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To scale or not to scale? When is the right time to take a step up and bust through that glass ceiling with your business? Is getting better preferable to getting bigger?
In this episode we are talking about growing with intention. The topic of this conversation was sparked by a question about scaling in the Fizzle forums and after some rumination on the idea of scaling and the right times for this, we settle on the idea and that intentionally growing is always preferable to growth for growth’s sake.
We also talk about what this really looks like, unpacking balancing your ambitions, finances and lifestyle as well as the opportunities that challenges and problems offer us. There are no definitive answers for everybody here, but hopefully the discussion will lead you to your own conclusions.
For a great conversation on a indispensable question, be sure to tune in with us!
Email is facing some challenges. Not only have subscriber bases taken a knock with the arrival of GDPR, cutting up to 50% of the contact list for some brands, but the annual volume of email is expected to rise from 269 billion to 333 billion by 2022.
Put simply, those that remain on the subscriber list will be inundated with brand content. Currently 49% of the emails that reach the inbox of the consumer are already being deleted before being opened. And now that will only increase.
Fortunately, email isn’t always the answer. Take the in-store scenario. A shopper using a click-and-collect service more than likely hasn’t printed – or remembered to bring with them – the printed copy of the order receipt. In this situation they might look for it in their inbox, but the reception in a shopping centre leaves much to be desired. In this situation, they remember an SMS they were sent alongside the order confirmation.
In its simplest form, this is cross-channel marketing. The customer has been engaged post-purchase through both email and SMS. Of course, in today’s digital age, this represents just a drop in the ocean of ways to engage and guide consumers on their journey.
Successfully orchestrating the cross-channel customer journey formed the centre of conversation at the latest Oracle Responsys User Forum, held in the illustrious Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge. Here, we cover some of the most important takeaways from a morning of insight and shared experiences.
Creating a full marketing journey
The main challenge when approaching cross-channel marketing is there are an infinite number of ways the consumer can interact with your brand before they purchase - and then again even post-purchase. As marketers we’re trying to join the points together to create a seamless experience.
When brands work in silos, they cut the connectors which results in a poor customer experience. As Simon Johnston, Strategic Consultant, EMEA, surmised, “It’s like you’re fielding a football team but none of them talk to each other. Rather than one cohesive group working together, you end up with 11 players who all want to score goals. They don’t want to pass the ball; they don’t want to share.”
This carries significant consequences for the end user experience. Say the consumer sees an ad for a local gym, they visit the physical location and signup while there. On their return home, they open up Facebook and see an ad offering a discount off the joining fee. The online cookie is still working but the customer converted offline. The channels aren’t talking to one another.
Getting your marketing channels talking to one another in a coordinated way hinges on vital ingredients;
Customer journey mapping
For most, elements of the above ingredient list will resonate with how they are set up currently or how they are looking to build. However, the very first ingredient requires time and thought marketers rarely enjoy.
Knowing where to start your customer journey canvas was the focus for KimBarlow, Director of Strategic & Analytical Services EMEA, who started by breaking this down into five distinct areas;
Putting this into practice, Kim drew on an example from GE. Doug Dietz, an industrial designer working for GE healthcare had one particular problem – children who have to have an MRI scan found the process scary. From the doctor’s appointment, to arrival at the hospital and waiting rooms, by the time they reached the MRI room, they were so anxious they often burst into tears and in struggling to stay still, made the process of taking the scans much longer than necessary.
Not only are the costs of hiring extra staff to support the process a huge driver of change, but also the side effects of often resorting to using drugs to calm the children and allow the machine to take accurate images.
Kim explained, “It’s about finding the moment that matters. For Sophia, this is the moment that she sees the MRI ‘monster’. Solving any kind of problem when customer journey mapping relies on asking “What gets the target audience excited?’ If you’re asking questions like this, you’re focusing on the needs which are always the key to changing their behaviours.”
In Doug’s case, the team realised kids care about exploration, adventure and being outdoors – this sparked an entire rejuvenation of the customer journey centred around the concept of going camping. The new roadmap was centred on maintaining this concept at every point in the child’s journey from doctor’s appointment, through to the MRI room itself, fully decked out as a campsite.
Kim concluded, “Data can give you lots of indicators, but it’s about understanding the attitudes that you want to influence. Consumers are humans at the end of the day. Once you’ve thought about the emotional journey, then you can start testing. Start small and build around the experiences that work.”
Make sure to also check out our Cross-Channel Fundamentals Guide and Streamline CX Guide here.
I’m not too humble to proclaim that clear communication is my strong suit. Each day, I make a concerted effort...
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Forrester Research recently evaluated 6 top Marketing Automation Platforms in The Forrester Wave™: B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Q4 2018 and we’re exceptionally pleased to share that Oracle is a leader in their assessment.
As more B2B marketing teams are evaluated based on their ability to increase revenue, the requirement should be to leverage technology that builds preferred customer experiences and keeps a total revenue picture at hand.
According to the Forrester report, Oracle attained the top-ranked score in the current offering category and the highest possible score in the strategy category out of the 6 marketing automation platforms assessed. Below are a few observations.
Marketing automation as we know it has come a long way in a short time. According to Forrester, “Savvy marketers are re-engineering their lead-to-revenue (L2R) process to transform marketing from a top-notch supplier of leads for the load-bearing sales channel to the architect of customer engagement across the entire customer life cycle.” At Oracle Marketing Cloud, our customers inspire us to act on a vision and strategy to empower progressive B2B organizations of all sizes to evolve from managing basic automated email marketing campaigns to orchestrating some the most engaging and strategic, adaptable cross-channel experiences possible across the entire customer life cycle.
