Imagine every piece of data about a customer, or a potential customer, at your fingertips. Find out why top marketers say that investing in a marketing cloud solution can help you unlock the full promise of data-driven marketing. 


Two-thirds of the executives VentureBeat surveyed for its recent report on marketing clouds say, that despite the barrier to entry, a marketing cloud solution may be the best investment they’ll make.

Why the resounding vote of confidence? It’s not just because it will significantly evolve your marketing strategy — it’s to stay competitive with the companies who have already harnessed the power of the marketing cloud and are ahead of the game.

Panelists Michael Healey, CEO of Yeoman Technologies, and Rachel Silva, assistant VP of marketing at Pep Boys, joined VentureBeat’s director of marketing technology Stewart Rogers to discuss the report’s surprising findings, look at vendor recommendations, and share insights into what makes the marketing cloud so powerful, and so necessary, for marketing campaign success.

In an increasingly complex marketing world, Rogers notes, marketers need a platform where they can live, where they can look at data, content, measurement, and engagement all in one place. It replaces the enormous stacks martech professionals needed to build to get the job done.

Unfortunately, when you’ve got a stack of solutions, no matter how carefully you choose each, these disparate platforms don’t always play nice, and the data is often still siloed in ways that genuinely undermine your ability to achieve real marketing insights. Marketing clouds are designed to fix that.

Clouds are crucial because marketing is evolving and companies need to keep up with customers, Silva says. Pressure is coming from the need to stay competitive with software companies like Amazon, which have been leveraging cloud technology out of the gate, and from management, which is still scrutinizing marketing spend and demanding evidence of real results.

There’s a schism happening, Healey says. The old school techniques aren’t as effective as they used to be, because customers are moving into the digital and mobile world and demanding more, but to management, this brave new world is too brave, too new, and threatening for all that.

In fact, the VB Insight report surveyed over a thousand companies and found that those that have leapt into the marketing cloud future have just barely broken the surface of all the features marketing clouds offer. They seem to be focusing on analytics, for the increasingly essential purpose of documenting and delivering ROI. And that’s a problem.

Rogers points out that marketers seem to be avoiding the features that are cutting edge, innovative, or experimental — including location based marketing, real-time messaging, video marketing, and more. They’re sticking with the old-school strategies that have been marketing bread and butter since the dawn of digital marketing — targeting, email marketing, and landing pages.

“People have been spending money on those for years,” Rogers says. “They’re comfortable with them, they’ve gotten results, so they want to keep doing the same thing again and again.” And they’re leaving opportunities, and ROI, on the table.

Silva recommends a balance as you develop your strategy: What’s worked for you in the past, what can scale, and what’s an emerging technology. “It’s a combination of art and science,” she adds.

But first you have to make sure you’re actually using the features correctly. “Everyone says they use analytics but they don’t appear to be using them properly,” Healey says. “When you don’t have your CRM integrated, don’t have your data management integrated, and you’re not building in either the capabilities or the tools to suck in all this campaign management and your lists and your customers, you’re actually working with incorrect data.”

Marketers need to integrate all that data available from across the organization in order to gain access to the full picture, including legacy systems, sales team systems, outside marketing. And once you get that better data set, Healey says, you’re better at everything.

The 360-view into data, customers, and patterns that the marketing cloud offers lets you understand how you’re doing and what you can do to get better. It doesn’t just offer short term leaps. The deep, real-time insight that the cloud offers helps you build a nimble strategy that can continue to evolve over the long term.

“The marketing cloud is starting to answer questions you didn’t even know you had to ask,” Rogers says. “And it’s helping you make changes in your marketing that can have a direct and immediate revenue benefit.”

 

Access the free webinar on demand right here.

After this webinar, you’ll know:

  • What makes up a marketing cloud and why it may be right for your organization
  • The five different types of marketing cloud
  • VentureBeat’s best marketing cloud software bets for SMBs, enterprises, and startups
  • The ROI marketers can expect from their implementation
  • How to encourage and improve user adoption

Speakers:

  • Stewart Rogers, VentureBeat
  • Michael Healey, CEO, Yeoman Technologies
  • Rachel Silva, Assistant VP, Marketing, Pep Boys

Moderator:

  • Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat

    This webinar is sponsored by IBM Marketing Cloud.