Technology and consumer expectations around personalized experiences have evolved at a pace that makes it extremely difficult for brands to keep up ... are marketing cloud platforms the answer or is there an easier way?

Consumer expectations on personalization are rapidly evolving

Technology and consumer expectations around personalized experiences have evolved at a pace that makes it extremely difficult for brands to keep up.

In the days when communicating with consumers involved running a print ad, buying commercials on the few TV networks in existence, and creating radio spots, there were far fewer decisions to make.

Today, people are used to relevant messages, recommendations, and offers from the platforms where they spend the most time (Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.).

When a brand has a relationship with a customer, that person assumes the marketer understands their needs, likes, and wants. Delivering on this vision is easy for the large consumer platforms with millions of authenticated users.

Most brands do not have the same advantage and struggle beyond the most basic forms of personalization. And personalization is a critical strategy for growing revenue, improving loyalty, and increasing marketing effectiveness.

While email and website personalization have existed for many years, the rules are changing by the day. For resource-constrained brands, it is increasingly difficult to navigate:

• privacy legislation,
• evolving fundamental shifts in browser policies, and
• extract actionable signals from leading media properties.

Engagement channels are shifting

All of these problems are solvable, but not easy. Even more difficult is the fundamental shifts in the channels where consumers engage:

• How do brands tailor experiences when people are ditching cable for streaming services?
• How do brands understand consumers’ behavior in podcast environments and react to these inputs?
• Intelligent cars will flood the market in coming years, with millions of vehicles on the road today that already have the ability to send and receive tremendous amounts of data through infotainment systems. How will brands effectively and efficiently leverage this data?

These examples represent the tip of the iceberg for brands that are doing all they can to remain connected to their customers and avoid the pitfalls of disintermediation.

Are Marketing Cloud Platforms the Answer? Not Quite.

Marketing clouds assembled with technology acquired over the past twenty years have made these problems far worse, not better.

Brands want automation, interoperability, and modularity. They’re not looking for another platform. They need partners to make their current homegrown or commercial software simply work better.

Although most marketers struggle with multiple challenges related to personalization, identity, automation, and visibility, their needs are not universally the same.

The majority of brands would be happy to simply make their current investments in technology pay off and have a plan to address the ever-changing market around them. They do not want to be locked into a specific cloud, stack, or platform.

The Solution: Technology that Goes Wherever the Data Lives

To solve the greatest challenges plaguing brands today, as well as the ones on the horizon, we need to know where the market is headed and see the traps coming around the corner.

We must proactively solve the challenges with personalization, but also with automation, data, visibility, and the privacy needs of today’s and tomorrow’s marketers.

Marketing and consumer engagement needs to be more automated, not more complicated.

We need to be able to make brands’ existing technology work for them more efficiently and comprehensively.

Habu is up for the task. We are pioneers who built the most successful data platform in the 2010s and that foundation will allow us to deliver on an even greater vision for brands in the 2020s and beyond.

Learn more about Habu Data Clean Rooms, the solution for secure data access, collaboration, and comprehensive analytics in a privacy-first era.