Orchestrating the Future: Segment-Driven Experiences and the Rise of Data Activation

NB: This is representation of my personal perspective, and not a representation of my employers perspective. Head to the official blogs to see those.

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, marketing is undergoing a profound transformation. The way we think about our strategies, our planning and the way we create experiences and capitalize on the moments is fundamentally changing.

The future of marketing lies in the seamless integration of technology and operations, with data activation and experience orchestration at its core. But what does this mean for MarTech architects and CMOs? Let's dive in and explore how this revolution is reshaping the marketing landscape.

The Data Foundation sits at the Heart of this Transformation

At the heart of this transformation is data. It's no longer just about collecting data; it's about activating it. A robust data activation platform is essential. Note, it’s not about your data lake nor is it about your CDP. You need an enterprise data activation platform, a central place where you can create a unified operational profile that can connect to any touchpoint, trigger any experience and it needs to be able to provide data to any AI endeavour (in a trusted way).

The baseline of the data activation platform, is to consolidate data via ZeroETL and Ingested Data patterns as seen fit, and use this data to build your unified profile and drive the right activations. This narrative is known already. So what’s the change?

The change lies in the feedback loops. You need a data foundation that is enriched with all of the behavioural and transactional data you generate, which is meaningful for experience orchestration. This data needs to be pushed in as quickly as possible, and you need to leverage this data to deliver the right message to the customer.

In the past, the narrative I used to drive was all around the ease of building “Customer Journeys”, this was a way of building logical, sequential flows where essentially you sent email 1, waited 4 days, evaluate if they opened it, and if not, sent a reminder.

In the future, we will determine your eligibility for a particular message and send this to you. If needed, we will then have a follow up segment, based on you having received the first message X days ago. But this segment will also have exclusion criteria in it, to address all the scenarios where a person should be excluded. Finally, the segments and messages will be ranked, to ensure that you get the most relevant message for you on a particular day.

In order to arrive to the future, you’re moving from “journey orchestration” to “segment orchestration” and the segments should live in and be powered by the data activation layer.

Experience Orchestration: The Symphony of Engagement

Once you have a solid data foundation and an actionable data activation layer, you can begin orchestrating experiences. This continues to involve designing and delivering personalized journeys that resonate with individual customers.

• Moving Beyond Campaigns: It no longer is about single-sends or sequential customers journeys. It’s about creating an infrastructure of “always on” experiences that gets invoked when the customer qualifies for them. While this doesn’t replace the need to communicate (i.e. campaigns) and pull people in, this is the next frontier in meeting customer’s expectations.
• Personalization at Scale: AI Powered NBA/NBO and potentially even GenAI powered content will eventually be table-stakes, and the same will be the case for a conversational interaction that is tailored to the customer, based on their own data.
• Cross-Channel Harmony: The feedback loop and the data action layer will work to ensure that you can transition between channels in your experience, and to ensure that it’s a consistent and cohesive customer experience no matter the channel.

The biggest change for the experience orchestration sits in the “always on” category, essentially building the infrastucture that is sentient and ready for prospects and customers alike to come our way.

As 70-80%+ of the buying decision and sometimes more, is made without interacting with your human employees, having the right sentient infrastructure to power the experience that matches the expectations of the visitor is critical. NBA/NBO, Conversational Agents and a real-time triggering capabilitiy of the rigth messaging and/or data capture approaches, will all be vital disciplines to cover.

What changes onThe MarTech Architect's Changes?

The main change will be in how we think about solutions. MarTech architects are the conductors of this symphony. They are responsible for designing and implementing the technology infrastructure that enables data activation and experience orchestration as outlined above.

However, we need to switch from the “journey orchestration” mindset to the “experience orchestration” mindset, and we need to double down on data activation, and especially executing this at scale. To succeed, some of the key things to focus on:

• Continue to Bridge the Gap: MarTech architects bridge sits in the interface between marketing and IT, ensuring that technology aligns with business objectives. If you’re a salesforce customer, this becomes even more important considering the harmonization that’s happening, that will unlock brand new capabilities that you first need to grasp and second, need to evangelise.
• Build The Data Activation Layer: MarTech Architects need to step up as leaders on the activation layer. It’s not about building the data lake, which IT traditionally sits on, nor is it about the CDP (the frequent marketing technology), it’s leading the charge on creating a data activation infrastructure that can serve the entire enterprise.

The CMO's, CDO’s and Experience Officers Strategic Vision

The CxO’s plays a vital role in driving this transformation. They must embrace a data-driven mindset and champion the integration of technology and operations. So from that aspect, nothing really changes – but they need to cast a vision where they graple with Data Activation for their company, and then they must continue with:

• Aligning Teams: CMOs must continue foster collaboration between marketing, IT, data science teams and now also the agents and AI teams.
• Investing in Technology: They must advocate for investments in the necessary MarTech solutions and outline the impact across the enterprise
• Measuring Success: They must establish clear metrics to track the effectiveness of data activation and experience orchestration.

Challenging the Status Quo

In order to succeed with this, we have to willing to look at what we have and adopt a beginners mind towards the future. Beyond moving beyond traditional metrics and focusing on future-oriented metrics, it’s also about continuing to build some key organisational capalities and fostering a culture of alignment at the company:

• Embrace Agility: Marketing teams must become more agile, adapting quickly to changing customer needs and market dynamics.
• Continuous Optimization: Data activation and experience orchestration are ongoing processes that require continuous optimization.
• Customer-Centricity: Put the customer at the center of everything you do.

Conclusion

The future of marketing is data-driven, personalized, and orchestrated. By embracing a data activation layer and re-defining experience orchestration, MarTech architects and CMOs can unlock new levels of customer engagement and drive business growth.

It's time to move beyond the buzzwords and build the operational MarTech of tomorrow. This is not just a technological shift; it's a strategic imperative. The marketers who understand and implement these strategies will be the ones who lead the way.

Call to Action

What are your thoughts on the future of marketing? How are you building a data activation layer and how do you define experience orchestration in your organization? Share your insights in the comments below!

?