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Create An Effective Enterprise Marketing Technology Blueprintby Rusty Warner, June 10, 2015

For: Customer Insights Professionals

Key TaKeaways

enterprise Marketing Technology Maturity Requires Customer ObsessionPlanning your enterprise marketing technology strategy does not stop with tool selection. You must ensure the entire organization is invested in winning, serving, and retaining customers. To elevate the maturity of your plans, align your strategy, resources, and processes -- as well as your data, analytics, and technology -- with customer initiatives.

Center your strategic Plan around Gaps In Marketing TechnologyForrester outlines key graduation criteria to help you acknowledge strengths and identify weaknesses in your current strategy, so you can determine your next steps. Begin with a self-assessment to identify gaps and continually improve on your marketing strategy as your journey evolves.

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For Customer InsIghts ProFessIonals

why Read ThIs RePORT

Planning and implementing enterprise marketing technology is at the top of the customer insights (CI) professional’s to-do list. But you can’t do it alone. You and your business technology (BT) counterparts must maximize your firm’s enterprise marketing technology investments to improve customer experience and spark continuous interactions with your customers. This report provides a blueprint for planning an enterprise marketing technology strategy, based on an assessment of your current capabilities. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy. We revised this edition to reflect planning requirements for real-time marketing.

table of Contents

Plan your enterprise Marketing Technology strategy In six areas

Identify Your enterprise marketing technology maturity level

design Next steps Based On deficiencies

reCommendatIons

define Priorities For your enterprise Marketing Technology Road Map

notes & resources

Forrester used information from multiple inquires and other research interviews for this report.

related research documents

model the roI of enterprise marketing technology Investments

Plan Customer-Centric enterprise marketing technology requirements

Create an effective enterprise Marketing Technology Blueprintstrategic Plan: the enterprise marketing technology Playbookby rusty Warnerwith srividya sridharan, samantha ngo, and olivia French

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Create an effective enterprise marketing technology Blueprint 2

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 10, 2015

PlaN yOuR eNTeRPRIse MaRKeTING TeChNOlOGy sTRaTeGy IN sIx aReas

Customer-obsessed enterprise marketing technology initiatives rely on building capabilities across six specific competencies.1 The first three — strategy, resources, and processes — focus on organizational readiness. The remaining three — data, analytics and measurement, and technology — underscore the importance of having the right tools to enable successful execution. CI pros must first assess their current state and identify critical gaps within each of these areas to begin the enterprise marketing technology strategy planning process:

■ Strategy. The degree to which a firm uses enterprise marketing technology to differentiate customer experiences shows its commitment to become a customer-obsessed enterprise.2 But in the early stages of maturity, CI pros tactically focus on managing customer contacts or executing channel-specific campaigns. As their strategy develops, they understand the importance of executive sponsorship to drive a companywide culture that is obsessed with delivering contextually relevant customer experiences, balanced across customer touchpoints. Further, technology investments support the strategy and enable definition and measurement of return on investment (ROI), profitability, and lifetime value aligned with business objectives.

■ Resources. Marketing technology resource planning requires a cross-functional organizational design that ensures the appropriate marketing operation and execution skills, as well as the necessary technology and analysis skills.3 In the early stages, firms focus on building operational skills and then move to assembling cross-channel expertise, either through in-house or partner resources. For in-house resources, mature organizations develop training programs and define incentives to reinforce and expand employee skills. For outside resources, maturity translates into collaborative relationships with third parties to complement internal resources.

■ Processes. To effectively leverage customer insights, it is essential to establish data synchronization and analysis processes that underpin enterprise marketing processes for planning, execution, and measurement. Many CI pros jump straight into operational processes that establish workflows for channel-specific campaigns, with siloed processes for customer data management. As capabilities mature, they redefine these processes to include data integration, analytics standardization, and cross-channel performance metric definition. Further, they also recognize the need for equally critical organizational processes, such as collaboration, planning, and change management.4

■ Data. Executing on an enterprise marketing technology strategy is contingent on a robust customer data management framework to capture, store, and manage a variety of known and unknown customer data sources.5 At the early stages of maturity, redundant efforts to manage data silos slow down progress. By contrast, CI pros at mature firms develop a unified enterprise data model and operate a centralized, virtual data layer that integrates data from customer-facing systems, as well as from third-party sources and customer-generated content. Business rules govern cleansing and transformation to ensure availability of data (in real time, if required), as well as to ensure compliance with security, privacy policies, and customer preferences.




