Practically Personal

How personal should you make the customer experiences you deliver? How personal can you make customer experiences? In a previous post we described how a guy who doesn’t ski reacts to images on an ecommerce site of a woman skiing.  He believes he’d respond more if shown something he can relate to. If we somehowContinue reading “Practically Personal”

Digital Transformation: Turnaround at Malaysia Airlines

[with co-author Patricia Seybold, CEO Patricia Seybold Group] Leaders in digital transformation foster a culture of experimentation, customer experience management supported by mature optimization programs, and measurements relevant to their goals. They demonstrate how an integrated platform, skilled people, and mature optimization capabilities are the keys to success. One such leader is Dean Dacko, SVPContinue reading “Digital Transformation: Turnaround at Malaysia Airlines”

Digital Transformation Leader: Suncorp Group

Leaders communicate the path; followers must interpret.  Leaders in digital transformation foster a culture of experimentation, customer experience management supported by mature optimization programs, and measurements relevant to their goals. They demonstrate how an integrated platform, skilled people, and mature optimization capabilities are the keys to success. One such leader is Murray Howe, Executive ManagerContinue reading “Digital Transformation Leader: Suncorp Group”

Marketing in the Digital World

As customers, we experience digital transformation all the time—perhaps almost every day. In the past decade alone, the ways we consume music, movies, photography, news, retail, and travel have changed utterly. We are on the cusp of similar transformation of transportation and manufacturing, with the advent of onboard computers in cars, driverless cars, and 3DContinue reading “Marketing in the Digital World”

Data Science and Not-So-Big Data

Statisticians joke (yes, they do!) that half the job is wrestling the data into shape, half is performing useful analyses, and half is explaining the findings. The data wrestling too often expands to consume all my time, leaving me too ennervated to find any findings. Big Data is what got everyone so excited about data science. But BiggerContinue reading “Data Science and Not-So-Big Data”

Data Scientist: Your New PartNerd

Inescapable: data science delivers the insights you need in order to be effective with digital marketing. Short-term avoidable: hiring a data scientist. Embraceable: Your new data scientist.Creative people and data science people should work together all day, every day, until they can understand each other, with a shared vision and shared vocabulary. Your data scientist must beContinue reading “Data Scientist: Your New PartNerd”

The Tragedy of Targeted Marketing and Personalization

OK, not really a tragedy. But a source of tremendous pain for many: targeted marketing, and personalization, are the antithesis of one size fits all. And this means you need an assortment for every bit of content that personalizes your customer experience. Not one walnut, but 7 or 8 or dozens. Having lots of contentContinue reading “The Tragedy of Targeted Marketing and Personalization”

The 6 Obstacles to Using Data Science

It would be great if we all had data to drive our decisions and processes — and used it. But the obstacles are so daunting that most of us can’t. Here are the top 6: Leadership from the top is mostly lacking. Data quality issues are omnipresent. Data science in marketing is not established (itContinue reading “The 6 Obstacles to Using Data Science”

Data-driven Decisions? I’ll get back to you later.

Who wouldn’t love love love having data to support decision-making? Interviews with two dozen people, mostly marketing managers and executives, on the subject of data-driven decision making, reveal deep-seated ambivalence. There are valid reasons to reject the value of data for decisions. Data quality is a pain point for everyone, and quality may be so poor thatContinue reading “Data-driven Decisions? I’ll get back to you later.”

Q2: Progress on Adobe’s Transformation

Adobe’s second quarter earnings announcement signals more progress in its transformation from “the PDF” company to a digital marketing giant. The transitions are many. First, clients are adapting their businesses to mobile customer experience and marketing. Good news here: Mobile transactions are up 25%. Second, Adobe is on a path to provide tools for digitalContinue reading “Q2: Progress on Adobe’s Transformation”