Has social distancing helped usher through the age of immersive digital?

As brands around the world respond to the ongoing disruptive trends and scrabble to re-shape the way they engage with their customers, what we are witnessing is an explosion of immersive digital experiences.

It might seem that up until a few months ago immersive digital interactions were more of a cherry on the top rather than the actual bun. Has the recent enforced social distancing changed our daily habits for good?

On the one hand we have seen a surge of digital...

By | 1 June 2020 | Commerce

Get ahead of the game: Why ‘earned data’ could be the future for marketers

As a marketer, I always question the wisdom of organisations coming up with their own ‘categories’ or catch-phrases because, as a general rule, there are more than enough of them, and making new ones stick is risky and expensive. But, despite the fact that the advice of my SEO consultant is that it might take a year or more before anyone searches Google for ‘earned data’, I still think it’s worth the investment. And here’s why.

Third party lists have been the bedrock...

By | 29 May 2020 | Customer Experience

What if your virtual agent could read? The benefits of integrating conversational AI for the enterprise

Automation is changing the way the enterprise operates and how people work across a broad range of business processes. So much so that organisations who still lack an ambitious and rigorous automation agenda risk being left behind. The benefits of automating many business processes are clear, with time-savings and efficiencies leading the list of benefits for many businesses. External and customer-facing businesses are automating much of their customer service operations, with some...

By | 28 May 2020 | Advertising Technology

The last (third party) cookie: How to prepare for a new era of digital advertising

In a 1984 episode of Sesame Street, Prairie Dawn, the most-level headed Muppet, is faced with a difficult challenge: she must explain the concept of ‘the last cookie’ to the Cookie Monster. The presentation begins well. Prairie asks the Cookie Monster to eat three of the four cookies on the table, and he does so with typical enthusiasm. But the mood changes when Cookie Monster is faced with the last cookie.

“But Prairie! Prairie! That’s the last cookie! After we eat that...

By | 27 May 2020 | Advertising

The four pillars of good spend management – a key skill amid the Covid-19 downturn

Spend management is hardly the most glamorous component of marketing, but its impact can be game changing. That fact is particularly important as businesses react to the downturn ushered in by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Done well, spend management can free up marketing budget and serve both as a foundation to weather a storm and a catalyst for future growth. Effective spend management enables agile decision making within days (or even hours), allowing marketers to rapidly re-deploy...

By | 26 May 2020 | Best Practice

Salesforce State of Marketing report promotes empathy, AI, and more focused KPIs

Salesforce has published its latest global State of Marketing Report, which has explored the rate of transformation within marketing and the data and organisational goals needed to achieve it.

The report, which collected data from almost 7,000 marketing leaders globally, had three overarching findings:

Marketing transformation is taking on new urgencyMore empathetic marketing is being achieved due to greater data and personalisationMarketers are doubling down turning...

By | 22 May 2020 | Automation

Getting beyond the buzzword of ‘agile’ digital marketing to improve your customer relationships

Mention the word “agile” in a business setting, and it may lead to furrowed brows and scratched heads. Agility creates a lot of buzz — and a lot of misinterpretation.

To clear up any confusion, agile generally refers to optimizing and managing workflows. According to McKinsey & Co., it involves “using data and analytics to continuously source promising opportunities or solutions to problems in real time, deploying tests quickly, evaluating the results, and rapidly...

By | 21 May 2020 | Content Marketing

Has it taken a crisis for us to embrace the power of broadcast communications?

For many years, technology has had the power to radically alter the live communications landscape. From virtual, augmented and mixed reality to AI, technology that is readily available to us has been in a position to dramatically change the way we engage with live events through broadcast. Often this type of communication has been pushed to the side as facilitating it has not been viewed as “business critical”. Of course, communication is now and always will be business critical but,...

By | 20 May 2020 | Video & Audio Marketing

Why you should see artificial intelligence as your top intern, rather than an Einstein

Personalisation is essential for high-quality customer experience. This means that contact points should always be timely and relevant. Services such as Netflix and Spotify have made personalisation an art. You always see songs that you like or the series that are 'made for you'.

How do these companies get to know you so well? This personalisation is thanks to AI, which is crucial for services such as Netflix and Spotify. For them, AI means the difference between a customer who...

By | 19 May 2020 | Personalised Marketing

Aimee Stone Munsell, CMO, Contentsquare: On leadership, learning, and lateral job moves

Aimee Stone Munsell, chief marketing officer at digital experience software provider Contentsquare, is a firm believer in the adage that a leader is only as good as their team. "A leader's job is to make themselves obsolete," she tells MarketingTech.

Realising the bluntness of that statement, Stone Munsell (left) laughs and clarifies. "What I mean by that is my job is to create at each level of management and leadership, to make the people underneath you successful and the...

By | 18 May 2020 | CMO