THE HIGHLIGHTS
How data can empower brands to engage on the customer’s terms
Sponsored by tealium
At the Festival of Marketing, Vodafone and Tealium talked through the personalisation promise being delivered by customer data platforms.
Having up-to-date information on consumers is the biggest stride forwards marketers can make, to ensure they are relevant at every touchpoint where a prospect or customer interacts with their brand.
To rise to the challenge, and to ensure conversations are both relevant and personalised, Festival of Marketing delegates heard how Vodafone Group has created its ‘always-on’ model. This relies on its customer data platform (CDP) being constantly fed the latest insights on customers, to get the most appropriate message out to each individual every time they interact with the brand or the brand reaches out to them.
In a session sponsored by Tealium, Jobin Joy, global martech lead at Vodafone Group, revealed the technology is also helping the brand bridge the gap between offline and digital communications.
Lia Koltyrina
“Always-on marketing is underpinned by a single engine that decides what the consumer should receive,” he explained. “It’s moving away from the idea of spray-and-pray to one-to-one marketing. It’s a single brain driven by machine learning; it applies arbitration so that, if a consumer is disappointed with surveys, we don't push a marketing message to them. We would rather give them the message that they are looking for solve their problem.”
Joy said Vodafone has the system set up on offline channels and is currently integrating digital touchpoints, through the aid of its Tealium CDP. All this is powered by smart use of data and machine learning, as Vodafone moves to what Joy describes as “a fully omnichannel experience for consumers”.
Vodafone's Jobin Joy on 'always-on marketing'
WATCH NOW
Click here to watch the Vodafone session on demand at the Festival of Marketing
Trust in data
This need to have direct, personalised conversations with consumers was underlined by David Morris, global VP of solution consulting at Tealium, in a separate Festival of Marketing session.
Morris outlined how CDPs are going to rise to greater prominence, because brands face several difficulties in striking up and maintaining relevant conversations with consumers. With so much data coming from different sources, the true picture of what a customer looks like can be muddled, and yet decisions need to be made in real-time.
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WATCH NOW
Click here to watch the personalisation session on demand at the Festival of Marketing
This should bring focus, he suggested, to the privacy paradox surrounding the deprecation of third-party cookies. People are willing to hand over personal information, but they have to understand how it will lead to a better experience. Most importantly, a consumer needs to be able to trust the brand that is asking to know them better, Morris insists.
“We all know that trust is implicitly required for us to have a successful brand,” he said. “But now the trust is no longer just about delivering my product on time. It's now about: how did you engage with me so I feel I can entrust my information with you, and you'll be a good steward of that? The converse is also the same when we are looking to communicate with our customers. How can we be sure that the information we are using is something we can rely upon as a foundation?”
The issue of trust in personalised communications is going to become key as consumers shift their lives to mobile, meaning they will be asked what they will allow a brand to know about them from permission engines built into their mobile device.
“We're going to see a shift where the consumer has all of their data in a little wallet,” Morris predicted.
“When they turn up to speak to you, you get access to it while they're there, so you’d better be ready in the moment and use that information. That digital wallet will probably be on their phone, which means if they walk into your store, it'll be presented to you and say, ‘Here you go, that's my digital-world self. If you'd like to know about me, you can scan this and I'm willing to share it. And now you can give me an immersive experience in your physical store as well.’”
This will see a huge shift in how brands interact with consumers, as trust becomes more than a sign that someone is likely to become a loyal fan of a brand. To get to that stage, where they have become a customer, brands will need to have shown already they are good stewards of personal information, while making clear the better experience they can deliver a customer when they can personalise their service. ■
Tealium's David Morris on consumers' desire to own their data