This is a common scenario for retailers because they do not have a 360° view of their customers across all digital channels, and therefore, are lacking an understanding of their customers’ behaviors. If the retailer was able to identify who my friend was across all channels and recognize that he had already made the appliance purchase, wouldn’t it have made more sense to send him an offer for something else — or at the very least, not show him a discounted price on the item he’d just purchased? What if that retailer was able to connect his purchase (he gave them his name, terrestrial address and email address when he bought the appliance) to their customer database and make the distinction before the discounted email went out?  An email thanking him for his purchase would have made much more sense, and he might have appreciated an offer for an accessory that he hadn’t initially purchased.

Marketers today face unprecedented challenges when it comes to creating and maintaining a holistic view of their customers across their marketing ecosystem. It seems that customer interaction points, particularly in the digital world, continue to multiply on a daily basis. Add in the pressure of customers expecting highly relevant communications when and where they want them, and the business goals of increasing the lifetime value (LTV), and it equates to an increasingly difficult environment in which marketers must work. Finding, consolidating and analyzing data to achieve optimal customer interaction has never been further from us — and yet has never been so close.

With a plethora of tools available, marketers can reach their customers through emails, online profiles, loyalty programs, social network profiles and more. What hasn’t been readily available is the ability to link these digital profiles together, reducing duplication in marketing databases, giving marketers a clear understanding of active and inactive customers, plus who is buying from them, where they are shopping and how they want to be interacted with.

On the surface, this kind of customer information integration seems like a fairly simple task. Underneath however, there are several nuances within customer identity resolution that make this a profoundly difficult task. This isn’t about appending data; it’s about using the data a company already has, housed in multiple databases, and linking it all together through sophisticated matching algorithms that leverage a rich repository of referential data.

To make an integrated marketing strategy work, you need to be able to:

1. Validate contact data in real time, as it is entered online, in-store and over the phone

2. Create linkage of disparate identities and data sets, using merely a single piece of personally identifiable information for any customer

3. Enhance your data with a 360-degree view of your customers

4. Cleanse your data to remove duplicates or inaccurate information

5. Profile your best customers and understand how they want to be reached: mobile, email, catalog, social and more

6. Identify more customers like your best customers

Organizations can build this infrastructure in-house, however the process necessitates a large investment in technology and resources. In addition, the ability to resolve identities would be limited to the pieces of information collected by the organization. By working with an experienced partner who can resolve your customer and prospect identities across mediums, marketers create consistent and coordinated messaging strategies, understand the optimal path to purchase activities, maximize return on marketing investment and create memorable experiences for their customers.

I have found that that analogy works well when dealing with changes in our lives as well. I find it interesting to watch people who are experiencing a change in their life, a curve if you will, resist the momentum of that curve by leaning the other way. Those that resist the momentum are often left behind while those that lean in to the change often come out of that change in a much better situation.

The marketing industry is experiencing this kind of change today. The shift to cross-channel marketing is a huge curve for companies to go through. Those that have leaned into the curve are seeing huge success while those that have resisted the momentum are struggling to keep up. In fact, we have seen an unprecedented number of bankruptcies and closures in the retail, catalog and financial services markets over the past decade.

Change is an inevitable part of life. You might as well lean in and go with the momentum rather than resist it and be thrown off the back.

• Lean in – when you feel your customers migrating to a new channel
• Lean in – when you feel the momentum of a particular channel fade away
• Lean in – when you are faced with a new reality to deal with
• Lean in – when you feel the culture of your organization changing
• Lean in – when you feel the momentum of the change in your life

You just may find that the other side of that curve is a better place for yourself.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  jeff.hassemer@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jhassemer
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffhassemer

In the world of marketing, risk can be easily expressed as the gap between the delivery and or deployment of a marketing solution and the ability to realize value from that solution. Your partner should have a plan for you to bridge that gap.

I have worked on the vendor side for most of my career in data driven marketing. I often see that both clients and vendors alike focus on the delivery aspects of the solution. I get questions like, “How long will it take to implement the solution?” or “What is the implementation process?” The question that should be asked is, “When can I start creating value from the relationship?”

As I mentioned before, your partner should have a plan for you to bridge that gap. They should come to you with a plan that allows you to find value during the implementation of the solution and a plan that monetizes the solution shortly after the deployment. Your partner should also have a solid approach that takes into account where you are as an organization and lays out a plan to achieve your goals from that point forward. Otherwise, you only have a vendor who is interested in taking your money.

So, how do you choose a partner? Find the company that will help you manage the risk? They are easily identified, as the company that:

1.  Spends time to understand what your goals and objectives are today.
2.  Has an understanding of where you are starting from.
3.  Presents a pragmatic plan to move you up the curve in improvements.

One other thing, do not buy the hype. There are a ton of pretty stories out there about how you should be marketing with one voice today. The fact is that getting to that state will take a considered, conscientious approach. The partner you are seeking is the one who helps you manage the risk on the way.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  jeff.hassemer@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jhassemer
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffhassemer

Even though direct mail spending is forecasted to grow 5.8% to $47.8 billion this year, driven by marketing acquisition programs, the fact is that any business will re-strategize their efforts to do what is right for their business and make these decisions by using their own metrics. Ultimately the key intelligence factor is knowing which marketing channels drive the best response.

A seasoned marketer will need to think of three key things when going through marketing cross-channel analysis:

1. Measure the eco-system, not the event.
   Today’s complex marketing environment means that by nature, a customer or prospect receives multiple marketing touches during the purchase cycle. Attributing 100% of a response, or purchase, to a single event does not tell you the whole story. You need to measure the entire series of events that drove that customer to purchase, not just the last touch.
2. Execute holdout tests.
   In order to truly understand the impact of withholding a marketing channel, you need to ensure that you are measuring the lift that the channel provides to your marketing eco-system. Make sure that you are consistently doing hold outs and control groups within your marketing so that your decision is properly informed.
3. Don’t listen to the pundits.
   Your answer is only found within your own data. There are tons of technorati, digerati and social media elite that will tell you that a particular marketing channel is dead or dying and being replaced by another. That statement is only true if your data says it is true. Listen to your customers and how they are interacting with your brand, then make an informed decision.

As data-driven marketers we need to think about our business as a marketing eco-system. Removing one component of your marketing/communications can have disastrous consequences (e.g. cut off the food supply) for other parts of your business. It is time that we start thinking about the entirety of the brand and not silo any channel without the appropriate intelligence. 2011 will be the year where marketers can have the tools to coordinate their messaging and optimize in cross-channel customer engagement and interaction. After all…customers are demanding it.