Articles | December 3, 2020 | 3 min read

4 Keys to Building a Positive Customer Experience Online for Retailers

Retail moved online in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic (even Black Friday was a largely digital experience). For retail brands, the transition has required restructuring everything from inventory management and order fulfillment, to marketing and advertising strategies (especially as those strategies pertain to mobile where screentime is up 13.9% this year). To help brands better adapt to the loss of large-scale brick-and-mortar retail heading into 2021, here are 4 keys to building a positive customer experience online.

#1 – Project a consistent brand identity online

The consistency of your brand online is critical to the delivery of a great customer experience. Everything from your logo, to your color palettes, to your email templates, to how and when you decide to deploy dark mode needs to be consistent. The more consistent your brand is online, the more recognizable it will be to consumers, and brands that are more recognizable can see a per customer lifetime value that’s 306% higher than the average.

Sephora's Instagram is Building a Positive Customer Experience Online — Sephora Instagram

#2 – Personalize your customer interactions

80% of consumers want personalized retail experiences. To deliver a personalized experience, your brand must be able to analyze a combination of first- and third-party customer data, and activate on the insights obtained in real time for custom product recommendations, uniquely tailored marketing emails, and more.

Prose Custom Haircare does a great job with personalization to enhance the digital customer experience. Using data from past purchases, Prose recommends new products that are relevant to individual shoppers, which makes those shoppers feel like the brand understands their personal wants and needs. The stronger that feeling, the more likely shoppers are to remain loyal to the Prose brand even when aggressively marketed to by competitors.

Building a Positive Customer Experience Online with personalization. — Personalized Prose email

#3 – Pay attention to the customer journey

Journey mapping is a crucial part of building a positive customer experience online. It’s the only way for retailers to understand details such as which channels attract the highest value customers, where customers drop off in the sales process, etc. The insights derived from journey mapping make it easier to create a holistic picture of individual customers (as well as audiences of customers) so you can improve the customer experience across every channel and touchpoint.

A map of how starbucks customer journey looks — Starbucks customer journey

Starbucks, for example, uses journey mapping to understand how their customers interact with the brand (the digital channels most frequently used, order histories, etc.) so their business can be more successful in the future building a positive customer experience online.

#4 – Implement an omnichannel strategy

Building a positive customer experience online requires an omnichannel approach (69% of U.S. consumers spend more with brands that offer a consistent experience across all offline and online channels). Therefore, retailers should implement a closed-loop measurement strategy using industry-leading marketing software to synchronize all customer activity be it online or offline. Doing so will ensure more timely and relevant engagement with customers (i.e. it will stop your brand from serving a product-specific ad to a customer who’s recently purchased that product).

Want more insights into build a positive customer experience online?

If you found the above tips valuable and would like more customer experience insights, read more about How to Enhance the Customer Experience During the Holidays.

Are Personalization and Individualization Causing Intimidation Within your Marketing Organization? It All Starts and Ends with DATA!

Artificial Intelligence | March 8, 2019 | 4 min read

Are Personalization & Individualization Causing Intimidation Within your Marketing Organization?

It All Starts and Ends with Data

By: Michael Lewis, Group VP, Retail, Zeta Global

Just back from eTail West, I can’t help but wonder if we, as technology solution providers, are pushing the right message to marketers in 2019. Marketing today is all about personalization and individualization, right? My immediate answer is: absolutely! But, after speaking with retailers from eTail in February and NRF in January, I have to change my answer and say, “No, it’s all about DATA.”

What are retailers most struggling with when it comes to reaching that level of personalization they want to achieve with consumers? Data. Data. Data – all day long, it’s data. So, while we can talk about personalization until we lose our voices (which is actually what happened to me), if the data isn’t available, the personalization will never happen.

Why is data such a struggle for retailers? There isn’t just one simple answer to that question. We know the struggles in our everyday practice with brands. Customer demographic data may be in one database, while point-of-sale data may be in another – no centralization. Or, you may understand the criticality of the data, but it may take you a weeks-long project request protocol to get it from IT – no accessibility. Or, perhaps the data is all in one place, and you have access to it, but you can’t engage with it – no activation capability. Or finally, the data you have doesn’t tell you enough to personalize effectively. When I sat down with Forrester’s Brendan Witcher at NRF he had this to say about some of these issues’ retailers are facing. And, the situation wasn’t any different at eTail.

