Subscribe by RSS
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe by Email
Alterian’s Engaging Times Summit held last week in Chicago presented a number of very interesting dilemmas as it is clear that marketing and those that provide services to marketers are in a state of transition. The differing points of view centered around marketing services optimizing spend but in a traditional direct marketing/direct mail approach which was in contrast with other emerging service providers that focused on the integration of analytics, strategy, creative, execution, and technology skills to deliver the greatest value to the marketers. The integration challenge was magnified in a number of panel discussions. At one point, Mark Wright from Targetbase actually suggested one of the biggest problems facing service providers today is finding creative talent that understands and leverages analytic outcomes to drive and inform creative strategy.
Alterian views this integration challenge as a key component in the development, emergence, and erosion of the current marketing service provider landscape while catapulting to the forefront the Customer Engagement Agency (CEA). Currently, services are purchased and delivered in silos. Organizations that deliver best-of-breed solutions around analytics, strategy, creative, and data/technology/execution force the customer to purchase in un-integrated, inefficient ways. This lack of integration is costly in terms of customer insight, strategy, data integration execution, and of course impacts outcomes or results. As buyers evaluate service providers and their delivery models there are a few points one may consider before decisions are made.
- How do you absorb the cost of so many service providers:
- Who is paying for the coordination of these services
- How many project managers does it take to manage multiple relationships
- How many account managers does the customer pay for when multiple providers are in the mix
- What is the cost of coordinating strategy/analysis/creative across multiple channels
- What results are impacted by separating analytics from execution?
- For instance, is your click stream data in your customer database?
Customer engagement agencies look to integrated dis-integrated services, and look to deliver superior outcomes, with more impactful results. For the customer engagement agency, it is about optimization of results across the disciplines of creative, strategy, analytics, execution, and technology. The Customer Engagement Agency looks to embrace the consumer in a dialog where channels, media, and data are given an empirically led opportunity to inform how to engage the customer in a dialog vs talk at the customer in a campaign.
Alterian’s Engaging Times Summit begged a number of interesting topics. Clearly understanding the customer is key. Integration of what has traditionally been disparate was all too often the discussion of the summit. Entering into a dialog with the consumer vs episodic campaign lectures is the evolution being driven by the Customer Engagement Agencies. Time will tell where the transition leads the marketer, and how the evolution impacts the consumer.
Download Points of View articles from The Engaging Times Summit
The Alterian Summit was excellent. Right on topic and definitely pushed our “thinking envelope”. Great group of people with session presentations that were well-done, timely and thought-provoking.
Among many thoughts that I’ve not sorted out yet, one is top-of-mind and, I believe, is absolutely critical to any Customer Engagement in the world of Social Media – and that is compliance.
This is the “wild west”. I believe we have to set the standards for how we use all of this data and continue to respect the privacy of the customer. Although this was alluded to in the Summit it was not a key not subject.
I would look to Alterian and the Summit attendees to hear your interest in the subject of compliance, privacy, and respect of customer’s data.
As always, thanks for being a great host.