In today’s digital and interconnected world, the importance of tailoring marketing efforts so they are mobile-first, rather than merely mobile-responsive or friendly cannot be overstated. To put it into context, a staggering eight out of every 10 digital minutes happen on a smartphone, with consumers reaching for their device almost 100 times a day — it’s clear that a fully-fledged mobile strategy is no longer a nice to have, but the keystone of any digital transformation.
Over the past decade, the relationship between consumers and brands has moved from the physical to the digital at an expeditious pace. Consumers interact with an average of six digital touchpoints when engaging with a brand. Whether that be content on social media, payment through wallet, news from SMS, or offers via email, to name but a few. A brand cannot rely on a single source to connect with consumers. Critically, however, all these touchpoints can be directly accessed through a smartphone, making mobile the obvious nucleus of any digital communication strategy.
Andy Gladwin, Head of Mobile at Marigold Engage+ sat down with Technology Magazine, the digital community for the global technology industry, to discuss how a comprehensive mobile strategy can furnish enterprises with the tools to build more meaningful digital relationships with consumers. This mobile strategy can empower them to gather vast amounts of consumer opt-ins, preference insights, and behavioral data and unify and harmonize that data in a single, accessible source.
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The problem of harmonizing data from multiple sources
“Always Be Collecting Data.” It’s the ABCD of marketing. However, in the data economy, it’s not uncommon to hear marketers lament that they have too much data to analyze, or that the data they have is siloed or in inaccessible formats.
53% of organizations report that they have only a few of their marketing channels connected. Conflate that with the fact that on average, marketing departments have a tech stack boasting 12 systems — the vast majority of enterprise brands are using many more. A single, accessible view of the customer seems like a pie-in-the-sky utopia.
As mammoth a task as it appears, centralization is imperative. Andy Gladwin explains:
“Modern enterprises are awash with data, but it’s fragmented from all manner of sources and siloed in disparate systems which are not integrated, nor were designed to be. Having a centralized, single source of truth of the customer serves as a complete, up-to-date record and empowers marketers to build lasting and more meaningful relationships with customers through accurate, timely, and trustworthy data. The closer marketers can get to the utopia of a golden record, the more likely they are to interact with customers through preferred channels with preferred messages.”
To cut the marketing buzzwords, the single source of truth is quite simply a unified customer profile, which includes identifying information about the customer, the channels they use to interact with the organization, their most recent interaction with the organization, and which recent offer they reacted to positively. The single source of truth also encompasses how a customer engages with the organization, including their most recent activity and lifetime value, complemented by a raft of preference and behavioral data.
This is where mobile comes to the fore; connecting brands, consumers, and touchpoints, it is an ecosystem that offers many channels and backed up with the right technology — harmonizing and actioning data.
“Devices have gone from being convenient to connected and through this period, content has evolved from being relatively basic to incredibly rich. The evolution of the channel ecosystem where engagement has moved from transactional to conversational gives brands more of an opportunity to engage, listen, and influence customer behavior. For too long marketing has been a decidedly one-way affair, with brands seeking to push their message louder and further into more intimate contacts. However, it’s not better marketing, just better targeting. Using mobile to engage in true two-way communications with consumers through legacy and emerging channels will be the next significant paradigm shift.”