Roughly 50% of our retail audience do go beyond using “first name” strategies to deliver personalized experiences on their websites and/or email communications

At a private luncheon we hosted at eTail we surveyed our retail audience members about their current and future plans to implement more personalization into their marketing programs. We were happy to learn that roughly 50% of them do go beyond using “first name” strategies to deliver personalized experiences on their websites and/or email communications. This was consistent with what we heard in our report with The Relevancy Group earlier this year. But we were also disappointed that the other 50% can’t reach that level of sophistication – often due to data struggles we highlighted above.

Are you one of those marketers struggling with personalization? Perhaps It’s because you’re not getting your data right, or, getting the right data. The critical first step is to know what data you have and, more importantly, profoundly understanding what you currently know about your customers.

The critical first step is to know what data you have and, more importantly, profoundly understanding what you currently know about your customers

Before launching a personalization strategy, make yourself the following checklist, because without “yes’” to these, you can’t go far:

Do I know where all my data is?
Is my data organized in a clear, consolidated view? Do I have everything in one place?
Do I understand my customers well enough to identify who is valuable to me and who is worth cutting loose?
Do I know which data points can lead to memorable experiences for our customers and market-moving results for us?
Can I activate the data in a personalized way in my marketing tech stack?

If you can answer “yes” all those questions, it’s time to focus on personalization and individualization. And, if you are just starting there, don’t fret. You’re with about 50% of all brands in the U.S. Here are my suggestions:

Don’t try to be “hyperdynamic” on the first day.
Know your customers as you have them, not as you perceive them to be.
Test what data points are helping you identify the most valuable customers you have.
Test what data points – combined with appropriate content – drive results.
Consider looking outside for a partner who can help you “mirror” those valuable customers so that you can identify and win those consumers over to your brand.

Don’t let personalization and individualization leave you feeling intimidated. Review your data assets and strategy before you embark on a personalization journey. If you do it right the first time, you will undoubtedly succeed and turn your highly-valued customer data into individual connections who identify with your brand and want to purchase your products and services.

Consider looking outside for a partner who can help you “mirror” those valuable customers so that you can identify and win those consumers over to your brand.

Michael Lewis, Group Vice President, Client Services, at Zeta Global, leverages his expertise in retail and marketing to transform our clients’ customer relationships — helping them identify the right data to move from a “reactive” model to a highly personal and individual strategy that anticipates and predicts their next need with great accuracy.

Digital Marketing | March 1, 2019 | 3 min read

Direct-to-Consumer Brands – What are They Doing Right?

Direct-to-Consumer Brands have an individual customer relationship, and most are online and digital-first.

By: Chase Altenbern, Sales Director, Zeta Global

Today we are living in a “Direct Brand Economy” where consumers are engaging directly with the brands they know and trust. Is your brand one of these trailblazers, or are you faced with navigating this market disruption? I recently attended the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Annual Leadership Meeting to learn more about this new “direct brand” landscape consumers are embracing.

At the IAB annual meeting, the IAB released its new list of 250 Top Direct Brands to Watch. From total funding and revenue to social velocity, these are the companies to watch who are leading the direct brand charge.

What are the Characteristics of the Top 250 DTC Brands?

78 of the 250 brands have a subscription model
5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, while 25% of IAB 250 Direct Brands are founded by women
Millennials have a growing affinity for disruptive brands (eMarketer thinks so too!)
2-day delivery is prompting all retailers to acquire/partner with these DTC brands to compete

25% of IAB 250 Direct Brands are founded by women

Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Brands Have an Intense Customer Focus

DTC brands center themselves around the individual consumer relationship, and most are online and digital first. These companies are also highly data-driven—they know who their customer is and where to find them and leverage their relationship to drive loyalty and growth.

These brands are “Maniacally Focused” on the consumer experience. They are very quick and responsive with customer service and always put the customer first. They are social and have a significant social media presence and correspondence with customers via text or DM is a routine practice.

DTC brands tend to use content as a differentiator as well. They advertise not just about the products or services, but on the lifestyle and emotional connection a consumer feels with the brand and their products. Because of their intimate relationship with consumers, DTC brands tend to have extremely loyal customers.

Part of how DTC brands build their story is through a corporate mission. This mission is often central to their story and purpose. They feel they are changing the world for the better and creating needed answers to long-unsolved problems. And along with their success, they give back. Most DTC brands have some aspect of a charitable cause in their mission, helping consumers feel they are giving back to the community while they spend.

