Discover Experience MarketingLearn what’s next for digital marketing and why you should embrace it

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Digital marketing—the end of an era. What’s next?Marketers have been at the forefront of the digital revolution, and although it’s been a tough (but fascinating) journey, most marketers feel now as if they understand and are getting results from digital marketing, and many organizations have changed dramatically over the past few years to accommodate the digital consumer. There really has been wave after wave of digital change, driven by a mix of technology, internet availability, and consumer demand in sector after sector such as retail—shopping online has become easier than shopping in stores. Marketers who have adopted digital marketing have seen many benefits—with many ways to reach and engage directly with customers—and as more customers have embraced digital media, more information and tools have become available to marketers that have allowed us to understand and increase the success of our marketing campaigns.

But nothing stands still. Marketers have recently been in the business of channel management; new digital channels—especially social networking and mobile—have emerged that give customers greater power to educate themselves, influence others in the decision-making process, and engage with brands wherever and whenever they want to. Customers have become more aware of the digital data they generate and how it can be used to help make interacting with brands easier; they expect marketers not only to use that information but also to use it wisely. What is certain is that traditional mass marketing tactics are not tolerated anymore. Customers have come to expect personalized, relevant marketing at every touchpoint…and that has always been considered the Holy Grail of the digital marketing era. But even that era is coming to an end.

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The majority of US households now own high-definition televisions (HDTVs), internet connected computers, and smartphones, and they spend an average of 60 hours per week consuming content across multiple screens.

“Nielsen Digital Consumer Report,” February 2014

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Today your customers make little to no distinction between the digital and the real, the online and the offline. Just think of your “average” day and how big a part digital now plays within it. Customers view digital simply as an integral part of their daily lives. They use the internet to enhance their life, their real-world experiences, from working and shopping to sleeping and eating, even finding a partner, and everything in between. Boundary lines between channels are disappearing; customers don’t see the boundaries or respect them. Now your customers don’t want to be “marketed at.” They expect experiences that they personally value—connected, individual, enduring experiences across channels. At the extreme, they want your brand to perform like never before, at full throttle. Just do what you do, now—and it had better be good.

So, for marketers, digital marketing has become an outdated and rather limiting concept. Digital—and the big part it plays in everyone’s lives—means that it’s time we look at the bigger picture and focus on what consumers are trying to get from digital: an enriching customer experience. We are entering the era of Experience Marketing.

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Experience Marketing: more than relevanceIf the Holy Grail has always been the ability to deliver personalized, relevant marketing at every touchpoint, what’s next? How can Experience Marketing do better than that? And how can you shape and control a customer’s experience, anyway—let alone the experiences of millions of customers? To answer these questions, think of how marketing has changed in recent years, and you’ll start to see the tremendous opportunity ahead of us:

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94% of US senior executive respondents rate keeping customers for life a somewhat high, extremely high, or top priority.

Forbes Insights/Sitecore, August 2014

Big data: Digital is everywhere, and data is being generated every second of every day by billions of people around the globe. The information you need in order to know every customer is out there. You just need to harness it.

Channel proliferation: New ways to interact with people and companies are popping up all the time, bringing with them the possibility for brands to build direct, two-way, measurable relationships with more people, even those who were previously unreachable.

Technology consolidation: Big data and channel proliferation are forcing the marketing industry to consolidate the technology stack, enabling better leverage of individual customer data from any channel, for use in any channel, to achieve measurable business goals.

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There have been two key strategy drivers in the digital marketing era, with some companies deepening their customer relationships by making their marketing more personal, whereas other companies have focused on breadth, making sure they have better coverage across more channels. The most successful companies have invested in marketing technology that allows them to do both, setting the bar for relevance in their industries. Although just being relevant at every touchpoint is key to delivering a superior customer experience, it isn’t the same thing as Experience Marketing.

Experience Marketing amalgamates all interactions a customer has with a product or brand, in both the digital and real worlds, into a continuing, compellingly relevant, composite experience that wins customers for life. This is a more holistic approach to marketing that is more integrally connected to customers as well as the business. It looks beyond point-to-point relevance to determine what a customer expects and what the business can provide in return, in both the immediate and long term, and deliver on those expectations.

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Practically speaking: it’s about expectationsAs a discipline, Experience Marketing requires you to know every customer and shape every customer experience in a way that delivers value for your customers as well as your business, over the lifetime of the relationship. When you know every customer, you have the knowledge to create more relevant interactions that your customers actually value, the sum of which, in turn, yields better, longer customer relationships, which then result in greater business value overall.

