Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Digital Transformation Paves the Way for Delivering Great Customer Experiences
Marketing across industry sectors is undergoing a profound digital transformation as companies implement customer-centric technology to deliver the right content to the right user at just the right time.
Companies are investing in digital technology in order to better position their brands in the marketplace. Market leaders are increasingly focused on the people, processes, and tools required to integrate technology across their enterprises, resulting in a digital maturity effect that impacts everything from differentiation to conversion rates.
To help you better understand the pace of digital marketing transformation, we surveyed 1,165 digital marketers across Europe and North America. According to Adobe’s seminal Digital Marketing Survey 2017, companies that categorize themselves as digitally mature more than doubled between 2016 and 2017, from 11 percent to 24 percent.
Marketing leaders in every industry — except retail — reported an increase in digital maturity. As a result, their companies are benefiting from stronger technical skills, increased use of marketing automation, and more integrated data. Moreover, a quarter of the companies surveyed believe their companies are at an advanced level in terms of transforming business processes and better understanding and using their data. The percentage of companies that consider themselves in the top two categories of digital maturity increased from 48 percent last year to 65 percent this year.
“This represents a tipping point in terms of the majority of companies identifying as digitally mature,” says Kevin Lindsay, director of product marketing at Adobe. “We see an increase in the number of companies that identify as being advanced as far as digital maturity goes, and a decline in those that identify themselves as having emergent or very low maturity.”
Increasing focus on customer engagement.
The transformation of a company into a digitally mature enterprise reflects a recognition that integration of marketing and operational data is a competitive requirement in today’s marketplace. One common denominator among digitally mature companies is a 360-degree customer view. This is the use of data to develop a holistic perspective on customer engagement with your brand.
Developing a complete customer perspective is achieved by integrating and acting on data from across the spectrum of customer interactions. “Getting a more complete view of customer engagement continues to be the most important digital marketing strategy,” says Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager of digital marketing at Adobe. “But audience reach, mobile app engagement, and mobile app analytics are all gaining in importance.”
In fact, digitally mature companies are investing in developing integrated digital marketing technology platforms that include: the ability to combine and leverage data sources, identify and target audiences, improve analytics, and optimize campaigns for web and mobile apps using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Companies in the vanguard of digital maturity also plan to invest in digital technology in the year ahead. Looking toward the future, the top three areas for increased investment for mature companies include: technology to facilitate optimization (65 percent), personalization (61 percent), and advertising (60 percent).
Automated personalization is on the rise.
Data-driven marketing solutions are among the leading tools that companies are using for web and mobile optimization. In order to understand and act on their data, enterprise leaders are also using analytics to create more personalized user experiences.
In fact, 52 percent of advanced brands said they are using integrated analytics to augment their marketing efforts.
“Analytics have evolved from providing basic data and reports to delivering important and revealing insights about customer behavior,” says Kevin from Adobe. “The ability to look at the data for insights is now fundamental. It’s the most important aspect of digital maturity.”
Automation for better targeting, Kevin adds, is “the next step” in digital maturity. “It’s great to understand what’s going on in your business, and to have lots of data insights,” he says. “But the real key is being able to use that information. Automation and targeting enable companies to act on their data, and that technology is an important part of the digital maturity story.”
One company with unique insight into digital maturity is Merkle, a technology-focused marketing agency that has worked with Fortune 1000 companies for more than 30 years. “The market is accelerating incredibly quickly,” says George Gallate, Merkle’s chief marketing officer. “The proliferation of marketing technology and opportunities means that companies have to meet customer expectations in real time.”
Digital maturity facilitates differentiation.
The need for differentiation in the marketplace is driving digital transformation for many companies. Not surprisingly, more advanced companies are highly focused on differentiation strategies that give them a competitive edge.
Overall, the survey found that 89 percent of companies believe their digital marketing efforts definitely or somewhat differentiate them in the marketplace. The quest to differentiate their brands is fueling investments in technology with the goal of better connecting with customers across different channels and devices.
When it comes to digital marketing, the ability to access and understand customer data and then use that data to personalize content across different channels is a way for companies to differentiate themselves from the competition. Success requires analytics that effectively measure cross-channel engagement and, ultimately, sales conversions.