Most DTC brands have some aspect of a charitable cause in their mission, helping consumers feel they are giving back to the community while they spend.

DTC vs. Blue Chip Brands

DTC brands are quickly gaining on blue-chip brands from Fortune 500 companies due to their extremely loyal and growing customer bases. Disruptive examples currently in the market include:

Hanging up your trips to the grocery store and endless meal planning in exchange for home meal kit delivery
- Blue Apron, Plated, Hello Fresh, Home Chef
A shift from tired, old mattress brands to digital delivery disrupters
- Casper, Helix, Parachute
Popping into the local liquor store to enjoying your favorite spirits delivered directly to your home
- Winc, Flaviar, Bright Cellars, Drizly
Searching endless aisles of beauty products in store vs. online subscriptions delivered to your door
- Quip, Harry’s, Hubble, Kopari

How Can Marketers Embrace the DTC Impact That is Occurring?

Know your customers. Deploying massive reach is no longer enough. You need to understand your customers and build a personal relationship that makes them a brand loyalist for years to come.
- Zeta’s Private Data Cloud can match against a customer file, offering a glimpse into our trove of proprietary data linked to PII, to give insight into what your consumer does after they purchase or leave your site and show you what they are passionate about.
Focus on Acquisition. DTC brands are experts in acquisition and know how to leverage various mediums — and the best way to communicate within each.
- Zeta’s Audience Activation leverages this multichannel approach to acquire new customers via display, social, and email.
Sell your brand. Tell your story to customers to strengthen your relationship and keep them passionate about the brand. Keep them coming back for more.
- Zeta’s Platform links these narratives through seamless sequencing to market to your customers as they develop their experience with your brand.

For more on how Zeta’s platform can help you implement some of these ideas above, please visit: https://zetaglobal.com/blog/how-to-activate-high-value-customers-leveraging-natural-language-processing-and-machine-learning/

Artificial Intelligence | February 12, 2019 | 2 min read

What’s Hot in 2019 Retail Marketing?

Learn why data should be at the core of your marketing strategy. National Retail Federation Expert and Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst, Brendan Witcher, Breaks it Down for Marketers.

By: Michael Lewis, Group Vice President, CRM U.S. at Zeta

I had the pleasure of hearing all about the latest retail digital marketing trends from one of the industry’s top analysts, Brendan Witcher, of Forrester Research. Brendan and I sat down at this year’s National Retail Federation event to discuss what’s in and what’s out for retail marketing in 2019.

I asked Brendan about everything from the hottest trends he saw on the show floor to where he sees the industry headed in terms of personalization, artificial intelligence, data strategies, and customer experiences. Here’s some of what he had to say, beginning with his take on AI and what marketers should be thinking about for their AI strategies:

ML: Artificial Intelligence (AI) doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. What is the receptivity/investment/expectations for it with retail?

BW: AI was hot and buzzy with retailers a few years ago, and they are still interested, but they are starting to question when they buy AI what they are really saying. The better questions to ask are: What do I want when I apply this to in my business? How do I find incremental gains through AI? Where will it provide me with a benefit… Operationally? Understanding the customer? Efficiency in customer engagement or efficiency for my marketing campaigns?

We can’t scale anymore to keep up with the speed of customer. AI helps get us there. How do we use it in ways to help organizations stay in lock step with the customer? Retailers should be looking for partners who provide AI solutions that build a better business or understanding of the customer.

Think about the outcome…think about how you will use it…what can you not do today? Look for a business challenge, and you will probably find an AI solution that will help. Most people don’t understand AI and the value it can bring to so many areas in the organization.

Watch our video clips below to hear more on the other topics we discussed at the event:

The customer journey management topic was introduced about 3-4 years ago, but are any marketers/brands getting to the individual level of that journey for each customer?

Are retailers mastering personalization in a space where merchandising priorities come into play?

Are there any new data sources or tactics being used in acquisition?

I’ve heard some panelists at NRF say they need to append more data to get closer to their customers, to personalize experiences for customers and that they need to make their media spend more efficient. That’s good news for those, like Zeta, who have been saying to analyze the data you have so that you can get to know your customers now that the stacks have been built. What are you seeing/hearing in this area?