■ Analytics and measurement. CI pros typically leverage analytics to understand, predict, and address customer requirements while measuring the impact of marketing programs on business performance. Customer analytics maturity capabilities range from using basic segmentation and digital analytics to target prospects, to using advanced predictive analytics to drive real-time optimization and personalization.6 Similarly, CI pros transform their marketing measurement maturity from campaign metrics to key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with business objectives. They use cross-channel attribution, marketing mix modeling, and media mix analysis to optimize marketing ROI.7

■ Technology. Enterprise marketing technology enables firms to integrate customer data with analytics and measurement capabilities to spark interactions across customer channels. As organizational capabilities mature, CI pros plan marketing technology investments to manage new sources of structured and unstructured customer data, deploy consistent online and offline content, evolve cross-channel campaigns for digital touchpoints, and orchestrate real-time interactions. It is also critical to apply increasingly complex customer analytics, as well as marketing analytics for resource and performance management. Above all, the various components must integrate seamlessly to maintain a comprehensive view of customers and contextual marketing requirements.8

Identify your enterprise Marketing Technology Maturity level

To accelerate your enterprise marketing technology evolution, begin with a clear understanding of your current maturity. Forrester outlines four stages of maturity; each has a defined set of criteria to graduate to the next level:

■ Stage 1: operational mastery. At this stage, organizations deploy operationally focused resources against channel-specific objectives (see Figure 1). Separate teams leverage disparate databases to support channel silos such as direct mail, email, Web, and mobile, and they use analytics to measure campaign performance for single channels. While each team is typically self-sufficient — and even successful, based on channel-specific metrics — there is little or no consistency across channels and the organization lacks a holistic view of marketing activities.

■ Stage 2: cross-channel integration. At this stage, organizations have unified their customer data sources to provide a common view of customers across marketing channels (see Figure 2). CI pros further leverage campaign management, marketing resource management, and digital asset management tools to ensure cross-channel execution, efficiency, and consistency. Analytics and measurement practices focus on KPIs across all channels, and the resulting insights drive overall planning processes.




■ Stage 3: optimization. At this stage, organizations not only focus on data quality and governance, they also leverage nonmarketing data (both first-party and third-party) to better understand and serve customers (see Figure 3). CI professionals leverage predictive analytics based on customer behavior, testing, and targeting across channels and touchpoints. Marketing metrics are aligned with business objectives, and the organization is focused on marketing ROI, profitability, and customer lifetime value.

■ Stage 4: real-time unification. At this stage, organizations adopt an agile approach to processes and technology investments for rapid deployment of customer-centric capabilities (see Figure 4). Continuous data streams — both structured and unstructured — enable real-time interaction management. The CI team enjoys C-level management support, as customer insights now drive strategic planning across multiple business functions. Analytics and measurement focus not only on driving contextually relevant customer interactions, but also on calibrating marketing technology capabilities for continuous adjustment based on customer needs.

Figure 1 Enterprise Marketing Technology Requirements For Operational Mastery

Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction, citation, or distribution prohibited.61277

Operational mastery

• Define key objectives for operational capabilities for separate channels.• Establish response and conversion goals for each channel or customer touchpoint.• Define a technology road map focused on acquiring point solutions.

Strategy

Focus primarily on operational skills:• Employ marketing practitioners (e.g., manager of email marketing).• Employ marketing technologists (e.g., web developer, designer).

Resources

• Leverage an email service provider for outbound campaigns.• Deploy web content management for inbound interactions.• License a standalone social listening platform.

Technology

• Track operational and channel-specific metrics.• Develop analytical processes primarily for campaign reporting.• Define metrics aligned with channel-specific processes.

Analytics andmeasurement

• Deploy self-sufficient, independent channel management.• Perform periodic database synchronization.• Leverage channel-specific insights for planning

Processes

• Use siloed databases tuned for each channel or line of business.• Set up data collection customized for each channel.• Leverage channel-specific insights for planning.