From Merkle’s perspective, says George, that differentiation requires a three-step process that includes developing a unified customer data platform, integrating both internal and external customer data sources, and organizational alignment with both internal teams and suppliers. “This is a fundamental organizational change,” he says. “It requires the creation of a data-driven organization that has an integrated planning process and the ability to deliver meaningful customer experiences at every level.”
Redefining customer experiences.
Hotel giant Marriott is a standard bearer for defining digital maturity. “They are the quintessential brand as far as best practices,” says Kevin. “They are thinking about the entire customer experience from the moment that someone engages with an app to the guest experience when a customer is checking-out. They also have a very mature approach to how they look at data, and how they use it to refine customer experiences.”
A cornerstone of Marriott’s strategy has been mobile engagement. “We are unleashing our scale and our personalization capabilities across a community of 100 million-plus members,” says Andy Kauffman, VP of digital marketing for Marriott International. “Mobile is a key, key part of this, and it has been a tremendous success for our company.”
Kevin adds that Marriott’s focus on mobile is indicative of the wider trends identified in the 2017 Digital Marketing Survey. “The biggest change in terms of digital marketing strategy that we see has to do with mobile,” he says. “We see a big bump in the survey in terms of how people view the importance of mobile app analytics as well as mobile app engagement. We also are seeing some really specific tactical areas around mobile, particularly with mobile app analytics and personalization.”
Driving higher conversion rates.
One of the most interesting data points related to the digital maturity effect is the impact it has on the bottom line. According to the survey, digitally mature companies — with highly integrated data and content — have much higher conversion rates than companies with emergent or non-existent digital maturity. Desktop conversion for advanced companies was 5 percent compared to 3.9 percent for the least mature companies. On mobile, average conversion was 4.6 percent for more mature companies compared to 3.7 percent for those less tech-savvy organizations.
“Based on the levels of maturity, advanced companies have better integrated data and content, as well as clearly defined best practices and automation strategies,” says Brad at Adobe. “The survey also shows that factors such as cross-channel support, automated KPIs, and personalization of content, all factor into better conversion results.”
What mature companies recognize is that to be relevant in today’s omnichannel marketing environment, you have to be able to deliver targeted, personalized content at the speed of light. “Consumers expect to find what they need online fast,” says Brad. “You can’t have latency. You can’t have non-relevant content, and you can’t get away with not personalizing.”
The good news is that digital marketers understand the importance of investing in technology. Overall, 95 percent of those surveyed said their companies plan to invest in expanding their digital marketing efforts in the year ahead. “Companies are making big investments in digital technology,” says Brad, “because you can’t get there incrementally, and they realize that.”
Being really good at just marketing, just optimization, or just analytics used to mean a competitive edge. But not anymore. “Today,” says Brad, “you need a well-integrated platform in order to optimize your ability to deliver great customer experiences in real time.”
The post Digital Transformation Paves the Way for Delivering Great Customer Experiences appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.
from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/digital-transformation-paves-way-delivering-great-customer-experiences/
Monday, October 16, 2017
Friday, October 13, 2017
Thursday, October 12, 2017
7 Steps to Digital Experience Transformation
The Schindler Group—a global manufacturing leader with more than 46,000 employees— transports more than 1 billion people each day on its elevator and escalator products. A few years ago, it began a strategic initiative to renew its websites and shift from a company-centric approach to providing a customer-centric web experience. In doing so, Schindler improved its click-through rates and the company’s customer satisfaction scores soared. In fact, more than 60 percent of viewers said they would recommend its websites to friends and colleagues, and 90 percent found the sites more user friendly.
To achieve these results, Schindler adopted a comprehensive digital strategy including a content creation and management tool. Using five templates, it created 60 localized websites in more than 25 different languages for 100 countries. As Schindler’s story illustrates, digital transformation is necessary for innovation and competitive success. It takes a significant organizational effort to identify the best approach and execution path. Proven digital transformation strategies make delivering cutting-edge customer experiences to customers, partners, and distributors a painless process.