Articles | January 31, 2019 | 3 min read

The Future of Customer Experiences, the Technologies They Love, and Where Marketers Need to Be in 2019

A Lookback at CES by Stefanie Henderson and Kelsey Smith, Zeta Global VPs

Everywhere you turn, it is evident that technology is a pervasive part of our daily life. As marketers, we have to be ready to react at a moment’s notice and drive the way consumers want to receive content – whether it be marketing, sales or customer service. Our recent visit to CES confirmed that we, along with 200,000 of our closest worldwide friends, want to learn more about every facet of technology in 2019 and beyond. Technology and innovation aren’t just for Silicon Valley or “the techies” any longer. It’s part of everyday life for everyone, and for all industries. And as marketers, we need to keep pace!

Amongst dreamers, innovators, creators, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and those hungry to be part of tomorrow, Zeta had an up close and personalized tour to better understand how technology drives what consumers do every day.

We observed, touched, and were amazed by how technology has woven itself into nearly every company’s vision from autonomous driving, to disruption of day-to-day farming practices. As marketers, we marveled at how our industry will have more and more touchpoints with consumers based on some of the latest technology innovations. With self-driving cars that look like living rooms, we will have more opportunities to create content and connect with people. Whether consumers will respond favorably to mailing away for custom razor handles remains to be seen, but innovations like bendable iPad screens opened up our minds to the possibilities of where and how consumers may utilize content in the future.

It will be interesting to see how consumers and industries adapt to the influx of innovation around them and determine their own “right amount” of technology. Can a machine pick a better grape for winemaking than a person? Do we need our kitchen devices recommending the appropriate Chardonnay for the chicken we are cooking? Maybe … maybe not. Either way, consumers are getting more and more comfortable with technology having a more significant role in their lives.

Let’s break down some of the trends and the new challenges marketers will face as a result…

1: The Power of Connection – 5G brings the ability to put content at consumer’s fingertips instantaneously, as well as the ability to transmit data at a moment’s notice.

Marketer Challenge: What is your plan to respond to this “Micro Moments that Matter” approach?

2: The Power of Intelligence – Machine learning is one thing – use machines to learn and adapt, but AI (as Zeta uses) allows machines to execute tasks “smartly.”

Marketer Challenge: Is your ML/AI strategy thinking smartly about how to solve your business problems?

3: The Power of Immersion – Consumers can move seamlessly from one digital experience to another, which makes identifying consumers as individuals to speak to them from a 1:1 conversation vital as we move forward.

Marketer Challenge: Are you identifying a single customer across devices with consistent messages?

4: The Power of Experience – Innovation around customer experiences (even things like security and blockchain) and immersion is essential for brands to build consumer trust and keep them as customers longer.

Marketer Challenge: Have you, or are you, thinking about experiential marketing programs for your brand?

As robots, smart houses and self-driving cars continue to become mainstream and not just reserved for celebrities or “early adopters,” marketers will be presented with more and more data collection points and additional avenues to engage consumers in the precise moments that matter to them most. When done correctly, brands can deliver a cohesive story not only across all devices and screens but now across autos and homes! It will become even more vital to understand users and how they are connecting all those experiences. Consumers will expect marketing to be that smart.

Articles | January 23, 2019 | 2 min read

Zeta Global Acquires Temnos

Enhances Zeta’s Artificial Intelligence Platform with Ability to Classify Entire Internet

NEW YORK, January 23, 2019 – Zeta Global , a data-driven marketing technology company delivering 1:1 personalization at scale, announced today that it acquired Temnos, an AI analytics company that works with publishers and advertisers to analyze, filter and organize content to make it more engaging to visitor and more valuable to marketers.

The strategic acquisition delivers highly-valued customer intent capabilities to Zeta’s AI platform, specifically around natural language processing, enabling classification of the entire Internet. Enhancing Zeta’s people-based audiences, Temnos provides deep analysis of the entire web, segmenting patterns that identify vital purchase intent information based on consumer life events.

“Our clients are the true winners in this acquisition of Temnos as we strengthen our AI platform to help marketers pinpoint their most valuable customers through audience interest and intent detection,” said David A. Steinberg, Zeta Global CEO, chairman and co-founder. “This is an extremely exciting time to be in the digital marketing industry as we continue to knock down barriers to create technology that identifies personal needs and speaks to the customer on an individual level, rather than guessing what they need and how they want to be spoken to.”

