Good morning Marketer, how’s your Memorial Day going?

Of all the things that Memorial Day is – first, of course, an opportunity to remember our fallen – it’s also the unofficial start of summer, where barbecues, outdoor activities, and parties are all part of the norm. Except for this year, Memorial Day is far from the norm and we all know why.

COVID-19 ripped through the first part of 2020: consumers stopped spending, businesses shut down, and events around the world were canceled – including our own. But despite the slowdown, brands and communities have still found ways to come together, innovate, and share ideas for the better – if even virtually.

And if you missed our first major virtual event (Discover MarTech) in April, don’t worry. You can still catch the on-demand replays of all sessions here. In the meantime, we’ve outlined some practical takeaways for marketers:

Digital transformation is no longer a buzzword. During his Discover MarTech presentation “From 0 to 60: Digital Transformation in the Age of Coronavirus,” Widen Director of Customer Success Michael Shattuck noted how projects that used to be a year-long process are now being rolled out in two to three weeks’ time. “It’s happening faster than we ever thought,” said Shattuck.
…And it doesn’t have to take years. Lytics President Jascha Kaykas-Wolff addressed a number of misconceptions during his presentation “Digital Survival. Right Now.” One, in particular, was the idea that digital transformation must be led by IT, involve a comprehensive data initiative mapping a 360-degree view of the customer, and come with long, complicated RFPs. “You do not need to connect together all of your customer data,” said Kaykas-Wolff. In other words, digital transformation doesn’t have to be a multi-year, or even multi-month, initiative.
Making real-time marketing work. Pegasystems Product Marketing Manager Andrew LeClair said a major barrier to real-time marketing is the lack of ways to effectively combine multiple disparate systems in a way that delivers sustainable real-time marketing efforts. In his presentation “Why Real-Time Really Matters,” LeClair said real-time marketing relies on four specific capabilities: detection, data, decision and delivery, said LeClair. Perhaps chief among these capabilities is the marketer’s ability to detect a customer’s moment of need. “Because we’re sensing needs in real-time, we can be proactive in our retention efforts, reducing our churn, reaching out to the customer before they even get the chance to think about leaving,” said LeClair, “And that’s really, at the end of the day, how we optimize for customer lifetime value which is what all of this is about.”
How to build a MarTech roadmap. Ed King, CEO for data orchestration platform Openprise presented the challenges of building a scalable and manageable martech stack — and offered a roadmap to move your tools to the next level. King suggested that martech stacks include six functional areas: data gathering and storage, data quality, funnel management, process automation, reporting and analytics, and compliance.

Taylor Peterson,
Deputy Editor