For this report, Forrester assessed Oracle Eloqua and its extensibility and functionalities with Oracle BlueKai, Oracle Data Cloud, Oracle Maxymiser and Oracle Content Marketing that make up our B2B focus in Oracle Marketing Cloud. When evaluating Oracle’s platform, Forrester noted, “Oracle aims to help its customers create consistent, compelling, and connected experiences for customers and believes a data-first approach is the best way to deliver on that vision.”
Based on the unpredictable and distinct nature of each customer’s journey, Oracle believes a data-first approach better enables marketers to understand each customer’s passions, priorities, and preferences so they can deliver meaningful 1:1 experiences. When armed with the right knowledge, marketers can engage with prospects and customers in the most relevant way and at the most opportune time - no matter the channel or device.
Forrester also remarked that “Oracle Eloqua’s program and campaign canvases make it easy to plan and execute the multistage contextual interactions to support complex B2B buying cycles.” One of the ways that we continue to support programmatic and data needs of our customers is by simplifying our CRM and other third-party integrations with Oracle Eloqua’s program canvas. The program canvas is a straightforward integration design tool for CRM and third-party application integrations that marketers can easily understand and use. Oracle has recently released a new simplified turn-key integration for Oracle Sales Cloud and has another coming very soon for our customers using Salesforce.
In addition to offering deep functionality for marketing tasks and tactics, Oracle Eloqua also provides vertical-specific solutions for B2B organizations. These solutions are tailored to industry requirements and regulations in areas such as financial services (asset management and insurance), not-for-profits, entertainment, wealth management, manufacturing, and life sciences.
Oracle is proud to be named a leader in this Forrester Wave report and believes that it sets the bar for current industry leading B2B marketing automation platform offerings and strategy. We remain committed to providing an innovative and integrated portfolio of best-of-breed components to power the full customer life cycle experience across marketing, sales, and service.
Want to learn more about current B2B marketing automation trends and capabilities? Download The Forrester Wave™: B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Q4 2018.
For marketers and customer service professionals, customer experience has always sat at the very core of their role in driving greater value for organisations. However, according to the Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey, the recent surge in adoption of AI and chatbot technologies means some 60% of UK CIOs report leadership teams are now also looking at IT for support.
Of course, to keep customers happy and loyal, all organisations need to figure out how they can keep up with the customer experience standards set by industry disrupters – and make the necessary internal changes to ensure it happens sooner rather than later. Where marketers and customer success teams might once have assumed ownership of the customer experience, they are now expected to share it, and play well with other departments being brought into the mix.
So what does this mean? Ultimately customer experience (CX) has always been at the centre of the organisation. What’s changing is its practitioners. In today’s market, CX practitioners come from all different parts of the business and must work cohesively to ensure the outcome is a seamless journey through on and offline channels.
Delivering this invites challenges not only in how teams are restructured and realigned with each other, but also how the wider organisation understands its purpose as a business and reports on its performance as such. Here we consider some of the chief barriers facing organisations looking to drive greater value through enhancing the customer experience.
Competing priorities
According to the recent report published by the CX Network on the Global State of Customer Experience, competing business priorities are now the number one challenge for customer experience practitioners when it comes to increasing the customer-centricity of their organisations.
Sales, for example, is a traditional area where sparks might fly with one team focused solely on short term financial results and the other looking at longer term trends and customer satisfaction. Crucially, this is no longer the age of the seller – with the birth of assistance technologies, the required mindset is one of guidance.
Equally, where IT might have seen its role as simply to ‘keep the lights on’, it is now an integral part of creating one, single record of all interactions between a brand and a customer that now range from online to social media, from customer support to chatbot.
Senior buy-in
Another second key challenge identified by CX Network in keeping customer experience on top of the agenda is a lack of buy-in from the top to the bottom. With that is a lack of understanding from senior internal stakeholders in regards to their responsibility and impact on the customer experience.
Customer experience is the responsibility of everyone within the company. Getting CEO level support to involve everyone from the initial start of a CX programme is key to cultivate companywide customer centricity, bringing everyone on board to share a common understanding.
Rip and replace
With senior leadership buy-in, the route map for customer centricity can be drawn in any conceivable way. Importantly, rather than embarking on a rip-and-replace mission, it is important decision makers understand how CX can complement the current culture to enhance the business’s competitive edge.
After all, the unique identity of a company is often crucial to its success. But, the culture does indeed need to accommodate to customer expectations, aligning to actually fulfil feedback where possible. This change must be driven from the top and rooted in the awareness of the value of CX – how it benefits client loyalty and the bottom line.
The CX and ROI relationship
Another perceived barrier is the absence of connecting the CX programme to tangible and measurable business results. Having clearly defined objectives and tying them to business results are key to keep CX a high priority initiative.
However, treating people only as rational actors where information, clicks and purchases are the only currencies of a brand interaction will likely not end well.
Instead, viewing every step of the customer journey as an opportunity to strengthen a mutually beneficial partnership, and designing the experience to trigger positive emotions, will endear customers and the people they happily recommend to the brand.
As an added benefit, a more fully human approach can boost the job satisfaction of everyone on the brand side as well, making stars of brand managers who understand the need to engage people more fully as human beings
It is up to customer experience practitioners to disband outdated roles to ensure marketing, sales and IT align to, with, for, and around the customer. Balancing the flexibility of practitioners to deliver positive emotions, rather than hard results, with the need for sustainable, profitable change around the customer is a fine line. Go too far and the initiative falls down, but executed well, the business levels the playing field with market disruptors.
Check out our free guide to streamlining your customer experience. Discover how top-notch customer experience can help you move away from a short-lived, campaign-centric approach:
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