Lagging Martech—The Old Data Tail Is Wagging the Marketing Dog

Just read about the new engagement audience function for Facebook ads and was struck by how Martech always seem to be a step behind strategies in marketing vs. leading the function. As I talk to CMOs focused on content, conversations and personalization, Martech continues to deliver unrelated insight such as this segment selection: “viewed 2 seconds/10 seconds/25%/50%/75%/90% of your video.”

Did you designed your video with these options in mind and have a plan for each audience segment based on video watching duration? How would you use that information for personalization unless you’ve tagged the content of your video to those viewing duration points? The fact is that this audience segmentation option is merely based on what data they COULD find about your video.

I recall 15 or so years ago, as we began moving from the sales cycle to the buying cycle and finally customer journey, that the Martech available was always behind what we envisioned. Back then I wanted to track engagement and what I got was “opened email.”

But then I think of an app like Photoshop. You won’t use an nth of the feature set in Photoshop ever, but it opened all sorts of possibilities and changed what we could do, so it changed what we did do. It allowed for vision and innovation in so many areas of design. Some analytics tools have this potential--Tableau's wide open visualization of data certainly created new applications of the tool vs. merely meeting feature and function requests from users. Take a look at the Cincy Insights site that opened up Cincinnati data to the public via Tableau. (If you haven't met the Cincy Data Diva Leigh Tami yet, I urge you to connect.)

Most Martech relies on what was or is tracked, not what ought to be tracked or even could be tracked. It's data derivative, so if a website collects 10-year-old web form data to start a contact record, then that's what Martech is going to use. But what if we turned it around finally and built on other possibilities than old databases? 

Here's what I want: I want a Customer Experience platform—customizable engagement modules that I can combine into a personalized support system for whatever relationship exists between myself and my customer or potential customer. I want to put control of that engagement into my customers’ hands, if they want, and let them build their own preferred experience. Or, I want all controls to disappear and be completely ambient to the interaction. I want to shed “channels” and formats and manage the ongoing conversation between my customers and myself. 

The reality is I’ll be dragging audience segments into email workflows that pretend to be campaign workflows and creating ads for segments dictated by a site owner. I'll get to bolt on a chatbot soon that won't be integrated and tracked in my marketing system for a couple of years. Although I have very high hopes for “Chat Apps” and entering the future of CX—Conversational Experience, I'm still waiting for truly disruptive Martech.