Cool --> Critical

5 Take-Aways From Day 2 @ #FCIF12

1. Personal Identity Management

Forrester Analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo wowed the audience by posting content that 3 attendees had posted to the internet. The information showed the attendees were interested in running, music, coffee and dogs.  this display highlighted the challenges associated with protecting one’s data.  In a super-classy move, Forrester made a donation in the honor of the three attendees to charities that support their interests.

Considering nearly all companies manage customer data, the question becomes ‘What can companies do to responsibly manage customer data?‘

Five Principles for managing Customer Data

1. Privacy
2. Security
3. Transparency
4. Portability
5. Economy

Companies that ignore Personal Identity Data Management are likely to…

• Lose crucial access to customer data
• Lose trust and loyalty
• Incur fines as privacy and consumer rights regulation increases
• Incur massive operational costs to correct data breaches

2. Using Marketing Technology to Drive Loyalty

[notice]Why does customer experience matter????   Because customers are in control.[/notice]

Melissa Boxer of Oracle demonstrated that customers’ are in control. They have:

• More choice – how when and where they want to engage
• Higher expectations – customers expect recognition at every touch-point
• More influence – peers influence decisions more than traditional marketing

3. Driving Competitive Advantage Through Science

Stephen Jalkut of Chartis, formerly known as AIG, provided an interesting data point:

Companies that have embraced Science have consistently outperformed the S&P

Science adds value across the spectrum of Chartis’ business:

1. Enabling – Traditional: loss models, data mining, visualization
2. Strategic – Sophisticated: price to value, customer lifetime value, client risk analysis, blending loss model techniques
3. True North – Transformative research: making the world a safer place, game theory in commercial sales, real options in claims

Science Teams Mission

1. Tier 1 – Reporting – what happened
2. Tier 2 – Forecasting – What might happen
3. Tier 3 – Predictive modeling – why is this happening
4. Tier 4 – Optimization – what is the best outcome

4. Taking Social Media from Cool to Critical

A session I looked forward to during the conference, Forrester Analyst Nate Elliott, challenged Marketers to connect their social media activities directly to your overall marketing plan.  Why? If you don’t even the best social media marketing campaigns fail to provide value to the business. Worse, if a business relies too much on social channels at the expensive of other marketing channels, marketing’s overall success will suffer greatly.

Want an example?

• Best Buy is learning that being really good at social media has not meant really good things for the company. They are shuttering 50 stores
• Pepsi – skipped super bowl in favor of social media campaign. They had a very successful social campaign, more people voted on social good efforts than voted in the presidential campaign. HOWEVER, Pepsi ultimately lost market position.

Why do social media marketing campaigns fail?

Two reasons social media marketing fails

1. We treat social media as an island. The engagement has little to do with the marketing strategy. They don’t turn followers into customers.
2. We ask social to carry the weight of the world. Other, traditional marketing channels suffer.

So what should a brand do?

[important]Treat social as a solution, not a problem![/important]

Customers and prospects to through four stages in the ‘customer lifecycle’

How to Use Social Media in the Customer Lifecycle

1. Discover – Focus on reaching the right audience
2. Explore - Provide depth of information about products and services
3. Buy
4. Engage – Engage customers and prospects in their signaled interests

Choose the right social strategies to support each stage:

Reach - Depth - Engage

Focus on which channels offer which benefits to your marketing plan.

Social should be used to support each layer of your brand ecosystem

• Social media on your own site supplies depth
  • This aids exploration and pushes customers towards purchase
• Public social media profiles offer engagement (Facebook)
  • This engages existing customers and pushes them toward further discovery
• Word of mouth creates reach

5. Emerging Media Showcase For Interactive Marketers

Forrester Analyst Elizabeth Shaw provided a suite of examples from some of the best agency uses of interactive marketing.

Why? Technology has invaded our lives

Consumers…

• Have shorter attention spans
• Are on more platforms and devices than ever before
• Are reading less
• Have more products and services to choose from
• expect MORE

Marketers are using new technologies to:

• Drive engagement
• Target new audiences
• Align their brand and products with innovation
• Evolve with their consumer
• Grow brand awareness
• Test and learn
• Create more immersive marketing experiences…

Here are my three favorite examples:

Razorfish 5D

A 5D platform connects digital devices such as kiosks, large-screen displays, tablets and personal smart phones to better attract consumers into the store, drive product engagement and arm store associates with ore contextualized digital tools

Razorfish Connected Retail Experience Platform (codename “5D”) from Razorfish – Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

Adaptive Advertising: Immersive Labs

Software that can automatically determine: age, gender, attention time, and adapts content on digital sights automatically based on who is looking at the screen.

