Report of the week: HootSuite’s Global Digital Overview 2020 Top 3 takeaways from the report we discuss: 1.What customer engagement is going to look like in 2020 and beyond: leveraging employees as a crucial link in CX 2. Will marketers find their ‘purpose’ with video in 2020? 90% of internet users said watching videos was their number one activity online- how will marketers’ approach video content to drive business outcomes – especially with a growing list of martech vendors that enable video production in pennies and minutes? 3. Thinking about ‘what is the best investment in voice in our ..read more

David Raab, Anand Thaker and Chitra Iyer analyze what the latest announcements in MarTech mean to marketers. Featuring latest CX news from Adobe, Verint, Adobe, Sprinklr, Freshworks, Wipro Digital, Rational Interaction, Thunderhead and Lytics. Gartner’s recent prediction asserted that 89% of companies will compete solely on CX - the market for CX spending is growing exponentially. And today’s analysis is about that. We first set context on the scope of CX and the core components needed to create a comprehensive ‘CX ecosystem’. Here are the recent CX news, trends and concepts we analyse on ..read more

This week we talk about making sensible martech stack decisions in the giant martech candy store; what makes the ‘D2C approach’ work, findings from 3 new marketing surveys; and David Raab’s expert commentary on 3 news items from the identity resolution space. Section1: talking martech with Pat Maigler, Sr. Manager Marketing Strategy and Operations at Williams Sonoma Inc. (All opinions expressed are Pat’s own, and not representative of Williams Sonoma Inc.) Top 5 highlights of the discussion 1.Growing into a career in marketing technology: Pat’s journey 2.How marketers have evolved into becom ..read more

Segment 1: The Growth of First Party Data Tech David Raab of the CDP Institute, growth advisor Anand Thaker, and Chitra Iyer talk about the rise of first party data tech - from personalization platforms to experience clouds, data integration to CDPs and everything in between. Highlights of the discussion include: - Factors behind the rise of ‘first party data tech’ - What’s problematic about ‘consent’ replacing cookies - Why publishers will make data vendors irrelevant over time (and the trouble with that). Hint: think mini walled gardens and the need for fair data exchange co-ops - Why CD ..read more

Brent Leary, David Raab, Anand Thaker, and host Chitra Iyer talk about 5 significant martech themes that will – or should matter in 2020: 1. The Customer Data Management space • David explains why his biggest milestone in 2019 was Salesforce, Adobe, and Oracle coming out with seemingly legit CDP’s, and “the very specific technical change” they have made since they entered the CDP conversation • Privacy is the other big significant concept. “It’s getting marketers rethinking how they will approach the concept of customer data” • Brent: will CDPs finally go beyond marketing and become an enter ..read more

What is rich media and why is it instrumental in the end user experience? Sanjay Sarathi, VP Marketing of Cloudinary, talks rich media and how marketers can get better outcomes from developing a practical approach to their non-text media strategy. 2/3rd of the web is images, or non-text content. And the world of non-text content is evolving fast- what with video, voice, AR-VR etc. all vying to play starring roles in most marketing strategies today, and users themselves evolving how they interact and engage with these non-text formats at different stages of their buyer journey. What are the 4 ..read more

Gary Laben from permissioned-first party research data provider Dynata tells us how marketers can use research-based data to bridge the gaps in our understanding of the customer. ‘Understanding the consumer’ is easier said than done (understatement of the year!). As Gary Laben from Dynata, David Raab from the CDP Institute and Anand Thaker of Intelliphi discuss in this episode of The Talking Stack, it will take a lot of technology and a lot of skills to do that in any meaningful way. Certainly, more than one methodology is needed to assemble all the data and insights needed to minimize the ga ..read more

When two industry experts who go back a long way get together on The Talking Stack, what you get is an explosion of thought starters and concepts that make for an extra-long episode title! Join Jeff Nicholson and David Raab in a great conversation around relationships and the future of CRM, where they will explore such questions as: 1. Can you orchestrate something you don’t have any control over? (i.e the famed ‘customer journey’?) 2. What’s best for the customer and why the future of customer-centric marketing is not about the next best offer but the next best action (which may not be an ..read more

If you track social media marketing best practices, chances are you’ve heard of Santiago Solimei, the global head of social media at the Melia group of hotels. While their success with social media marketing has been extensively covered in the press, let me remind you of the outcomes: the company has been named one of the 10 most influential brands on social media; and has built a solid online community (over 6 million followers) around its 545 brand and hotel accounts on different social media platforms in 167 countries. If you think those numbers are staggering, then listen to this - Social ..read more

Steve Petersen, marketing technology manager at WGU, an online institution for higher education shares what the job profile really involves, real life practical challenges on-the-job, the reality of choosing the right technology, and on being a good partner to your martech vendors. Here are the top 3 highlights – but don’t miss the details in our conversation! 1. Want to build a career in martech? Here are Steve’s top tips • Listen to your dad! • Learn new stuff/ technologies when you get a chance, whether technical or functional- trust me, it will come in handy one day • Dabble in a lot of ..read more