Additional commentary about the Temnos acquisition from Zeta’s CEO can be found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgoldsmith/2019/01/23/fast-growing-zeta-global-buys-silicon-valley-ai-firm-temnos/#442d365914ea

Five Temnos employees from engineering and product development will be moved to Zeta’s San Francisco office.

About Zeta Global

Zeta is a data-driven marketing technology company delivering 1:1 personalization at scale. Leveraging proprietary data, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, Zeta Global helps Fortune 1000, and Middle Market brands identify, acquire, retain and expand customer relationships. Founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley, the Company’s highly rated ZetaHub technology platform has been recognized in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs (February 2017) and in its Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management (April 2017) competing with offerings from Oracle, IBM, Salesforce and Adobe. Operating on four continents with 1,300+ employees, the company is headquartered in New York, with offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Nashville, London, and Hyderabad, India.

Articles | January 2, 2019 | 3 min read

Customer Loyalty and Data Capture Delivers for Marketers

Part two of three.

In the heart of any holiday season when buying activity is at its highest, marketers have a unique opportunity to deepen customer relationships through Loyalty Programs. Initial sign-up incentives, like double points or “on-the-spot” discounts, are tactics that entice consumers to join a program. These enrollment benefits also incent customers to make a purchase and simultaneously benefit brands by collecting valuable customer data.

Loyalty programs come in all shapes and sizes, but the customer reward must be tangible and achievable for your program to succeed. Programs can be as simple as an email list which promises to notify customers of early sale notifications or new arrival information, or a complex points earnings program with multiple redemption opportunities. Beyond merely rewarding participants for purchases, recognizing other behaviors, like sharing a social post, is another way to engage program members. Each brand has a different relationship with its customers, so determining what is valuable to their shopper base is critical. Rewarding customers appropriately in exchange for their personal information results in a win for both parties.

Customer Data Enables Effective Marketing

Critical in every way, customer data fires the engine behind any loyalty program. The amount of customer data available, and what it’s capturing can mean the difference between traveling in the slow lane or speeding through any holiday season.

Your loyalty program holds valuable first-party data that can convert into a powerful marketing strategy. While a punch card at the corner deli will bring customers back, and possibly increase sales, it doesn’t help you learn anything about customer behavior. An effective loyalty program requires capturing each customer interaction with a unique identifier. There are several benefits to collecting the data. First, tracking this information enables brands to understand key behavioral shopping patterns which can be utilized to develop more targeted marketing initiatives. Secondly, consolidating this information allows a brand to group customers and identify “best customer” segments, those most likely to engage long-term with the brand – and most critical to retain. Lastly, the combined behavioral and segmented data can be leveraged to build more advanced modeling to improve the level of personalized communications with elements like product recommendations.

Increased Data Collection Leads to Revenue Growth

At Zeta, our focus is on customer data – we begin every client relationship by understanding what data exists in the database and what data our clients need to propel their marketing strategies to the next level. As a loyalty program grows over time, offering additional incentives to gain more detailed information about a customer, like their birthday, or street address, allows a brand to draw even more powerful insights. For example, after obtaining a mailing address, the brand can then match that customer’s information with third-party demographic data. Knowing about the behavior and location of “best customers” can also help a brand acquire new high-value customers in the high-demand peak season by focusing prospecting advertising efforts towards those customers with similar attributes.

How impactful is all this data? Our insights have shown that having a customer email address alone can increase your average order size by double-digit percentages, compared to non-collection of customer data. Having email plus other contactable information such as a mailing address increases that growth percentage even further. Check back for additional stats on how our clients’ programs performed during holiday 2018, and how to continue and leverage these programs throughout 2019.

Stay tuned to the blog for the remaining 3rd-part of our Peak holiday blog series!

Omnichannel Strategy | September 5, 2018 | 2 min read

Overcoming a Critical Retail Marketing Challenge: Customer Acquisition

Editor’s note: This article and interview were orchestrated by Zeta Global’s SVP of Customer Experience, David Schey. Connect with him and get more insights on LinkedIn.

An interview with Brendan Witcher, Principal Strategist, eBusiness & Channel Strategy, Forrester

Earlier this year we sat down with Brendan Witcher, principal strategist, eBusiness & Channel Strategy at Forrester to talk about retail trends at NRF. We recently checked back in with Brendan to see if retailers are making good on their promises when it comes to acquisition strategies in 2018.

