This is a free educational print out from the AdNews September issue. To get it hot off the press download a digital version of AdNews or subscribe to the premium print edition here.
In a nutshell, what's a marketing cloud?
Simon Bowker, enterprise director of Oracle Marketing Cloud ANZ, says: "A marketing cloud is a suite of products that enable a modern marketing team to understand customer behaviour and connect with them across all of the various channels through which they communicate."
Companies are struggling to solve three main challenges when it comes to the process of engaging with a marketing cloud.
- Being able to collect and use the huge amount of data that they hold about their customers.
- To be able to reach their customers at the right moment, through all of the channels presenting a consistent message that doesn’t conflict with marketing or advertising messages the customer may see in other channels and reflects the moment of the customer at that point in time.
- To be able to quickly make gradual improvements to their programs without the need for huge IT resources whilst maintaining a high volume of activity under the pressure of limited budgets and resources.
Top five marketing cloud pointers
1. Don’t make any investment in marketing cloud technology before you have a clear plan. Think about all aspects of your customer journey and build a plan of what you want that to be in the next five years.
2. Be sure to understand which tools really are needed and that they’re all included within the package that you’re buying – watch out for hidden costs and features that disappear after that great demo you saw.
3. Be realistic about the the fact that your tools will need to integrate and ensure you have worked with your IT team to get their support and opinion of how easy to do that will be – don’t assume that just because you’re buying from the same vendor that everything works well together.
4. Be realistic about the amount of change you can introduce to your team over a given period – without an effective adoption and change plan, everything will fail.
5. Look for partners who will provide more than just a set of tools and leave you to work it out for yourself – more than anything, you need expertise to help you on that journey.
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