martech's blog

Martech Interview with Gregg Holzrichter on Data Management


Marketing, by nature, is built on data. How does data assist marketers optimize strategies and deliver personalized content, driving more engagement? In an Martech interview on Data Management, Gregg shares insights on Click-stream analysis, retail data, behavioral models – leveraging data for marketing is driving a golden age of personalization and micro-targeting.


Finding the right platform or service that helps your engineers reduce their tedious data management workload by automating pieces of it–like data blending–makes them more productive and happier. Some were in Lattice, others in Bamboo, and some just use spreadsheets. Whether it’s public, private, or hybrid, cloud workloads are pervasive given the flexibility clouds provide for rapid scale. That wouldn’t be practical or reasonable, and external data management is no different. Data blending is another critical step in the external data integration process, and external data companies know it.


Companies that don’t have cloud-native integration platforms struggle to onboard net new external data sets that help to augment internal data and achieve unique insights and data analytics. Data transformation is the same concept. Taking a table of data and parsing, combining, segmenting, or blending it can yield different results based on what you need. Instead, buying great solutions to enable your data engineers is a more sensible solution for building your data pipeline. 


About Gregg Holzrichter- Gregg is a results-oriented senior marketing executive with extensive experience and a history of global leadership roles in large enterprise, pre-IPO, and start-up marketing organizations.


About Crux- Crux offers a managed data engineering service that helps organizations scale their most critical data delivery, operations, and transformation needs. Our cloud-based technology stack enables you to reliably get the data you need, how you need it and where you need it.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends?  Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Interviewsfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


Most Brands Fail by Stopping Just Short of a Brand Purpose


Humans are driven by meaning and purpose same as the corporate entities. How does the branding of stores impact the buying behavior of consumers? Of course, profits are key to running a business, but that’s not its purpose. The brand purposeis the reason your brand exists, which is more than just money. You created your business to improve the lives of your customers by solving their problems, and that’s where you can create an emotional connection.


What Is a Brand Purpose?- Brands used to be in the power position. They spoke to customers and dictated the terms of the relationship, regardless of what the consumer thought. The philosophy was that if a customer didn’t like the brand, they could move on. Consumers have more choice, and more power, than ever before. As more brands develop their online presence, consumers are given an outlet to share opinions, express displeasure, and in numbers, force a brand to change. Now, when a customer voices an opinion, brands listen up.


Why Do Brands Need Purpose?- The internet and social mediagive consumers direct access to brands. If consumers aren’t happy about something a brand is doing, they can share it. If enough of them have an opinion, they can shift the decisions the brand makes. Consumers are quick to share their opinions about products, services, or brand actions, often forcing change. This gives consumers more power.


The Value of Brand Purpose for Customers- Humans are driven by meaning and purpose. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, everyone has the need for love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, which is the desire to achieve your true purpose. People are conscious of their purpose and place and seek relationships that align with their own beliefs and values, not just with other people, but with brands.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends? Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Cube Podcastfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


Certainty of outcomes – Only goal that matters for marketers


Certainty of outcomes– what does it mean to you? And in percentage terms, how close does your marketing strategy get to achieving certainty? As we face a future of continued economic uncertainty, In this article I will outline some high-level ways to make those crucial steps towards achieving certainty of outcomes for marketers. I believe that the marketers that will lead the way are the ones that can deliver certainty about the outcome of every single marketing action that they undertake for their brands.


Ask yourself the following questions: How certain are you about where demand exists for your product? How certain are you that the marketing investment you are making will convert into immediate sales and long-term growth? Ultimately, the ecosystem that you choose holds the key to understanding the impact of your marketing strategy on business growth. That will help you to shift the marketing function from acting in a mere support role, to gaining a central voice at the strategy table.


In the Ecommercespace, where ROI is squeezed and competition is astronomical, the marketing teams that can differentiate themselves by achieving certainty of outcomes will be highly rewarded. That process is, of course, already well underway in the marketing profession.


Build a marketing ecosystem to support your certainty mission- Data is the tool that helps marketers achieve certainty, and the richness of the data that is being made available grows by the day. That’s why choosing the right marketing ecosystem and tech stack – one that can work with the data that is available not only today but also tomorrow – is the key to winning the certainty challenge. Marketers have become more data-, and indeed, results-focused, which is driving a psychological shift away from fluffy marketing tricks, towards meaningful and optimised action.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends? Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Cube Podcastfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


Customer Experience for Marketing Growth


Most brands try to zero in on retention marketing to reduce customer churn. But it’s the CX that keeps them coming for more. The modern customer has a plethora of options at their disposal- if they don’t have a good experience with your brand, it wouldn’t take them long to give business elsewhere. Customer experience for marketing growthkeeps your clients engaged, satisfied, and inclined to do more business with you.


Customer Experience is not limited to products or offerings. It entails everything from customer service to the types of ads you serve to your audience and how. Customer experience isn’t the job of one department or one person. CX can make or break your marketing. It’s an organization-wide responsibility to see how each decision impacts the customer experience. This article will elucidate how you can get it right!


