WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Use the 2019 Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising to prioritize your marketing technology investments.

Marketers who adopt a portfolio management approach to marketing technology investments can better serve the business and stay on top of tech needs and obsolescence.

CMOs are placing big bets that personalization will break through all the noise and clutter of branded messaging. Most CMOs either have ambitious investment plans or are already spending on personalization-related tech and data platforms and staff. Yet, some do not realize that if done incorrectly, personalization attempts can alienate customers and fail to achieve desired returns. This webinar, Gartner reveals how brands are rethinking personalization to achieve far better business results.

Get five best practices for developing an omni-channel approach to personalized marketing, and discover the solutions that make it possible to deliver automated recommendations, across channels, to connect with customers. 

Gartner research has uncovered five ways a consumer can perceive a brand’s personalized message as helpful:
“Make it Easy” – The message made it easier to get through the purchase.
“Reassure Me” – The message made me less anxious about making the wrong decision.
“Teach Me Something New” – The message helped me understand how to better use a product I purchased.
“Direct Me” – The message guided me to a product/service that would solve a problem for me.
“Reward Me” – The message provided me with exclusive benefits.

An update on HubSpot App partners and integrations in 2019.

Leading CMOs make measurement the centerpiece of their growth strategy.

Advertisers that raise their digital game report cost savings of up to 30% and revenue increases of as much as 20%.

The number of marketing technologies available to businesses has soared in the last five years – from about 150 in 2011 to over 3,800 in 2016, according to ChiefMarTech.com. And a study by eConsultancy and Tealium found that businesses use on average more than 20 marketing technology vendors to deliver their campaigns and customer experiences. This rapid expansion of the MarTech space has created significant challenges for marketing, technology, and management teams alike making it difficult to build cohesive, end-to-end customer experiences because of gaps between marketing technologies, the data they leverage, and how they are implemented. This paper provides an overview of the four core problems businesses are facing with data due to the proliferation of marketing technology, and how adopting a Universal Data Hub (UDH) solves these problems. 

Content needs to reach the right people at the right time to be impactful - here we break down every funnel stage and the content that goes with it!

By now you understand that AI is mainstream. We carry it around in our phones, it’s installed in our automobiles and household appliances. But how should you be thinking about using AI in your business? Start by considering the data managed by your company. What can your data teach you about your business? What can you automate or streamline using your data? If there are repetitive processes in your business, AI can be used to automate those processes.
For example, if you have large customer data sets, it is likely you can use machine learning to let the data tell you more about those customers, give you intelligent insights that will help you to create a more customer focused offering. Examples: Retail banks use AI to offer appropriate banking products tailored for individual customers. Insurance companies use AI to verify identity, assess risk profiles and recommend coverage. Companies are using ML to sort though massive resumes to find the best matches for new employees.

Companies transforming to become customer-obsessed are using customer journey analytics to help them become customer-led, insights-driven, fast, and connected, and to ultimately be more effective in acquiring, serving and retaining customers.  

This report from leading global research and advisory firm, Forrester, identifies the 12 most significant customer journey analytics platform providers today, and reveals how each measures up based on 26 different evaluation criteria, to help you make the right choice for your organization. You'll get a complete overview of the current customer journey analytics market, including;

• The two primary journey analytics provider categories, visioning and orchestration, and four core capabilities: (1) data fusion, (2) journey design & planning, (3) journey testing & optimization, and (4) journey automation & orchestration
• The 2018 Forrester Wave Journey Visioning Platform rankings and scorecard
• A breakdown of each journey analytics provider’s offering, strengths, specialties, and customer base
• Key criteria that helps leaders stand out from the pack

In the near future, all media buying will be automated. Being good at buying media will no longer be a competitive advantage.

Based on my research and work I’m doing with some of the top CMOs in the world, here are my bold predictions for what advertising will look like in Canada by 2025:

• Bold prediction #1: Because of the continuing shift to online advertising, rapid improvements in Machine Learning (ML), and the rise of programmatic, almost all media buying will be digitized and fully automated.
• Bold prediction #2: Driven by this digitization, most paid ads—across most channels—will be measurable and optimizable in real time.
• Bold prediction #3: This will transform brand marketing, which will start to look a lot more like performance marketing.

The technology to unlock the value of personalization at scale is readily available, and you may be surprised how much of it you already have in place. You don’t need to tackle everything at once. Develop a road map with regular stage gates to evaluate platform progress based on the trade-off between value at stake and ease of implementation. Identify and prioritize quick wins that make it easy for the organization to continue funding the transformation.

Personalization at scale relies on an organization’s ability to orchestrate the 4Ds—Data, Decisioning, Design, and Distribution. Addressing the technology in each of these Ds is the key to unlocking the full power of personalization.

Personalization is a crucial weapon in the marketer’s arsenal to achieve that goal. That’s how businesses can deliver tailored recommendations, content, offers, and experiences, across all channels and devices, along the entire customer journey. Personalization at scale has the potential to create $1.7 trillion to $3 trillion in new value (Exhibit 1). Capturing this value will require mastering the technologies and addressing the organizational disconnects—all while forging trust with customers and protecting their data.

Legacy structures and operations are keeping companies from taking full advantage of technology to modernize marketing.

For the 5th year, we've run The Stackies Awards, where marketers send in a single slide that illustrates their 'stack' — the collection of marketing technology tools they use and how they conceptualize them together. We received 48 entries this year, and some truly incredible ones. Airstack graciously sponsored the awards this time. And, as promised, we've gladly made a donation of $4,800 to Girls Who Code on behalf of the 48 entrants ABinBev, Airstream, Alliant Credit Union, Artemis Health, BraunAbility, Esri, G Adventures, Juniper Networks, Lola, Nationwide Advisory Solutions, Paychex, Racing Post, Sargento Foods, The Telegraph, Tennant, and the

As Bill Murray would have said in Groundhog Day, 'Well, it's martech landscape day... again.' It has become an annual tradition at our spring MarTech conference to release an updated version of maybe the most infamous slide in marketing: the marketing technology landscape. We're keeping that custom alive this year again. What a crazy graphic! We nicknamed it the 'Martech 5000' a couple of years ago. While I like the ring of that — kinda rhymes with the Fortune 500 and the Inc. 5000 — it's a misnomer. Last year's landscape already exceeded 6,829 solutions. We're now up to 7,040 solutions

Marketing leaders must boost scale, relevance and return on content marketing investments. To meet these needs, content marketing platform vendors provide ideation, editorial planning, content sourcing and analysis capabilities. Use this research to find a CMP that drives efficiency and results.

Marketing has been on the front lines of the digital revolution, but the landscape has become much more complicated, requiring a focus on marketing-growth strategy, data, and new modes of creativity

LUMA is the leading investment bank focused on digital media and marketing. We provide strategic advice, proven M&A expertise, and extensive industry knowledge to optimize outcomes for our clients.

A look at how our product marketing teams have evolved as we've grown in order to optimize our setup and grow our products.

Changes in Google mean changes to rankings, right? Not exactly. Here we will cover the biggest SEO trends that don’t affect your rankings.

In this recorded briefing RSG founder Tony Byrne takes you on a tour of a new reference model for the omnichannel era. Tony shows you how to guide your future stack investments towards supporting omnichannel needs, and what this means for content, data, decisions, and operations. If you manage one of these tech stacks, this is a must-see educational session.