Marketing's New Frontier: Intelligence After the Sale
I was just speaking at SAP's impressive Sapphire Conference, a massive gathering in Orlando of their customers and partners. What struck me as I listened to the other presentations was how much everything in the technology field is becoming real-time and on-demand. So much of the software that’s now going to the cloud becomes data that can then be analyzed to understand usage, see trends, or target marketing messages. The implications are immense. With the customer decision journey lens I usually use, this trend means more resources and emphasis will finally shift towards helping customers after purchase by finding opportunities through "product data analysis" to further build satisfaction and engagement with the brand.
For example, if a company is able to track how customers are or are not using features of their software, they can immediately launch programs to help people make better use of their services, e.g. send a prompt to try a feature that someone has not used yet or offer a promotion to someone whose usage has slipped. Going further, an NFC tag on an item that activates an app on your mobile phone when tapped could change when the item is on a store shelf versus after it is purchased. Once home, tap the tag and it shifts from hyping the product to now providing a video on how to use it. Tap it a few months later, and your phone shows new ways to use the product that others have posted.
When done as a way to enhance the customer experience and build loyalty – ie. done in a way that isn’t spam or like creepy spying – then marketers can build real and helpful connections with customers. For software companies, this opens up massive opportunities for CRM programs that have just not been there before. For sales and service partners, this opportunity will create a lot of complexity as the ownership of the customer relationship becomes less clear.
An important implication of this development is that marketers need to be involved in the software development process to highlight those “tags” that need to be added in order to generate the necessary data. And legal has an important role, of course, to balance the needs of privacy. As data keeps flowing after the sale, instead of stopping at the sale, there are new opportunities for touchpoints throughout the journey.
How much are you investing in usage-based marketing? Is it paying off in higher satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy?
Read more about this and other topics on the Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum site, and please follow us on Twitter @McK_CMSOForum. And please follow me on Twitter @davidedelman.
[Image: marsmet547, Flickr]
Data & AI Strategist | Statistics | Python, R, SQL, Tableau, Power BI
11 年This is "genious"... aaaaand pretty BASIC Customer Experience thinking, nothing "New" about this... Customer Service professionals have been engaging in this for a very long time and the companies that does it well are often market leaders in their respective industry. So - nothing "New" here...
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11 年Completely agree with this, marketers need to also be "technologists" to understand how the digital environment is shaping what we do.
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11 年Regarding marketing intellince most of the time we think of pres-sales activities. "Intelligence After The Sale" is really a paradigma change. And maybe also a good starting point for new sales. In fact it's strange that the idea of "after the sale" is so undervalued. How many service departments etc own important customer data. And is that data used? No! Good cooperation between sales / marketing and service offers huge opportunities.
Owner and Founder at All Fantastic
11 年Interesting indeed. Big data is certainly the big buzzphrase these days. One portion of the data discussion that David brings across strikes home in very human thinking: "i.e. done in a way that isn’t spam or like creepy spying". The tipping point is important to consider. Where the fine line exists between being too invasive and not gathering enough information could well make or break an organization. Google - surprise, surprise - does a fair job with their advertising targeting while not being too overtly intrusive. (Of course, "overtly intrusive" is likely perceived as relatively different to each person.) Generally, I foresee even more emphasis being put on the end-user opting-in, with multiple levels and settings managed by them, when it comes to allowing usage information to be accessed. While the old "opt-in" is nothing new, it certainly is a fine indicator when it comes to gauging product interest!