How to deliver millisecond marketing

Still too many excuses for not delivering millisecond marketing

Too many companies still complain about their inability to deliver ‘real-time’ in-the-moment marketing because of old systems and technologies creating silos around the business.  That might have been a valid excuse a few years ago, but it simply doesn’t wash now.  Some have used this as a free pass to avoid developing true cross channel real-time marketing strategies until the magical IT fairy waves her magic wand and replaces all existing technology.

Consumers expect

But, your consumers couldn’t care less about the state of the platforms you use for your website, contact centre, campaign management, stores or ecommerce.  They just expect you to know what they are doing, when they are doing it, and respond and react using what you know about them across any channel.  All the research suggests that consumers don’t just have expectations about you understanding their behaviour, but they also expect you to respond and react in millisecond real time.  And you can.

All things possible now

There’s been a massive change over the past few years in connectivity.  The technology landscape is more open and designed to be connected.  That means your website, call centre, apps, stores and tills don’t need to sit as silos, they can genuinely be integrated -- opening the possibility of passing data in real time between them, for both listening and recommending.

Plus, there are new, exciting technologies specifically designed to make it possible for marketing teams to centrally set up decisions and rules which reflect what a consumer is doing across any channel.  After all, why make decisions in a single channel when your consumers expect you to understand them across many channels?

These technologies are truly transformative.  First, they work with existing systems, so you don’t need to replace all your existing tech.  Second, they provide a way to bring together your business so that you can deliver a joined-up customer experience across service, marketing, sales and operational functions.  Finally, they let you adapt the experience so it’s hyper-personalised for each individual consumer.

Start thinking millisecond marketing now

It’s time for marketers to start getting creative.  Start planning what the customer experience should be.  Develop your own use cases about how exactly you want to listen and engage with your customers across all your touchpoints.  Fill those whiteboards with your ideas.  Once you’ve worked up two or three of these then pick up the phone to a few of those real-time providers and your own IT team and have a few discussions.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised about what you could start delivering by enhancing what tech you’ve already got.

After all, who wants to make excuses when you could be delivering over 22% in ROI across your business.

Roger Luxton is senior solutions consultant at Alterian, an Adaptive Customer Experience™ company where marketers gain the power to maximize customer opportunity in milliseconds, allowing brands to stay one step ahead of individual customers with the right message no matter where or when they interact.