: As consumers demand more valuable, relevant and timely experiences from brands, marketers will respond by shifting more of their budget from scheduled campaigns to automated programs that are triggered off of real-time data. As a result, consumers will build relationships with brands organically, based on each customer's actions and interests at any given point in time. Constant connectivity has shifted the balance of power in the consumer-brand relationship, and the successful companies will be the ones that leverage this new reality to deepen customer relationships with consumer-first marketing. Only by putting the customer first can brands demonstrate the integrity and empathy that will turn fickle, bargain-hunting consumers into loyal and passionate brand advocates. The bar for the consumer-brand relationship is being raised. The successful companies will be the ones [that] abandon the status quo to push the bar even higher.
Selligent is a Platinum Sponsor of MarketingSherpa Summit 2016. To learn more about their solution, visit their website or stop by Booth #201 in the Solutions District at #SHERPA16.