Immersive Labs – Adaptive Advertising Demo from Immersive Labs on Vimeo.

Augmented Reality: Olympus Camera

Brand Objectives: Generate consumer buzz and logins to the Olympus Camera website

A Demonstation of Olympus Pen Augmented Reality from edward boches on Vimeo.

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Cool --> Critical

5 Take-Aways From Day 1 @ #FCIF12

and the one thing that was missing at Forrester Customer Intelligence Forum

1. Cool to Critical

I love the theme of the conference, from COOL to CRITICAL. That’s exactly what Marketing Technologists need to focus on. There’s too much focus on the new shiny bauble — what’s the next Instagram or Pinterest?!?  Sure, it’s important to understand what new technologies and sites are coming to the forefront, they show us what new dynamics are coming to market, but these technologies are worthless, or even worse a distraction, if they are not connected to the core business and marketing strategies.

2. Brand Activation

There are 4 pillars of brand equity

1. Credibility
2. Leadership
3. Uniqueness
4. Relevance

But the pillars are crumbling from an active consumer who has high standards and is empowered by social media. To guide your brand you need three things.

3 things to guide your brand

1. Brand North Star

• Your brand North Star guides your internal and external vision of the brand
• North star has to be honest, strategic, inspirational, concise

2. Brand Map

Update your brand experience map:

1. Actions – How will our brand interact with the world
2. Products – Align and augment offerings with actions
3. Messages – shape and share the brand message

3. Brand Compass

1. Trusted – earn trust by guiding the brand to be more transparent and accountable
2. Remarkable – disrupt the market in a way that inspires people to talk about the brand
3. Unmistakable – become known as the one and only at what you do
4. Essential – become more irreplaceable in the lives of your customer

Cristina Bondolowski, Global brand manager for Coca-Cola, shared brand strategies on how it uses a message of hope and optimism to keep Coca-Cola at the top of the list of global brands. You want to see brand happiness? Check out this viral hit.

3. Customer Intelligence Landscape

Forrester Analyst Dave Frankland gave an update on the customer intelligence landscape and cajoled CI professionals to “do better”.   CI needs to deliver more than analytics, the future is in contextual relevance.  Dave covered three types of context.

Three context areas for customer intelligence:

1. Behavioral context - engagement, transactions, propensity
2. Business context -business drivers, customer value differentiation, yield management
3. Emotional context – sentiment, preference, perceived value

4. Using Social and Mobile to Drive B2B Customer Retention

Forrester Analyst Michael Greene shared insights into how B2B companies can use social and mobile to drive customer retention. I support the focus on customer retention because research shows social efforts don’t currently do a great job of gaining new clients, however, social/mobile can give your current customers a valuable touch point.

Some notes from the session:

• 39% use social platforms on their mobile phones
• Many B2B marketers aren’t equipped to market to addressable customers
• Expectations of a 14.4% CAGR in interactive marketing spending over the next 5 years
• One of the challenges to executing social and mobile is they are often  disconnected from the normal B2B process of driving leads to Sales, and that can be okay
• Mobile’s value is consistent access. Customers are not always at their desk waiting to take our call. And even if they are at their desk, some don’t want to take the call.
• Social gives marketers the ability to act like sales and account management teams by creating conversations with and between customers

5. Marketing Technology Roadmap

Forrester Analyst William Band discussed what a Marketing Technology roadmap is, why you need one and how it helps you.  There were a ton of great information in this session. I loved the topic, but also useful is how to create a roadmap – something I only had a loose understanding of.  Here’s how to create a roadmap:

How to create a roadmap:

1. Current environment
2. Industry trends
3. Marketing goals and metrics
4. Future vision – target state
5. Capabilities gaps
6. Significant changes/major programs
7. Create road maps at various levels
8. Dependencies and interconnections
9. Implications of actions and consequences of inaction
10. Business and financial implications

[notice]But something was missing – Content Strategy[/notice]

A lot of Marketers I talk to are struggling with  content strategy.

Content Strategy challenges:

• How to optimize content for  different segments?
• How to organize content assets?
• How to change traditional processes (print, ad, display, PR) and adapt to digital channels (social, mobile, interactive)?
• How to measure content effectiveness?

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