Making digital transformation a top priority.
Manufacturing companies face strong economic headwinds that are forcing them to reduce costs, re-examine their business models, build new capabilities and adopt new technology, while focusing on the customer experience.
The need for improved efficiency is why many management teams are turning toward Industry 4.0, the most recent reconstruction of manufacturing. According to market analyst firm PwC, there are three major aspects of the concept:
- Digitization and integration of value chains
- Digitization of product and service offerings
- Digital business models and customer access
While the internal components of Industry 4.0 make things faster, better, and more cost efficient, customers and distributors benefit from these efforts as well. To be competitive now and in the future, you have to wow B2B customers in the same manner you would B2C customers.
In fact, Econsultancy’s 2017 Digital Trends survey found customer experience is the most important differentiation tool for competing in today’s global marketplace, which means personalized and accurate information needs to be available immediately.
Customers, partners, and distributors require information and services throughout the sales cycle, which begins with early-stage research and continues with aftermarket experiences. Experiences can range from technical background information — specs, CAD drawings, reference designs, and software updates — to technical support and maintenance requests. Therefore, it’s imperative to identify your customer’s needs and build a digital transformation strategy to fit your business’ needs.
For example, Henkel Adhesive Technologies — a global manufacturing company with an annual sales of approximately €16.5 million and 47,000 employees — went through a rebranding and digital transformation process more than three years ago. It consolidated its businesses into four main brands and heavily invested in its digital channels. In fact, Henkel now supports more than 90 websites in more than 20 languages. Henkel uses its digital presence to present product information and inspire its customers with project ideas. The company’s digital transformation resulted in a module website approach that balances brand consistency with local customization. Plus, Henkel’s sites are mobile enabled with responsive design. Due to it’s thoughtful digital investment, Henkel now delivers flexible, local, on-demand content.
Seven digital transformation steps.
Any major change in software systems, business processes, and employee responsibilities is a significant undertaking. That’s true for the transformation of your digital experiences, as well. The potential breadth of adoption throughout the organization will need the right
strategy and planning at the beginning. Although no single blueprint will work for everyone, there is a series of seven steps that you can adapt for your organization:
1. Partner identification. Transformation your digital experiences can be complex. Identify potential partners — whether vendors, consultants, or individuals you can hire — who can bring their expertise to your challenge.
Once you have selected the right partners, you’ll need a working relationship between an external expert and your employees to determine structuring procedures, identify primary contacts, and integrate communications. While details can change over time, setting yourself up for success begins with strong partner relationships and communication.
2. Department coordination. Digital experience transformation can and likely should involve many parts of your company — as many have direct or indirect contact with your customers and distributors. You’ll want to add departments and groups as new goals require their involvement.
Still, at the start, identify as best you can all the departments that could be involved in or affected by the digital experience transformation. A basic part of change management is to bring those people into the process through a cross-functional transformation team. Doing so greatly increases the chance that employees will cooperate and support the effort. Develop processes early on that will enable interdepartmental communication and cooperation.
Also consider creating a new customer experience function within your company. Multiple departments will be involved with the transformation effort, but each has an understandable focus on its own operations. Many companies find that a separate group with a mandate to work across departments enables a more effective transformation process.
As part of the departmental coordination, identify upper-level executives from various departments who can and will act as sponsors for the effort. They can direct their employees to cooperate with other parts of the company and make the necessary departmental resources available.
3. Strategy identification and goal analysis. Once partners, departmental coordination, and executive support are in place, begin to identify the overarching strategy and broad goals of the transformation. Experts involved with the effort can help identify common applications of digital experiences that they’ve seen work at other manufacturers. Internal experts can point to weaknesses in processes that directly affect customers and distributors.
It’s important to understand what both customers and distributors find of greatest interest — what experiences they see as most important. Find people in both groups who are willing to share their ideas and begin conducting interviews and surveys to see what they need most. Although your ROI is important, true success will come from a competitive advantage, and that only happens when you satisfy customers and distributors with what they want and need. Beyond surveys and interviews, consider creating advisory councils, which could offer customer and distributor viewpoints and be a source of knowledgeable for people willing to test new experiences and services.
