Editorial
We've all gone through a lot of changes in the last 18 or so months. People are questioning key tenets of life — their schooling, how and where they work, what they spend their free time doing, where they live and more. Questions have also emerged from a business perspective, as brands change alongside consumers. Brands are asking what’s working and what isn't, what matters most to their customers, and what is important to their employees.
To paraphrase successful inventor, businessman, physicist and perhaps one of the world’s greatest ever problem solvers, Lord Kelvin: “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” So how can measurement help provide answers to the questions above for brands? I see three key measurement centric themes emerging that will move martech forward in 2022.
1. Overall Marketing: ROMI Becomes Top of Mind
Marketing leaders continually feel pressure to prove the value of marketing, but the pressure is even stronger now. With marketing accountability going up and marketing budgets going down, measuring marketing’s impact has never been more important. To effectively measure marketing effectiveness — techniques like attribution, optimization, and AI and ML based reinforcement and agile learning will be of prime interest to marketing leaders and their teams in 2022. These techniques will be coupled with voice of the customer (NPS, CAC, CLV, etc.) and organizational change (surveys, sentiment, education, training, etc.) metrics to build out a brand’s complete marketing measurement toolkit. This will allow brands to more effectively measure complete return on marketing investment (ROMI).
Related Article: The Challenges of Measuring Marketing ROI
2. Consumer Trust: First-Party Data Emphasizes a New Value Exchange
With the eventual demise of the third-party cookie on the horizon, marketers will embrace not only their first-party data strategy more holistically but will create new methods to initiate and create a better value exchange with consumers. Brands will have to design, test and measure new and innovative ways to influence consumers to relinquish that valuable first-party customer data. Marketers will help brands develop these unique and creative strategies to provide demonstrable value and encourage customers to participate in a two-way dialogue and opt-in to digital data collection.
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Brands previously relied on third-party cookie techniques to collect the data that informs so many marketing and customer engagement efforts. This value exchange between brand and consumer, whether it’s the brand providing discounts, waivers, incentive programs, or other rewards, will pave the way for a new type of brand to consumer interaction, one that focuses more on brand transparency and authenticity. Building consumer trust will take significant strides in 2022 as brands prepare for the disappearance of the third-party cookie in 2023.
Related Article: The Demise of the Cookie and the Rise of First-Party Data
3. The Impact of the Employee on the Customer: EX Informs and Impacts CX
As we know, an exceptional employee experience is inextricably linked with a seamless, frictionless customer experience. As the great realignment of 2021 continues to occur, 2022 will see organizations emphasize not only employee acquisition and retention but also developing, tracking and measuring employee onboarding, education, development and compensation. This will be done to not only retain top talent, but to also positively impact the downstream customer experience. Brands know it’s difficult to satisfy and even delight end customers when their own frontline workers aren’t efficient, empowered, and excited about their work. Marketing organizations will demand that the customer experience improve in 2022, and other departments will fall in line to make this a reality.
As marketers become more data driven, we will undoubtedly see measurement come to the forefront. Marketers in 2022 will measure the effectiveness of their programs, how well they are transitioning and collecting valuable first-party data, and how their employees are impacting the end customer experience. It will be fun to watch, and perhaps very noticeable, who makes significant changes in these three areas and who continues with the status quo.
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