A car engine may be extremely well built, but if one vital nut or bolt gets loose, even in isolation, it can suddenly destroy your forward progress. Marketing campaigns face a similar challenge. Various components such as email, direct mail, and paid search must work together seamlessly, not in silos, in order to deliver engaging experiences for consumers, and meaningful results for the business.
Of course, campaign construction is more malleable than automotive engineering. While there’s only one way to wire a spark plug, combinations of marketing tactics may perform differently based on specific brand goals. But whether you’re under the hood of a car or managing a multi-million-dollar budget, synchronization is key to ensuring everything runs smoothly. Every element of a marketing campaign must work in harmony to engage target audiences, enhance their experience, and drive desired business outcomes.
This is easier said than done, however, as many organizations fall victim to silos. These silos not only promote inefficiency, duplication, and waste, but also create a disjointed experience for customers and prospects. If your team is segmented by channel, product, or function, your marketing campaigns may not be achieving all that’s possible.
Silos working solo
The digital age means consumers are accessing content and interacting with brands across a growing number of channels, touchpoints, and devices. Tracking these interactions is relatively easy leveraging the adtech and martech platforms marketers use today. The problem is that much of this data is stored in silos across disparate systems and analyzed using outdated measurement techniques that give all the credit to the last marketing touchpoint experienced by a consumer before he or she converts.
Since the data is managed separately, multiple channels end up taking credit for the same KPI, leading marketers to double-count success metrics. These silos also mean that marketers aren’t considering any marketing channels and tactics from earlier in the consumer journey that may have played a role in influencing a desired action. As a result, marketers can’t tell how these touchpoints are working together to drive desired business outcomes (engagement, leads, conversions, sales) at each stage of the funnel. Even worse, this lack of visibility may mean teams are actually working against each other.
While building campaigns that resonate with customers and prospects at each stage of their journey is challenging, it’s by no means impossible. However, it does require marketers to embrace a more people-based approach.
A 360-degree view
People-based marketing and measurement can help break down the data and functional silos that prevent marketers from having a comprehensive view of campaigns and consumers. People-based marketing is made possible by the creation of a single anonymous identifier, or ID, that connects a consumer to his or her browsers and devices (laptop, mobile phone, tablet, etc.). These IDs combine a consumer’s cookie ID, device ID and offline ID to create an enriched profile of each individual that has been exposed to a brand’s media and marketing across online and offline channels, as well as across multiple devices.
When these enriched profiles are used to feed the marketing analytics process, marketers can uncover the effectiveness of each channel and tactic in driving conversions and other desired business outcomes by audience segment. By understanding how customers and prospects are interacting with their brand and the content, messages and offers that are influencing with different audiences, marketers can create more relevant experiences that drive conversions, retention, lifetime value and other meaningful business results.
Today’s consumers are inundated with messages from brands everywhere they turn. To break through the noise, brands must ensure that their communication is flawless. Just like a car engine, marketing campaigns must be well-oiled and fine-tuned before they’re ready to take off. Demolishing silos enables marketers to come one step closer to achieving their goals and providing their target audiences with the best experiences possible.