Data analysis of customer choices with current digital experiences can offer insight into what customers and distributors find most valuable. Time on site and time with assets can be particularly telling. They also can indicate when services and assets require too much time for access and use.
Finally, rounds of competitive intelligence will show what your competitors in the same markets are doing. You can learn which types of services and information have become “table stakes” and which might be opportunities for competitive distinction.
4. Tool selection. To some, putting tool selection this late in the process may seem odd. Many organizations that embark on enterprise-level changes choose tools early on. However, those companies run into the potential danger of letting the tool choice drive their strategy.
To create experiences that address your business’ needs, you need a digital foundation that provides a flexible, agile, and scalable platform with the following four parts — which all play an important role in your overall digital foundation.
Analytics: Measuring, managing and analyzing performance to maximize effectiveness and optimize return on investment is essential in order to create the best digital experience.
Content Management System: A content management system is an application used to create and manage digital content. It works in tandem with a DAM to create the actual digital experiences customers, distributors, partners, and employees use.
Digital Asset Management: Digital asset management (DAM) is a business process for organizing, storing, and retrieving rich media and managing digital rights and permissions. DAM is a single point of control — which means changes to assets are made centrally and available globally.
Data Management Platform: Combine in-house, customer-level data with third-party data to create specific audience segments based on a variety of traits and behaviors. By pulling data from multiple sources into a single platform, you’ll have a master marketing profile that will become your one-stop shop for everything related to your customers.
Working with transformation experts and the IT department, make a list of the types of tools that will be necessary. Be sure they have the ability to readily interact and integrate with your specific enterprise software. Understand the functional dependencies among packages to plan your installation sequence.
5. Planning. With the information you now have in hand, it’s time to plan. Synthesize suggestions from partners, user feedback, information from internal subject matter experts, and competitive intelligence. Identify potential use cases by customer and distributor type and find the common features, assets, data sources, and other enterprise systems of different types of experiences.
Now you can create a master list of experiences as well as the enterprise data and system resources necessary to create them. Tag each of the experiences with the digital tools and integrations that will be necessary. Also apply a 1-to-5 scale level of interest on the part of customers and distributors, based on previous interviews and surveys. Add the interest levels of internal departmental executives, line-of-business employees, and digital transformation experts. Add estimations of time, resources and cost necessary for each experience. The result is effectively an annotated to-do list.
6. Prioritization. With the annotated to-do list in hand, it’s time for prioritization. Work with the transformation experts, internal subject matter experts, and representatives of the finance department to generate estimates of the financial return you expect to see — both those that deliver specific cost benefits, as well as advantages from competitiveness, market strength, and brand value.
You can then begin the process to determine the relative ROI opportunities for each type of experience transformation on the list. This stage requires the balance of benefits with costs and the software necessary for implementation. Group potential experience implementations by the tools they require to see when it would be possible to begin each one.
Consider peppering the early part of the priority list with projects that offer a strong ROI and relatively easy implementation. Significant wins in the opening phases of the work help build goodwill and continued support.
7. Phased development and rollout. It’s finally time for implementation. Based on your priority list, establish roles and responsibilities for cross-functional team members. Ensure those team members have the time and resources necessary to perform their tasks. This is where having departmental executive sponsors becomes critical.
A master project list and schedule will help keep everything in the context of the overall goal. The master list and schedule should not be overly detailed. Specifics will come in individual schedules for each of the experience projects.
Schedules will also have to include detailed testing — including user testing with internal employees and the volunteer and advisory customers and partners — and roll-out plans. The best concepts and implementations can fall flat if there isn’t a strong path of transfer from one method of customer or partner interaction to another.
Transforming the digital experiences you offer customers and distributors, and the corresponding business processes you use to interact with them can be a large although rewarding undertaking. But it is something you can accomplish and that will provide a long-term competitive advantage.
Learn more about how digital experiences are reshaping manufacturing customer and distributor experiences. And read more in our #manufacturing series.
The post 7 Steps to Digital Experience Transformation appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.
from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/7-steps-digital-experience-transformation/