The definition of real-time marketing is evolving. The buzz around Big Data and the age of the “multi-channel, empowered consumer” has made marketers believe that a real-time and instantaneous interaction with consumers is the answer to all marketing situations. Yes, real-time is important, but there has been a subtle shift from a purely real-time mode of thought to that of Right Time Marketing.
Right Time Marketing is a sophisticated way to boost customer acquisition and retention, provide seamless customer experiences, and create revenue lift by understanding a customer’s characteristics, channel preferences and in-market purchase signals. Right Time Marketing is built on a foundation of rich customer data and taking the massive opportunity that marketing data presents and getting it right.
The 4 R’s of Right Time Marketing
Right Time Marketing matches offline and online data sets to drive right real-time connections with today’s consumers. Traditional marketing discusses the 4 P’s – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Big Data is based on the 4 V’s – Volume, Variety, Velocity, and Veracity. And Right Time Marketing has evolved to embrace the 4 R’s –Right Person, Right Channel, Right Moment and Right Answer.
- The Right Person: Identifying the right person through a combination of internal customer and prospect data, as well as third-party demographic and firmographic enhancement, digital data, and in-market purchase signals.
- The Right Channel: Once the right person or audience has been identified, marketers must use a multi-channel approach to target today’s consumers. As consumers go from device to device and use as many as 8 channels or more for research and purchases, marketers must continually strive to provide a seamless experience for the customer, however or whenever they decide to interact with your brand.
- The Right Moment: Consumers today are constantly bombarded with marketing messages and advertisements. Cutting through the clutter requires that you serve up the most relevant messages at the right time.
- The Right Answer: By integrating the right data across multiple channels to understand a consumer’s behaviors in the moment, companies can find the Right Answer to meet increasing customer expectations. When targeted to the right person, through the right channel, and at the right moment, every customer interaction is an opportunity to strengthen customer loyalty, reduce churn, and boost revenues.
Data: The Foundation of Right Time Marketing
With the constant influx of bigger and faster data, marketing data solutions have evolved from copy, paste characteristics to dynamic and multifaceted profiles that require input from a variety of constantly fluctuating sources. As consumers increasingly move to online channels for shopping, researching, and socializing, traditional offline ways of marketing are simply not enough.
Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions integrate both offline and online data sets to deliver real-time data at just the right moment of opportunity. DaaS is a revolutionary way of mining today’s massive data ecosystem to find just the right data and delivering these assets to a company’s channel systems or digital marketing platforms at just the right time.
The importance of data to drive all aspects of marketing has become so profound that a majority of today’s marketers now agree that data is at the foundation of successful marketing strategies. GlobalDMA and the Winterberry Group conducted research study that demonstrated marketers’ commitment to data-driven marketing.
Key findings included:
- About 80% of survey respondents said that data is important to their current marketing activities, and more than half (57.1%) described data as “critical” to their efforts.
- More than 90% of respondents said that data is becoming more important to marketing efforts, and over three-quarters (76.7%) said that data is growing “substantially” more important.
- A vast majority of survey respondents (77.4%) said they are confident in the data-driven approach to marketing.
When survey participants were asked to describe the primary focus of their data-driven marketing activities, 68.5% chose “Targeting of offers, messages, and creative content.” When survey participants were asked what factors were responsible for driving their investment in data-driven marketing, the 52.7% stated “Demand to deliver more relevant communications to customers/be more ‘customer-centric.’” In other words – the right message to the right person, at the right moment.
The evidence is clear – Right Time Marketing is the next wave of innovation to change the way industries acquire and connect with consumers. The question is, is your strategy ready to keep up?
