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What do you get the woman who has everything? It’s a question that comes up every year when shopping for my mother-in-law. The answer this year seemed to be a chic pair of Scandinavian bedroom slippers that my wife found on Instagram.
We’d never heard of the brand, but the website looked fantastic, ordering was simple, and the e-mail confirmation was personalized and fast.
But, despite ordering well before Thanksgiving, the slippers still hadn’t shown up a week before Christmas. One quick glance at the company’s social media revealed that we weren’t the only ones waiting for our order.
There were literally thousands of complaints, and a lot of hostile comments. Sometimes going viral isn’t always the best thing to happen to a brand.
What happened was a classic case of not connecting the frontend of digital experience to the backend of business process.
The big disconnect
Today, it’s relatively simple and cheap to set up a gorgeous looking, professional website – and just as simple to set up an e-commerce backend.
The problem arises when what is being sold on the website is not connected to what’s available in the warehouse and the entire connected supply chain.
This brand did everything right on the frontend but couldn’t actually deliver the physical product on the backend, turning thousands of new customers into haters.
It’s a cautionary tale, to be sure.
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Digital transformation and missed links
In the same vein, I’ve witnessed a lot of big brands undertake a digital transformation strategy that starts in the CIO’s office, is executed with big software companies and integrators – and fails to connect to the company’s marketing strategy.
By the time a big software company gets an RFP for a new e-mail service provider, CDP, or website personalization tool, most of the year’s marketing budgeting and planning have been done in consultation with their agency.
By the same token, agencies who are the “hands on keyboard” workers executing these digital strategies are rarely consulted about brands’ software selections and informed after the fact.
In today’s world, as CMOs themselves are transforming into executives that own customer touchpoints with systems that extend well beyond marketing and advertising (think in-store, loyalty, and call center experiences), the disconnect between software providers and ad agencies is becoming exposed like never before.
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Auto industry reveals CX opportunities
We work with a lot of big automobile manufacturers, and it’s an exciting time in the industry. Cars are getting cleaner, smarter and faster – and the way we buy them is changing too.
Most of the auto buying process can be done from the comfort of your home, and with near real-time pricing information, much of the old school “let me talk to my manager” negotiation has gone by the wayside.
Tesla recently showed us a glimpse of the future when introducing a subscription program for heated seats, and it doesn’t take a genius to look at some of the huge touchscreens in our cars and see a future where many different things can be purchased from the dashboard.
What if car makers could seamlessly connect what they knew about a car (telemetry data) with everything they knew about the driver (profile data) in real time?
Low on gas? Petroleum companies could bid on price to try and win the ability to fill up your tank. Lunchtime? You could be directed to roadside eateries via navigation and offered a mobile coupon to choose them. Time for an oil change? You could book a service appointment right from your car’s dashboard.
You see some of this happening today already. For example, many insurance companies offer drivers the option to place a tracking device in their car, which sends telemetry data back to measure driving speed. Go slow enough, and you could get big discounts on your monthly rate.
Enterprise, meet your customer.
Interactions, data, front and back office – connected.
It starts here.
Where innovation dies
That said, many of the innovative (and obvious) use cases above haven’t been implemented yet. This isn’t because they’re technically impossible, but because the agency driving the campaigns for gas stations, dealership service, and fast food don’t have ready access to the data needed to make them possible and relevant.
Agencies are ideating on thousands of use cases that can move the needle for brands, but many great ideas can die on the vine of execution due to the gap between what’s technically possible and what’s practical, given the traditional ways brands and agencies work together.
This gap needs to be filled if we’re going to speed up digital transformation and truly deliver the personalized, relevant experiences customers expect.
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3 reasons to bridge the gap NOW
The arguments for more closely connecting your digital transformation strategy and go-to-market strategy with your agency are many. They include:
- Agencies need data for more than targeting. Most digital transformations start with data management, and customer segmentation and analytics are at the heart of modern data management. It’s not enough to provide segmentation data to agencies for targeting in advertising and marketing. Your agency partner is also designing web and app experiences, introducing powerful new data attributes derived from media performance for fine tuning campaigns, and using customer segmentation to understand customers’ ideal profile for building creative executions.
- Agencies execute software strategy. We’ve seen it time and again in the software business. A hot new trend emerges (like DMP), but there’s a gap between brands that buy new tools, and agencies who are directed to use them. Whether it’s account-based marketing, dynamic creative, audience targeting with DMPs, or wholesale customer data management with customer data platforms, the agency is at the heart of getting the hands on the keyboard to execute and wring ROI from big technology investments. The earlier the agency is brought into evaluations; the more successful implementations will be.
- Agencies are the bookends that hold digital transformation together. Imagine a data-driven marketing initiative such as a product launch; there’s a progression from strategy, budgeting, execution across channels, analytics and optimization. Brands think of their segmentation strategy (who will buy this?), their omnichannel marketing budget (how do we tell people about it?), execution across many touchpoints using email, digital ads, owned media, social channels (how do we reach people where they’re engaging with us?), and analytics (were we successful?). Software plays a critical, but relatively small role when it comes to overall success. The agency has stewardship over the entire process, however, and is ultimately responsible for making the machine work from end to end.
As we enter an exciting new era in customer data management with CDPs, and the emergence of the CMO charged with delivering the entire “customer 360” experience across channels, we’re beginning to see digital transformation strategies more closely involve agencies. That’s a very positive development.