Data




Figure 2 Enterprise Marketing Technology Requirements For Cross-Channel Integration


Cross-channel integration

• Build a plan for relevant and consistent customer engagement.• Implement cross-channel capabilities for primary channels or customer touchpoints.• Develop a road map focused on integrating enterprise marketing capabilities.

Strategy

• Focus on cross-channel campaign management functions.• Employ advanced marketing practitioners (e.g., campaign design, channel execution).• Employ advanced marketing technologists (e.g., analytics, web developer)

Resources

• Implement cross-channel campaign management to consolidate campaign execution.• Use marketing resource management to track core activities across programs.• Implement marketing asset management to ensure consistent content deployment

Technology

• Establish goals and track performance of key customer interaction channels.• Leverage customer-focused analysis and reporting across channels.• Apply cross-channel insights and metrics based on customer preferences,

communications, and content.


• Establish collaboration for consistency across customer communications and touchpoints.• Integrate channel management and use cross-channel insights to drive planning.• Establish regular, scheduled updates to synchronize data and insights across channels

Processes

• Unify a marketing database or data virtualization layer relating customer, transactional,and promotional history.

• Synchronize extract, transfer, and load (ETL) processes to the marketing database withbehavioral and social data.

• Establish a flexible approach to customer identification, including address, email address,cookies, or social identity.

Data




Figure 3 Enterprise Marketing Technology Requirements For Optimization


Optimization

• Measure the return on investment (ROI) of marketing technology deployments.• Support culture for learning through experimentation, especially for an enterprisewide

contact strategy.• Implement change management and training processes focused on encouraging agile

organizational change.

Strategy

• Focus on customer insights functions, including dedicated marketing scientists andanalysts.

• Focus on marketing technology functions, including technologists/developers, usabilitypractitioners, and interface designers.

• Centralize business rule development paired with analytical analysis and insight.

Resources

• Deploy data mining, modeling, and predictive analytics for propensity, churn, upsell,cross-sell, next best action, and so on.

• Leverage online testing and targeting to optimize the performance of digital channels.• Deploy product and content recommendations to personalize offers and messages.

Technology

• Use a value-based approach to customer decisions (e.g., lifetime customer value).• Operationalize analytical decisions through decision or interaction management systems.• Leverage analytics technologies for offer and contact optimization.


• Establish continuous data synchronization and apply optimization process.• Define processes for experimental design and data mining.• Apply customer contact rules globally across all channels and lines of business.

Processes

• Define a comprehensive approach to data management and data quality.• Integrate fully with nonmarketing data, such as market insights, voice of the customer,

customer service, product, loyalty, and so on.• Capture campaign response data to analyze performance based on business-level key

performance indicators.

Data




Figure 4 Enterprise Marketing Technology Requirements For Real-Time Unification


Real-time unification

• Calibrate the capabilities of the marketing technology stack to business and customerneeds.

• Measure the value of customer insights based on contribution to business objectives.• Leverage customer insights based on contribution to business objectives.

Strategy

• Deploy full internal support and staffing for all components of the customer-centricmarketing process.

• Define reporting through a customer strategist or vice president of customer insights.• Align resources with an agile marketing technology and customer intelligence development

approach.

Resources

• Enable data sharing and integration across marketing applications for a single customerview.

• Deploy channel-neutral interaction management balanced across appropriate customertouchpoints.

• Orchestrate customer-driven, interactive marketing based on customer journey mapping.

Technology

• Use customer preferences, propensities, and valuation to create marketing programs thatadapt to and drive customer relationships.

• Leverage customer insights to develop products and influence corporate strategy outsideof marketing.

• Fully integrate business rules and predictive analytics to support decision management.


• Deploy continuous testing across content, campaigns, and channels (inbound, outbound).• Define processes for identifying, prioritizing, and coordinating technology development with

business technology (BT) and external partners.• Develop real-time analytical processes, such as real-time scoring, offer management, or

interaction management.

Processes

• Build a comprehensive repository of structured and unstructured, relational andnonrelational data sources.

• Enable full data access across brands, lines of business, and regions.• Ensure real-time data capture for customer interaction channels.

