I’m worn out from reading predictions as we race into 2012. Though I am excited about all the new things we’ll witness (CMO.com provides a nice sample of digital marketing predictions from 32 luminaries), I do not think we will make much progress on one of the bigger challenges faced by data-driven, or digital, marketers – converting “big data” into prescriptive, profitable marketing action. We’re lost in the trees, thrashing through a lot of data. Without some clear architecture for how we will apply our analysis to individual customers. We have lots of interesting findings, but less insight and little resulting action. What we need are clear hypotheses and frameworks for applying the data to marketing action that goes beyond a single purchase event and into the longer-term relationship with the customer.
Long before we had “big data” we studied our customer life cycles and each purchase, or event, cycle closely. Marketing researchers have been doing this for decades. We still do, but we don’t often architect prescriptive, individual treatments (marketing touches) in a manner that is thoughtfully-aligned with the life cycle and each event cycle. Some of us do, like top flight travel marketers and a few e-commerce brands like amazon.com, but most are not doing the tedious scenario planning necessary to link event triggers (data points from transactions, marketing, social media, search and service) with real-time analysis and decision rules that automatically trigger individual, contextual marketing action (content and offers). Examples of such actions include automatically triggering an email, a phone call, a personalized web page, or front-line staff to personalize the sale across the counter and so on.
I hope I’m wrong – maybe you (?) can point me to some marketers that are routinely using analytics, scenario planning and prescriptive marketing actions to improve sales among eager customers (up-selling), while just as ably recovering with proactive service among jaded customers. Surely we’ll witness a few comprehensive deployments of intelligent marketing automation in 2012… but not many.