The Dismantling- Marketers need a closed-loop analysis to uncover pivotal insights into customer behavior. Essentially, customer experience is how the customer feels about your brand and their subjective opinion of it. Is the customer criticizing your brand or recommending it? What do the reviews say? Also, what one customer believes to be a good customer experience - CXmight not be similar to another customer’s definition of it. Marketing’s overarching goal is to understand the customer.


Moving Forward - The B2B buying behavior has changed drastically. While most companies believe they are delivering excellent experiences, most customers disagree. Customers can access any information they desire at the click of a button. Moreover, with businesses having customers globally, it is unwise to believe the messaging that works in one country will resonate with your audience in another. CSAT would tell you how happy the customers are with your product or service, but it doesn’t explain how to achieve customer satisfaction or enhance it.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends? Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Cube Podcastfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


MarTech Interview with Paul Brenner on Location Targeting


An AOOH solution provides several unique benefits and acts as a touchpoint along the buyer’s journey. But is it the future of retail? In an Martech interview on Location Targeting& the importance of location targeting comes down to the point of sale. Customers hearing ads while shopping in-store have immediate access to the brand’s products.


The same principle applies to other out-of-home channels like radio or billboards. But when you have a captive audience shopping in-store, location targeting helps ensure the message reaches the consumer at the point of purchase. We’ve also optimized our software to help brands align their seasonal promotions or location-based discounts with each store.


They achieve this connection through location-based audio out-of-home (AOOH) advertising — sharing brand messaging via in-store speakers in retailers such as grocers and c-stores. Our targeted ads play in over 6,000 retaillocations nationwide, allowing brands to customize in-store promotions by each location, demographic, daypart and campaign journey.


About Paul Brenner- With more than 25 years of experience in media & entertainment and technology leadership, Paul Brenner served in several c-suite roles including division President with Emmis Operating Company [NASDAQ:EMMS]. As President of NextRadio/TagStation his work focused on global innovation through FM Chip activations in all smartphones for audience measurement, improved in-car user experiences, and data attribution platforms for all broadcast radio.


About Vibenomics- Vibenomics is a location-based Audio Out-of-Home advertising and experience company that powers audio in-store for retailers, giving brands the ability to talk to shoppers directly, at the point of purchase. Through its strong retail partnerships, Vibenomics is able to provide unique sales insights and performance data, customized to each campaign’s needs.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends?  Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Interviewsfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


Where Are We with Security Posture Initiatives?


Scott Gordon talks about how organizations are contending with increased cyber risk due to a worsening threat landscape and more organized threat actors. A recent 2022 Attack Surface Management Maturity report shed light on the current state, exposures, and priorities that organizations are considering to fortify their security posture. This survey, conducted by Cybersecurity Insiders, asked more than 350 security professions in enterprise organizations across industries their views on business outcomes, remote work, policy shifts and more, and revealed many useful findings.


The question is, given today’s accelerated hybrid workplace, multi-cloud, and digital business growth, how are organizations contending with increased cyber risk due to a worsening threat landscape and more organized threat actors? As organizations determine how to better leverage their endpoint, application, network infrastructure, cloud, and security management tools to improve their security posture and cyber resilience, a platform approach to enterprise technology management would provide a centralized means to gain accurate and timely asset visibility and requisite analytics.


Cybersecurityleaders continue to calibrate and extend their attack surface management capabilities. This encompasses understanding the range of internal and external attack vectors that could be exploited, such as endpoints and network devices that are poorly maintained, improperly accounted for public-facing cloud resources, systems with known vulnerabilities, and malicious sites posing as trusted sites designed to dupe users to provide access credentials.


While 40% have confidence with the measures their organizations have taken in attack surface management, the remaining have low to no confidence. The outcome of related security issues over the past 12 months resulted in a third indicating an impact on employee productivity and reduced business activity. Surprisingly, only 10% admitted to data leakage issues, but over 20% experienced increases in IT incident response expenditure – adding more pressure against anticipated shrinking budgets. An attack surface comprises entry points where a user or system is susceptible to attack, and as a result, provides unauthorized access to a system and data.


Visit AITechParkfor cutting-edge Tech Trends around AI, ML, Cybersecurity, along with AITech News, and timely updates from industry professionals!


Key Components of Composable Content Operations


Creating CX is a brand differentiator.Great content is how you create these experiences. What are the major components of composable content operations? Creating a great customer experience is the competitive differentiator for your brand. Great content is how you create these experiences, how you interact with your customers, and how you engage them in omnichannel conversations. That means the pressure is on for your brand to continuously deliver relevant, engaging content to the right person, at the right time, on the right channel.


To keep pace with these digital demands, content needs to be understood as a strategic component to the business and operationalized in a way that drives strategy, inspiration, and collaboration. Brands are adopting content operations, a framework for how to create the content that powers customer experiences – across channels and platforms. No matter where you reside in the business – marketing, sales, HR, product strategy, R&D, etc. – everyone is affected by the content and digital experiences built through content ops.


Supporting an integrated ecosystem- Delivering relevant, omnichannel customer experiencesrequires that organizations utilize an unprecedented level of solutions—and integration support for them – to better manage and connect their data, workflows, and content.