Data




desIGN NexT sTePs Based ON deFICIeNCIes

Closing the gaps in your enterprise marketing technology strategy may seem daunting, but breaking down and prioritizing your requirements will help you determine what you need to do next and how you will accomplish it. How do you prioritize the gaps that you should address? To guide your blueprint to effectively execute your enterprise marketing technology strategy, use these four success factors:

■ Fully activated customer-obsessed culture. Achieving enterprise marketing maturity requires a companywide strategy that’s aligned with processes to ensure successful orchestration of contextually relevant customer experiences.9 Make sure your executive team realizes that this is not just a marketing initiative — it’s a cross-organizational process that expands focus beyond operational requirements. At a recent Forrester Leadership Boards Customer Insights Council meeting in London, members representing multiple vertical sectors across the UK, Europe, and Latin America all agreed that the most critical success factor for enterprise marketing technology deployments is the required cultural shift to customer-focused objectives.10

■ Right mix of marketing technology talent. Review your resources carefully to ensure required staffing, training, and incentive programs are in place. If you currently leverage other internal or external teams for advanced technological or analytical skillsets, develop a road map to become self-sufficient, if possible, while you maintain relationships to ensure ongoing service levels.11 For example, the marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) teams at a global airline used Forrester’s enterprise marketing technology maturity assessment to help prioritize recruitment for new roles as part of their transition to a more collaborative — rather than full-service — relationship with their marketing service provider.

■ Effective customer data management and insights strategy. An agile customer data strategy that can grow with your business is a foundational requirement. It is critical to have a comprehensive view of explicit and implicit customer behavior to execute your customer analytics strategy and to define objectives that measure marketing performance against key business drivers.12 The head of digital platforms at a North American investment firm told us,

“Before we could deploy our cloud-based marketing technology solution, we first needed to build a consistent view of customer interactions across multiple business units and data infrastructures.”

■ Aligned marketing technology strategy. Even if you’ve enjoyed success with single-, multi-, or cross-channel marketing initiatives on your own, it will be impossible to achieve full enterprise marketing maturity unless you collaborate with your business technology counterparts to advance your organization’s BT agenda.13 Why? Because technology requirements for customer experience orchestration extend beyond customer insights or marketing teams. For example, when a global athletics apparel brand realized that its distributed marketing investments depended on broader big data initiatives, the company formed a cross-functional CI team that used Forrester’s enterprise marketing technology maturity assessment as a tool to facilitate technology alignment discussions.




R e c o m m e n d at i o n s

deFINe PRIORITIes FOR yOuR eNTeRPRIse MaRKeTING TeChNOlOGy ROad MaP

Now that you’ve designed a blueprint for your enterprise marketing technology strategy, you’re ready to take the next step toward defining a road map for investment requirements. Don’t be discouraged if your self-assessment shows multiple gaps; few organizations will hit it out of the park in all six categories. CI pros must use the results to identify key areas for improvement and create a clear set of priorities. To do this, you must:

■ Address organizational deficiencies first. Remember that strategy, resources, and processes compose half of your self-assessment. Ideally, multiple employees will take the self-test to determine how people in different roles across customer insights or marketing teams rate your organization’s maturity level. Include sales, CRM, and other internal stakeholders, as well as relevant external stakeholders (such as agency partners), to ensure a more complete view of your organization’s enterprise marketing capabilities. Once you’ve identified actionable concerns, build a short-term road map that you can execute with current resources. Assign longer-term milestones for issues that require additional budget or staffing, and highlight these dependencies.14

■ Review self-assessment results against customer feedback. Validate the results of your enterprise marketing technology self-assessment with actual customer data. Your voice-of-the-customer and enterprise listening efforts will point out areas where you need to improve customer experience, but make sure to include campaign response or transactional data to demonstrate what’s working and what’s not. Look for root causes that hinder success across multiple customer touchpoints. Remember that investing in new technology won’t provide a return if you can’t properly deploy the solution due to technology gaps, organizational barriers, or insufficient access to requisite data sources.15

■ Incorporate flexibility for evolving requirements. It will take time and resources to optimize your enterprise marketing technology strategy. Even after you reach the real-time unification stage, you’ll need to continuously evaluate and adjust to keep pace with customer expectations and outmaneuver competitors. Use the maturity model not only as a blueprint for defining your investment road map, but also as a guide for ongoing improvement as you implement your enterprise marketing technology strategy. Collaborate with your BT colleagues to ensure the appropriate technology evolution requirements are reflected in your BT agenda and included in vendor agreements.16




eNdNOTes1 To determine your organization’s current enterprise marketing technology maturity, take Forrester’s self-

test. See the “Plan Customer-Centric Enterprise Marketing Technology Requirements” Forrester report.