Let’s recap the trends Brendan outlined at NRF…

In 2017 – Personalization and omnichannel were key trends with retailers.
In 2018 – Personalization and omnichannel are still big, but…maybe retailers don’t understand their customers well enough to personalize the experience or, maybe they don’t understand their business well enough to optimize a retail omnichannel strategy.

Brendan’s Advice for Retailers at NRF: “Focus on the “unsexy” work you haven’t gotten done to optimize your personalization and omnichannel programs.”

“Focus on the “unsexy” work you haven’t gotten done to optimize your personalization and omnichannel programs.”

We think retailers were listening. At Zeta, we’ve been hard at work with our retail clients all year helping them focus on optimizing personalization through their use of data. We have a phrase we use a lot around the water cooler here: “We know your customers, you just don’t have them yet!” Yes, it does sound a little out there, but it’s true.

How do we do it? We focus on people-based audience acquisition. We leverage customer signals, deterministic data and native artificial intelligence to deliver 1:1 personalization at scale. We target specific customers by identifying who you want to talk to, not who you think you want to talk to.

We think it’s pretty cool that a little after the mid-year mark, retailers are transforming their data programs from “unsexy” to “sexy” work. But, we wondered if Brendan is seeing the same pivot from the retailers he is talking to on a daily basis. Here’s what he had to say…

We asked Brendan if retailers are doing the work they set out to do, specifically are they:

Finding value in their customer data?
Capturing their data correctly to create better customer experiences?

He told us that retailers are making progress on the objectives they stated earlier in the year:

To be more data-driven
To engage with customers at the individual level

In doing so, he also said that new challenges have arisen that have slowed their progress, mainly:

Cultural roadblocks
Siloed organizational agendas

How do you get around that? Brendan suggests obtaining quick wins with data and showing how data-led marketing can have the greatest impact. He went on to say that some of the same marketers who are facing these retail omnichannel strategy challenges above are building the business case to have their organizations lean heavier on data—in both their strategic decision making and their tactical campaigns.

Brendan’s Keys for Success?

Find and focus on the areas that have high impact on your customer.
Make sure your organization is operationally set up to execute on the digital tools you have.

To learn more about how we can help you achieve personalization at scale through your data, contact us for a personalized demo.

Articles | August 22, 2018 | 4 min read

How to Choose the Best CRM Solution for Your Enterprise

When it comes to customer relationship management, not all technology is created equal—especially when operating on an enterprise scale. The solution you ultimately choose will provide the foundation for understanding your customers and meeting their growing expectations. That, in turn, will determine the ROI of your marketing and success of your brand for years to come.

Choose wisely.

Diamonds in the Digital Rough

The marketing technology landscape is expanding at a terrific pace. Thousands of solutions provided by no fewer than 6,242 different vendors are available to today’s CMO—27% YoY that’s likely to continue.

Included in the flood of evolving technology are at least 200 customer relationship management solutions, including established providers and disruptive new startups. How does a marketing leader at a large business with an enormous audience chose the right one?

Key Considerations for Choosing an Enterprise CRM

Enterprises have some unique challenges in meeting the ever-changing expectations of today’s connected consumer. It’s one thing to recognize the value of personalized, relevant experiences—but delivering them to hundreds of thousands ,or even millions, of individuals around the world is a daunting task for the most capable CMO.

Choosing an enterprise CRM that enables you to serve 1:1 experiences on a massive scale can mean the difference between earning loyalty and being forgotten. When comparing your options, take special care to consider the following factors:

Data Treatment

The key to understanding your customers as individuals, anticipating their needs, and engaging them in real-time lies in data.

Big data has been at CMOs’ top-of-mind for years now; finding ways to organize, interpret and act on the mountains of consumer information now available remains a high priority.

Almost every CRM has some amount of data analytics capabilities. But that can range from rudimentary web analytics to sophisticated deterministic data science.

Ideally, an enterprise CRM will provide access to a large pool of proprietary data that can be used to supplement and enhance your own first-party customer data. Enterprises often struggle with large silos of disparate data—a good CRM option also will be able to flexibly adapt and unify those scattered resources into a single view of your customers.

Today’s consumers are active on a broad selection of channels and devices at any given time. An effective enterprise CRM must be able to accumulate real-time signals from any input and translate them into thoughtful omnichannel responses.

