Technology plays a vital role in helping marketers do their job and engage with customers. The best marketing tech solutions help you automate and efficiently execute individual marketing tasks, such as customer segmentation, email, and data collection, as well as big-picture campaigns.
Unfortunately, many marketing tools create more problems than they solve. And these problems aren’t simply a nuisance — they can directly affect your ability to do your job. If you can sympathize with the headache-inducing hassles below, it might be time to reevaluate your marketing tech.
1. Poor data integration leads to outdated segments
Data should drive most, if not all, of your marketing actions. But bad or stale data impedes your ability to make informed strategic decisions. Most marketing solutions cannot aggregate information from multiple sources, which leaves you unable to connect the dots between touchpoints and effectively target specific audiences.
Rather than manually creating these segments — which takes considerable time and effort to import updates — the right marketing tech solution will automatically update these audiences. Without this ability, you can’t truly understand customer motivations and behaviors throughout the buying process.
When you select a platform that easily ingests data from any source and makes that data actionable, you’ll be better equipped to develop content and experiences that will inspire your customers’ loyalty.
2. Not user-friendly
Marketers must keep up or (ideally) get ahead of the needs and wants of their customers. What’s more, they must also provide value through the communications they send and the experiences they create, seamlessly encouraging them to make purchases. It’s difficult to achieve this with a clunky platform that complicates campaign development and provides features and workflows that aren’t intuitive. Working within a marketing platform shouldn’t be hard. It should have the technology, features, and functionality that enables to do your job quickly and easily. If your current technology requires you spend a significant amount of time trying to figure out how to execute cross-channel campaigns or develop segmented audiences, it’s probably not the right fit for your brand.
3. Lack of scalability
Some marketing technology platforms are specifically designed for small, mid-size, or large marketing demands and don’t easily support variable business needs. Marketing technology should automate all your tasks and help you accomplish your goals — no matter how big or small they might be. When a spike in volume occurs can your platform deliver? Select a solution that can efficiently handle any quantity of data, agilely manage campaigns of any scale at any time, and flawlessly execute highly personalized customer experiences.
4. Insufficient reporting
A marketing team’s work isn’t done until it can demonstrate its impact on customer behavior and engagement. A witty social media campaign might look good on your content calendar, but how did it perform? Did that email subject line your Chief Marketing Officer gushed about result in more customers opening your email and making a purchase? It isn’t until you have insight into what works and what doesn’t that can you make educated, strategic decisions that drive revenue and long-term ROI.
Do any of these pain points sound familiar? As a marketer, you shouldn’t have to tolerate issues that cost you time, money, or effectiveness. Marigold Engage+’s Marketing Suite makes your job easier by connecting your data sources and enabling you to optimize cross-channel marketing strategies for all audience segments. Learn more here.
