The Forum Buzz: martech implementation – most common mistakes

Jasmine Butler Burnham

Marketing Manager

The Financial Services Forum

On the 25 April 2012, 55 Forum Members gathered at a seminar titled ‘Marketing Automation Unlocks the Holy Grail of B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment’.

‘A new breed of technology is opening up exciting opportunities for B2B marketing’ the event summary proclaimed, stating that ‘the real prize’ of marketing automation was ‘to measure marketing effectiveness more powerfully than ever before’.

Fast forward 8 years, and the marketing technology landscape has changed beyond recognition. Automation software is now a solid tenet in any marketer’s toolkit, and the tech itself is constantly (and rapidly!) being further developed to deliver more meaningful, intelligent insights and functionality.

We now talk about our marketing technology ‘stacks’, conjuring up images of towers of solidly connected breeze blocks of software, working in perfect synchrony. Or, depending on your experience, precariously fixed-together jenga bricks, easily disrupted by any sudden movement!

Next Tuesday from 0900-1230, The Forum will be hosting our first ever fully digital, interactive conference, dedicated solely to marketing technology in financial services.

This event will see us bring together some of the biggest names in marketing technology, to share best practice, expertise, and learnings from years spent helping financial services companies to implement marketing technology in their organisation.

You can join us from wherever you are in the world, live from your desktop. There will be an opportunity to discuss the topics of the day with your fellow Members using our live chat function, visit virtual exhibition booths to ask questions of our fantastic line-up of sponsors, and pose questions to our speakers during the meaty panel debate.

To kick us off ahead of the event, we asked a couple of our speakers to share the most common mistakes they see marketers stumble into when implementing new martech…

“define a roadmap…how important each tool is to you, how long it takes to implement and how quickly you can train your team”

Chris Vinnicombe, VP of Financial Services, Acxiom

“1. Buying too many tools

All these tools promise to solve all your problems at a click of a button but in reality each new tool adds strain on your IT systems and marketing team. The right approach is to define a roadmap for each of these tools – how important they are to you, how long they take to implement and how quickly you can train your team.

2. Thinking bigger is always better
We all know the big players in the Martech world and what advantages and problems come with them. So why not look to the smaller, more nimble solutions on offer. Advantages of smaller solutions include much better customer service and more user friendly dashboards, meaning your teams can learn faster and smarter.

3. Not using a customer data platform
Customer Data Platforms (CDP’s) are the one central place you have to process all that customer data for the rest of your martech stack. Not having one is a huge mistake for marketing teams with large amounts of data coming from multiple sources and tools. CDPs process data better so you can make smarter decisions along the customer journey.”

“don’t end up with the same result as you had before, but just with new tech”

Mike Plimsoll, Industry Marketing Director, Adobe Inc

“The most common mistake I see is based on “Conways LawAny organisation that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organisation’s communication structure”. What this means is that many companies buy new tech and implement it without thinking about their organisation structure or process.

This means they end up with the same result as before, but just with new tech. To really make a difference, ensure you review people (skills), process and structure when implementing any new technology. Think about Agile methodologies, cross functional teams and better enablement for instance.”

Hyper-personalised communications and content using integrated first, second and third party data sets is the key organisations using their expertise to help boost customer financial wellbeing. But how should FS companies get started?

Consumer research carried out by Acxiom earlier this year found that age, gender and income have a huge impact on the way that FS marketers should consider their communications and engagement strategy.

In his latest blog, Boxever’s Financial Services Lead, Ed Porter, discusses how FS companies must align their third, second and first party data sets to deliver individual, personalised messages with the potential to help consumers improve their financial wellbeing and better-manage their money.

Have a lovely weekend, and please don’t hesitate to drop me a line if I can assist with anything. Hope to see you at FSMartech2020 on Tuesday.

Jasmine

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