Finally, a great enterprise CRM needs to be extremely secure when it comes to data and align to quickly-evolving social and regulatory privacy standards. Given the sheer volume of data a large organization handles and the sensitivity of the information within, enterprises can’t afford to take chances. Recent history is full of high-profile breaches that compromised corporate and customer data and tarnished brands—don’t let your marketing technology platform be your biggest vulnerability!

Automation Capabilities

Automation is what enables an enterprise to take a powerful, relevant, personalized customer experience and scale it up to thousands or even millions of individuals around the world.

Most CRMs have some automation capability, many of them lack the capacity to constantly process and manage a compelling relationship with every customer. Seek out a provider that has the sophisticated AI technology needed to capture and interpret a flood of real-time customer signals and decide when, why and how to respond.

Flexibility

Most enterprises have an enormous tech environment that includes legacy systems, scattered databases, and third-party vendors. Even large organizations with robust IT teams find integrating new tools and platforms into their stack to be incredibly difficult.

An ideal CRM tool for enterprises is one that can flexibly adapt to your existing technology and data infrastructure. A quick onboarding process and the ability to unify customer data all in one place is a huge advantage in the perpetual battle for consumer attention and loyalty.

What the Experts Say

Shopping for the best CRM for your enterprise is an arduous process, but choosing the right one can quite literally determine the success of your company for the indefinite future. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of resources and expertise to pull from when selecting a solution that will bring the most value to your customers.

One such authority is the prestigious MarTech Breakthrough Awards, which recognizes leaders and innovators in the diverse and ever-changing world of marketing and advertising technology. This year, Zeta Global’s technology platform ZetaHub was awarded ‘Best CRM Solution for Enterprise’—standing out in a pool of over 2,000 nominees.

marktech breakthrough best CRM for enterprise

“The days of linear marketing are long gone, and multichannel marketing is now a necessity, but we find that many enterprise organizations are struggling with the challenge of managing this more complex customer journey,” said James Johnson, Managing Director at MarTech Breakthrough. “Zeta Global’s ZetaHub shines when it comes to enabling multichannel dialogue, empowering global brands to engage with customers and prospects across email, mobile, social, direct, and web. Congratulations to Zeta Global on its 2018 MarTech Breakthrough Award!”

Read the complete press release from MarTech Breakthrough here.

Click here to see Zeta’s announcement of the award.

Every day we work closely with our enterprise clients in Retail, Travel, Finance, Insurance, Media and beyond to better understand their customers and develop lasting 1:1 relationships. It’s not hyperbole: to see for yourself how our solution makes people-based marketing at scale possible, request a demo today.

using automation to personalize at scale

Digital Marketing | July 26, 2018 | 2 min read

10 Marketing Automation Do’s and Don’ts For Your Business

Today’s consumers expect customized experiences and on-demand engagement at the channel of their choosing.

Nearly all marketers now appreciate the impact personalization can have on improving customer relationships and conversion. According to recent research by Researchscape, almost all believe it has at least some impact while “Seventy-four percent believe personalization has a ‘strong’ or ‘extreme’ impact on advancing customer relationships.”

marketing automation personalization at scale

Understanding the power of personalization is the easy part. Executing it is much more complicated. Serving thousands, or even millions, of individuals with customized content and tailored experiences is a formidable mission for even the most dynamic CMO. No marketing department or agency on the planet can deliver handmade marketing to every single customer at any significant volume.

There’s only one way marketers can personalize at scale: automation. But not all automation is created equal.

Smart Automation: How Marketers Can Personalize at Scale

Marketers have been drawn towards tools that enable them to send tailored content to their leads and customers for years. Some 49% of companies are already using marketing automation and more than 55% of B2B organizations use the technology.

However, most of them have yet to realize its true potential. They still rely mostly on basic rule-based marketing automation software rather than responsive, adaptive artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions.

You should also read: The Artificial Intelligence and Personalization Buyer’s Guide

Are You Making the Most of Your Automation Budget?

Global spending on marketing automation will crest $25 billion by 2023. Unfortunately, much of that investment will be put toward suboptimal technologies or get hamstrung by ineffective policies. Make sure your ROI is optimized by following best practices and taking advantage of the most powerful tools available to provide compelling personalized experiences for your audience.

Editor’s note: This is an update of an article and graphic published last year by our partners at Boomtrain.