2 In the age of the customer, you must be customer obsessed to succeed. CMOs, CIOs, and eBusiness professionals must work together to create this companywide-transformation. For a four-part blueprint that explains how, see the “The CMO’s Blueprint For Strategy In The Age Of The Customer” Forrester report.

3 CI pros can’t build real-time relationships upon a traditional campaign management organization. Brands that build the best relationships with customers — and the best defenses against competitors — must take a new approach to enterprise marketing technology. See the “Drive The BT Agenda With A Marketing Technology Office” Forrester report.

4 Many process challenges represent entrenched organizational issues that are difficult to tackle. Learning from other travelers who have been down the road before can help you avoid obstacles and chart a route that moves the organization forward. For detailed research based on survey data from more than 500 organizational change programs, see the “Focus On Customer Value To Grow Organizational Maturity” Forrester report.

5 Forrester identifies four customer data management maturity levels to help organizations determine their sophistication in relation to their peers. To reimagine your customer data management capabilities, see the

“Are You Using Data To Win? Discover Your Data Management Maturity” Forrester report.

6 Forrester identifies four levels of maturity, or personas, in a firm’s journey to build a customer analytics capability. To take the customer analytics self-assessment, see the “It’s Time To Raise The Bar With Analytics” Forrester report.

7 Performance measurement approaches, like cross-channel attribution models and marketing mix models, are complex methodologies. To complete Forrester’s self-assessment, focusing on different measurement and insights approaches, see the “Evaluate Your Marketing Performance Measurement Maturity” Forrester report.

8 While CI pros demand best-in-class solutions for specific marketing objectives, they also require end-to-end integration to deliver more consistent brand experiences to customers. For more information on enterprise marketing technology components and integration requirements, see the “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q4 2014” Forrester report.

9 Brands need to become obsessed with orchestrating contextually relevant customer experiences. See the “The Power Of Customer Context” Forrester report.

10 Forrester Leadership Boards are exclusive peer groups of Forrester clients who exchange best and next practices to win in a disruptive marketplace. For additional details, check out our website. Source: Forrester Leadership Boards (https://www.forrester.com/FLB/-/E-MPL41).

11 The lack of analytic talent is one of the largest challenges inhibiting CI organizations. For more information on the analytic talent challenge and possible solutions, see the “A Stopgap For Marketing Science Scarcity” Forrester report.

















12 It is no longer enough for your organization to simply meet your customers’ needs. Today, your customers often expect you to anticipate their needs, based on both their history and current interactions with your brand. To learn how to better leverage data to win, serve, and retain customers, see the “Big Data’s Big Meaning For Marketing” Forrester report.

13 To create sustainable competitive advantage, customer-focused organizations craft a BT agenda that keeps customers at the center of technology decisions and provides a shared vision for the whole organization. See the “Top Technologies For Your BT Agenda” Forrester report.

14 Hierarchical and channel-obsessed marketing organizational structures do not effectively support the customer-obsessed approach. For advice on how to develop more customer-aware marketing teams, see the

“Reboot Your Organization For Modern Marketing” Forrester report.

15 Customer centricity drives technology development and deployment changes that vary by organization. Each firm’s formula for success depends on applying the right combination of timing, talent, technology, and tenacity. To assess your readiness to address customer requirements, see the “Map The Gaps In Your BT Apps” Forrester report.

16 Forrester and Forbes Insights conducted a survey of over 300 marketing and tech management leaders with regard to their BT collaboration efforts. For insights into where firms are making progress and the types of issues that are hindering alignment, see the “CMOs And CIOs Must Turn Collaboration Into Action” Forrester report.








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