Supporting the full content lifecycle–from upstream creative to downstream delivery - Marketers are responsible for the cumulative experience audiences have across the customer’s journey. The full content lifecycle must be managed and scaled to ensure superior brand experiences.


Using AI and automation to deliver omnichannel experiences at scale- Industry experts like Forrester Research agree that not all content needs to be created by humans – nor should it be. AI and automation can help teams eliminate the work about work, so they can focus their efforts on more strategic opportunities to move the brand forward.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends? Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Cube Podcastfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


The Essentials of a B2B Marketing Plan


B2B marketingstrives to strike a balance while consumers keep disrupting it. As technologies change, here’s how to build a future-proof marketing plan! B2B marketing plans aren’t crafted just for marketing’s sake. This blog will entail all you need to know to craft a perfect B2B marketing plan. It’s an all-encompassing course of action, addressing stakeholder’s needs.


To a great extent, marketing success depends on delivering the best possible experiences through the right channels. You must gather data to make more informed business decisions. There’s a lot that marketing needs to do- create brand awareness, support sales, and drive customer loyalty. Nevertheless, putting it all in one plan isn’t an easy task. We’re here to change that. Knowing your customers and looking at things from their perspective will determine if your plan resonates with their needs.


How to get started- Before you even begin crafting your draft, you must set clear goals. What do you plan to achieve? What are the timelines? Being through with objectives ensures that everyone on the team is on the same page and understands their roles and responsibilities. Analyzing customer engagement& behavior unearths details that will help you influence customer journey and purchase decisions. You may segment content to answer specific queries your audience may have for you.


Decide on what you’ll include in your plan. It’s imperative to have the coherent flow of information and answer all the pressing questions your internal stakeholders and customers may have for you. For instance, the head of sales may want to hear how you plan to support sales with your content and marketing tactics. The CEO might want to know how your plan fits the overall business strategy and the metrics you’ll use to measure marketing success.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends? Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Cube Podcastfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


Differences Between Chatbots And Live Chats : Which is Better Business


Chatbots and live chatsare a fixture of customer communications. You should know the key differences before investing in these solutions. Let's discuss it. Chatbots and live chats are a staple of the online experience. In this post, we lay out 7 key differences between chatbots and live chat, before discussing which might be ideal for your business. As businesses seek to take more of their communications online, text-based communications can be leveraged to facilitate rapid customer service and customer support.


Both solutions are stealing the limelight from traditional channels like email or phone. But should you go for human-powered live chat or automated chatbot software? Yet chatbots and live chat systems run very differently and it’s important to understand the pros and cons of each. Brands can save money, get more bang for their buck, take the strain off their contact centers, and boost sales.


Live chat- Live chat is the touchstone of customer support. When the customer has a query, a member of the live chat team will reply through chat interfaces. The inherently conversational nature of live chat delivers direct experiences with a human touch – a win for customers who get their problems resolved without leaving the page they are on. Plus, it’s much easier to reroute more complex problem solving to the right team on a video call.


Chatbots- Chatbotshave come a long way since way back when. With new strides in machine learning and natural language technology, today’s bots are smarter, better at having conversations, and lightyears more helpful. Businesses can automate customer interactions via a chat interface; AI-driven software does the rest. In order to offer customers an exceptional experience, businesses need to meet and exceed their expectations in a way that distinguishes them from competitors.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends? Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Cube Podcastfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


How Inflation Impacts Multi Location Brands


Local search becomes very important during times of inflation or economic turmoil. Darcy discusses how inflation impacts multi location brands. Let’s dive into how inflation can affect multi-location businesses and discuss how your brand can adjust its localized marketing efforts to align with consumer needs during this time. This increase has influenced consumer shopping habits, which can, in turn, impact your multi-location business’s bottom line. As you’d expect, consumer needs change depending on the economic climate.


A Look Into Consumer Search Behaviors- During a time of inflation or economic turmoil, local search becomes very important. Recent data from SOCi has shown that rising gas prices have increased searches related to the category “gas and convenience,” as seen in the graph below. The most significant increase in search volume occurred from January 2022 to June 2022, when gas prices were at their highest.


Improve Local Search Efforts to Meet Consumer Expectations- Now that you understand the increased importance of local search during this time of inflation, what can your multi-location business do to level up its local search efforts? If you haven’t already claimed and updated your local marketing& listings with accurate business information, that’s an essential first step. If you’re just starting with local listings, platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook are great places to begin.


According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, consumer prices have increased an average of 9.1 percent from June 2021 to June 2022. Search results for “gas stations near me” or even a search as simple as “Chevron” revealed the closest locations for gas while also including the prices of a regular gallon. These search results indicate that consumers are searching for gas more frequently to see the prices ahead of time so they can make an informed decision on where to purchase.


Are you missing out on modern marketers' needs in the digital era? Want to stay updated with Martechtrends? Check out Martech Newsfor such regular updates.


Check out our Martech Cube Podcastfor stories from the industry experts that share their business journey with tips and strategies to achieve career success!!


Pages: «« « ... 5 6 7 8 9 ... » »»