When The Motley Fool came to Lytics, their stated goal was to scale up their relevance—serving customers across channels, understanding those customers’ content preferences, and serving the right messages in the right channels at the right time.
Recently, we co-hosted a webinar with The Motley Fool about just that. They talked about those challenges and the changes they saw when they implemented Lytics CDP. And Lytics’ own Matt Cannell, Head of Digital and Demand, chimed in to share some perspective on scaling relevance despite complicated customer journeys. Here are some key takeaways:
The customer journey isn’t linear
First thing’s first: When we talk about scaling up relevancy, what we’re really talking about is optimizing the customer journey. Sending people the right content at the right time in the right channels. Personalizing to people’s individual context.
And here’s the thing: Those customer journeys…we know they’re not linear. We know the goals aren’t simple. As we fold in types of customers, content, digital channels, offline channels, products, services, all the teams that manage everything…the customer journey touch points and goals get more and more complex.
It’s our job to be hyper-relevant
It’s our job, as marketers, to know where people are in their journey and serve them the right things moving forward.
Which is tricky.
Because if the customer journey isn’t linear, if it varies from person to person, how do we make sure our marketing is relevant to all our customers and not just a small sub-set of them?
Marketers used to think of it in simple terms. You had Group A who needed Result A and took Journey A to get there. You had Group B in search of Result B and on the B Journey. Every group had its own journey.
But now, with the advent of big data, we know that that model is too simple. Because it’s not just every group that has its own journey. It’s every person. My path to purchasing a subscription to a financial newsletter might be different than your path, which might be different from the paths of all your closest friends.
So, what does being hyper-relevant mean in a world where customer journeys aren’t so easy to define? In a world where 50% of customers use at least four channels before they make a purchase, and where they might use all four of those channels over the course or just an hour or two? How do we help people as individuals and at that kind of blinding speed?
Omni-channel isn’t optional
The first part of the answer is this: Being omni-channel isn’t optional anymore. In fact, omni-channel marketing outperforms single-channel by a striking 250%.
Go back to your goals
The second part of the answer is that your goals need to lead the way with every customer journey decision you make. Which means if you haven’t defined your goals, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. If your goals feel nebulous, it’s time to sit down and give them some substance.
Integrate smart technology
The third part of the answer, as you’ll have guessed, is smart technology that helps you determine the best method to reach your customers and achieve your goals. Your Content Decision Engine should help you determine—across channels—what content people are listening in on, reading, and consuming, what they need, and when they need it.
With Lytics, this is done through data science tools and techniques like content affinity and audience building. The first helps us understand what content customers connect with today. The second helps predict what customers will interact with tomorrow, what kind of interaction is most likely to drive them toward a purchase, and where they’d like you to connect with them—be it email, social media, your website, or somewhere else entirely.
Scale your relevance
If you’ve been nodding along, we’d love to show you how Lytics can transform your customer journey optimization. Contact our experts today to learn more.
