Better Business Banter

Crack the Stack: 4 keys to optimizing your marketing technology Gartner’s  survey  estimates the 29% of the overall marketing budget goes fund the marketing stack (up from 22% in 2017) and is now the single biggest component for many companies.  More than just cost, a well-executed stack provides a competitive advantage in the marketplace and ensures the company meets its sales and retention goals. It’s such a focus in some companies, there’s even annual awards, the  stackies !  This article provides a working definition, describes why its so hard to get stacks right, and provides 4 steps you can take to get the most out of your investment. A marketing technology stack is a grouping of technologies used to conduct and improve marketing activities. “Martech” automates processes and data flows to improve efficiencies and increase the ability to engage customers and win in the marketplace.  The stack typically includes critical components of ma...

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else ” – Yogi Berra The role of marketing continues to evolve, with today’s CMO and her team adding technology, behavioral tracking, new channels, and other disciplines to their already crowded list of responsibilities.   Welcome to the rise of integrated digital marketing, a holistic approach combining marketing strategy, process, and technology to improve the cost and effectiveness of customer acquisition and loyalty efforts.   In this evolving landscape it’s hard to recognize, let alone keep up with the rapidly changing and expanding tool sets and practices to compete.   In a 2019 study , BCG found much room for growth, with 55% of businesses stuck in the first 2 stages of maturity, and only 2% of responding companies operating in the highest stage 4 maturity.   The majority of respondents who improved their maturity ascribed a 30% cost savings and up to 20% revenue increase from t...

This post  originally appears  in the  dPrism dBrief .  Check it out and sign up for weekly articles on digital transformation from a range of experienced thought leaders.  Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been getting a lot of buzz lately, for its promise to reduce manual work, accelerate operations and enable new products and services. While RPA offers huge potential, there are plenty of challenges that can impact a company’s ability to realize the promised benefits. To help you realize the full potential of RPA, below are five lessons learned from a recent project establishing an automation center of excellence for a client in the global financial services industry. RPA is software that emulates human keystrokes and mouse clicks in order to automate rote tasks. RPA designers create automated processes using bots or artificial intelligence (AI) to copy and paste data, run calculations, format files and more. RPA is often used on high volume or s...

This post  originally appears  in the  dPrism dBrief . Check it out and sign up for weekly articles on digital transformation from a range of experienced thought leaders.  Since the Industrial Revolution, companies have sought competitive advantage through gains in process efficiency. Non-farm U.S. labor productivity has steadily advanced at an annual average of 2 percent for the past two decades, reflecting the relentless drive by companies in every industry toward improvements that will sustain their operating models. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a recent example of this trend, involving the programming of software “bots” to conduct basic tasks across applications to reduce manual effort.  But whether it’s lean, process outsourcing or RPA, solutions are only tools in a larger strategy to unlock next-level efficiency, scale and product opportunities. Companies must avoid a “hammer looking for a nail” approach by developing del...

This post originally appears in  Adweek .   Check it out here ! It’s easy to overlook traditional email when compared with interactive and higher cost channels like paid display and social. With the right level of attention and integration, however, this reliable and low-cost workhorse can be your secret weapon to improving acquisition and retention performance of all your campaigns. This article will show how email contributes to company performance and suggest 4 ways to improve your own email marketing performance.       Why Email?   Email is core to the customer relationship.   Email is the first piece of customer information captured.   Often used as the user ID and the customer identifier, the email address is the most reliable two-way connection with a customer. Email also delivers.   According to a June report from OneSpot, conducted by The Relevancy Group, US marketing executives said email attributed 21% of the...