In Part Seven of Our Predictions Series 2018, We Explore How the ‘Butterfly Effect’ Is Going to Disrupt the Martech Community
Small drops, big oceans… Minor flutter, gigantic tornado!!! In our scientific parlance, the “Butterfly effect” within martech demonstrates a great metaphorical effect on the way B2B technology ecosystem is shaping up in 2018.
An extension of the Chaos Theory, the butterfly effect is “the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later stage.”
Any resemblance to the contemporary marketing technologies, impacted by the proliferation of the automation, AI/ML and a bunch of other self-driven, human-fed data-powered capabilities! To further our efforts in bringing the most contemporary insights from the martech community, we are featuring senior executives from Adobe, Aki Technologies, Animoto, Contently, eZanga, Equals 3, HG Data, Indicative, Reply.io, Thunder, and Quantic Mind.
Hey Marketer! Do You See What AI is Doing to Your Customer Experience Efforts, Under the Hood?
Kevin Lindsay, Director of Product Marketing, Adobe Target, calls on modern marketers to dive deeper into AI-powered technologies that run personalization campaigns.
Kevin states, “Whether marketers are new to personalization and optimization or run a highly mature, sophisticated program around it, 2018 should be all about exploring AI-driven personalization. But it’s not just enough to have AI running in the background; marketers need visibility into what the machine learning algorithm powering AI is doing under the hood.”
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Kevin added, “Having this insight answers questions about why the algorithm decided to deliver the experience it did, what attributes of the visitor it deemed most predictive, what experience resonated best with what audience, and so on. This information can guide marketers in determining the types of experiences they create and what specific audiences to target in an effort to drive the most accurate personalized experiences at scale.”
Rich and Timely Benefits for Data-savvy Marketers
Jeremy Levy, CEO and Co-Founder, Indicative, predicts, “2018 will be the year of data-savvy marketers. Marketing teams will be expected more than ever to leverage data to optimize their activities.”
Jeremy goes on to add, “This doesn’t mean that marketers will suddenly be required to be data scientists. It means they will be equipped with easy-to-use tools that empower them to simply perform complex analyses. With behavioral analytics platforms like Indicative, marketers will be able to input and assess their own data, without waiting on their data teams to do it for them.”
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Dramatic Rise of DMPs and CDPs
Victor Wong, CEO of Thunder, said, “Martech leaders will begin to grapple with their investment in data starting with their data management platforms. The first generation of solutions are now simultaneously facing challenges by Customer Data Platforms and questions on the real reaches of audiences because of match rates between systems. Even tougher questions will come around what exactly they are doing with this data to change the customer and brand experience when they are able to activate it since that was the whole point of the investment.”
… Don’t Leave the Content Marketers Behind in the Race to Deliver Customer Experience
Content will continue to drive rich personalized experiences. However, the theme has gradually shifted from high-volume content to high-value “contextual” content for better personalization, something that drives sustained engagement and ROI.
Henry Bruce, SVP of Marketing, Contently, said, “For CMOs and marketing leaders, content transformation will continue to gain momentum as a critical aspect of digital transformation. While content is the currency of digital marketing, many companies have not prioritized transforming the content lifecycle according to SiriusDecisions, 75 percent of B2B enterprise organizations have not formalized how they approach content creation.”
Henry added, “There are plenty of opportunities for marketing leaders who take content transformation seriously. According to the CMO Council, 32 percent of a B2C organization’s budget and 28 percent of a B2B organization’s budget is spent on content”–suffice it to say, improving the efficiency and performance of content has the potential to drive significant business results. To accomplish this, senior marketers need to holistically rethink the strategy, process, and technology behind how they create content and adapt them for an always-on, digital world where audiences are increasingly dispersed across an array of disparate channels.”
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A Definitive Move Towards MarTech Simplification for Better Customer Experience
Barbara Winters, VP of Marketing, HG Data, reveals how 2017 was a real eye-opener for the company.