There has been much talk about delivering moments of customer delight as the key to success. Yes, you can and should endeavor to deliver great experiences, but, practically speaking, you can succeed by delivering positive experiences. After all, each time a customer interacts with a brand, the resulting experience is still the product of a simple equation:

The key to success in the Experience Marketing age lies in knowing what your customer expects and being able to meet or exceed those expectations—consistently, over time, and amid rapid and constant change in customers, markets, and business strategies. Even market- leading companies that have spent the past few decades building brand equity, capturing market share, and setting the standard for customer experiences in their industries face a new challenge. The pace of change has accelerated, and digital has become ubiquitous and all-encompassing very quickly.

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“The customer of 2020 will be more informed and in charge of the experience they receive. They will expect companies to know their individual needs and personalize the experience. Immediate resolution will not be fast enough as customers will expect companies to proactively address their current and future needs.”

Walker Insights, “Customers 2020 Report”

[ What actually happened – What was expected = Experience ]1

Customer needs and expectations can change in an instant, and you’ve got to be ready. A customer’s pattern of interactions can appear completely random and chaotic. Hence, at the heart of the Experience Marketing paradigm lie two fundamental requirements:

n A single, real-time view of every customer, amassed from all interactions, spanning the multitude of online and offline touchpoints

n Technology platforms that provide all you need: unified tools that use this single customer view from analytics to prediction, automation, and channel delivery to make sure the right interaction occurs at the right time, in the right channel, with the right customer1 Scott Liewehr, Digital Clarity Group, “Great Customer Experience: Moving Beyond Digital Marketing to Build the

Ultimate Customer Experience,” September 2014.

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Technically speaking: are you ready?Customers have already accepted the blurring of the digital and real worlds. Have you? They are ready for Experience Marketing—digital influences everything your customers now do, and even in the “real world,” they are looking to digital to enhance their offline experience. Are organizations ready to meld data, channels, and operational delivery? In the digital marketing era, brands rely on talent with channel-specific skills who can implement channel-specific (even multichannel) campaigns. Furthermore, it’s practically impossible to consolidate the more than 1,200 tools available to help you achieve that single, magical customer view, let alone reach customers everywhere they want to be. Finally, achieving relevance on a per-channel or per-interaction basis is still a relevant goal. Given all this, Experience Marketing, based on a holistic, integrated view of customer and business expectations, still seems like a nice-to-think-about vision of the future.

But ready or not, Experience Marketing has arrived. It’s possible. Customers expect it. And whether you realize it or not, you’re delivering experiences already. You just may not know how they’re affecting your business performance or customer satisfaction. Now you can, with Experience Marketing and experience platforms.

The latest Marketing Technology LUMAscape contains 1,876 brands/products across 43 categories.

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Thanks to digital pervasiveness, you can take ownership of the customer experience again. You can design, monitor, and measure experiences for millions of customers from a single technology platform. Simplifying the complexities of big data, channel proliferation, and technology creep, these experience platforms can help you:

n Gather all the data needed to understand individual customers to shape the experience, including capturing every interaction

n Automate and deliver integrated, relevant experiences at any time and across any channel

n Analyze, predict, and measure experience outcomes in terms of business and customer value

At last, technology has evolved to let the customer come into focus. It’s time to leave behind the silos of digital marketing and see the complete picture that Experience Marketing enables. Only then can we begin to truly understand customers and craft the personalized experiences that win customers for life. As more and more companies compete on the basis of customer experience, adopting Experience Marketing—and new technology platforms—will be the key to driving differentiation and brand value.

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Move your brand forward now with Experience MarketingWant to find out more about Experience Marketing? Visit our Experience Marketing portal, at sitecore.net/experiencemarketing, to download the second ebook in this series, Get started with Experience Marketing, or register for a demonstration of the Sitecore Experience Platform.Share your views on Experience Marketing. Click the social media tabs below to keep the conversation going.

About SitecoreSitecore is the global leader in customer experience management. The company delivers highly relevant content and personalized digital experiences that delight audiences, build loyalty, and drive revenue. With the Sitecore® Experience Platform™, marketers can own the experience of every customer who engages with their brand, across every channel. More than 4,400 of the world’s leading brands—including American Express, Carnival Cruise Lines, easyJet, and L’Oréal—trust Sitecore to help them deliver the meaningful interactions that win customers for life.

For more information about Sitecore, visit sitecore.net

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