The kids are going back to school, our Denver office has already seen snow, and it’s starting to feel like fall. While 2020 has dished up a lot of new challenges, marketers are still facing the need to plan and budget for next year, even if we’re still struggling to plan for next month. Here’s what our CEO thinks about 2021 planning.

Like many people, I have spent a lot more time in 2020 with Zoom meetings and Netflix characters than with real people. And as social distancing continues to be the norm, the resulting consumer habits are leaving some marketers to rethink their tactics. I recently sat down with our CEO to talk about what’s changing – and what isn’t – as more consumers are staying home.

Although states and communities are beginning to lift their stay at home orders, it’s clear that social distancing is going to be a part of our “new normal” for quite some time. That said, there’s much to consider, especially for retailers.

The ways in which consumers are acquiring goods and services are ever-expanding. We are in the driver’s seat when it comes to competition among brands, both in price and value. And beyond that, we are more in control of the customer experience than we’ve ever been. How are brands responding to that? I recently had a chat with our CEO Michael Caccavale about direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing and what it means to marketers.

Often, consumer behavior – especially in the ever-changing digital landscape – can feel like a moving target. And as we’re head-first into the new year, it’s always enlightening to sit down with our CEO and talk shop about what’s happening, what’s ahead, and what we as marketers should – and shouldn’t – be responding to. 

Marketing technology providers talk a big game about integration but few live up to the hype. More often than not, the addition of a new marketing technology to an existing program creates a new silo – a repository of data that does not flow freely within an organization but remains stagnant within a single piece of technology. But, much like kindergarteners, marketing technologies need to be taught to play well together and to share.

As marketers, we constantly strive to improve our results. And when it comes to learning – and proving – efficacy, something as simple as A/B testing is paramount. A/B testing, the process of using two versions of a marketing piece (web page, email, etc.) to see which one performs better, offers us the ability to tweak very small details in our programs to see incrementally larger results. But, like many marketing strategies, A/B testing can provide mixed, or even inaccurate results if not properly executed.

Consumers are adopting disruptive technology at an accelerating rate and this is changing their behavior. Energy companies, historically slow in responding to changes in consumer behavior, reluctant to invest in consumer analytics systems, and unprepared to take advantage of their own customer data, are at a disadvantage. Energy companies must review their marketing strategies and develop their digital assets in anticipation of a changing competitive landscape and evolving customer expectations.

Too often, marketers are using multiple platforms but their tools are siloed. How do you work through that and bring together the tools you need in order to reap the benefits of customer analytics? In this week’s coffee talk, our CEO Michael Caccavale helps unravel the mystery of omnichannel integration. 

Challenges to overcome in moving to an interactive marketing model

There are several key movements in the marketing technology are that are driving solutions today. One is the proliferation of web-based marketing tools. Many vendors have developed or are developing tools in the personalization, ad management, web measurement, e-marketing, and campaign management areas. These tools have significant overlap, often solve a tactical short-term problem, and don’t provide support for the entire marketing process – thereby falling short of improving the bottom line. This generates significant confusion in the industry and leads organizations down a solution path that might lock out future business alternatives.