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From mass marketing to individual customer experience

Technology is developing rapidly. The challenge for companies is that customers use new technologies faster than companies can adjust to them. In the words of a merchandising director: “By the time we have reached the current state of technology, our customers are already three steps ahead of us again.” Companies must be in a position to keep pace with this development in order to be able to fulfill their customers’ needs. In the 1990s, most customers were still using TV, radio, and other unidirectional media to inform themselves about brands and their products. Today, by contrast, we are well-networked and constantly online via social networks. Information no longer comes from just a single source. There is a trend that accompanies this: trust in companies, especially in marketing and sales, is dwindling. Google data makes this clear: 99.8% of all online advertising is simply ignored. Sales employees are only involved in the purchase process once the decision has been made and many shopping carts do not conclude with a purchase.

Customers are blazing their own trails

From the identification of a need to the purchase, on through to the disposal of the solution, customers are blazing their own trails, not ones specified by a company. Therefore, this customer journey is necessarily non-linear. Jumps and repeated steps are part and parcel of this. Customers are using different end user devices, touch points, and they are active at all times. From a technological point of view, this means that the touch points must be connected to one another so that the right data can be collected at the right point and – still more important – offered. Only then can a good, consistent customer experience be guaranteed.

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For It´s Your Customer Who Decides: Digital Marketing in the Here and Now

�On average, marketing uses 15 different systems Advertisers are faced with a big challenge: Customer data for personalization is often stored, but usually in different systems without a connection between the individual data sources. The Forrester study “The Contextual Marketing Imperative” from October 2015 shows that on average, marketing departments generally use 15 stand-alone systems and 11 communication channels for context-related marketing and personalized communication.

The consequence of this is inconsistent data, interrupted, inefficient, and ineffective processes, redundant work, poorly addressed campaigns, etc. In particular, due to these data silos, it is impossible to reach the holy grail of marketing: the 360 degree view of the customer. Instead, information gained about customers’ behavior and interests is lost: Which e-mail did the customer open? Which hyperlink did he click? Which newsletter did he subscribe to? Which voucher did he redeem? Which offer did he accept? When a company does not succeed in preparing and using this data consistently, the customer experience will not succeed either.

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�Content is gold – context is priceless

But how do you create a positive customer experience? The only way is to successfully design the company's digital transformation. For this, the island solutions used must be connected to one another so that they can exploit all of their strengths. The key to success is “to connect”. The individual solutions do not necessarily have to be replaced; instead, they should rely on a common data pool so that a uniform view of customers is possible at all times. And this view is updated constantly. This is the basis for providing customers with precisely the information that is relevant for them in their current context. Context-related information is information that:

• reaches the customer at the right time. For example, a customer who has bought a new iPhone may also need a new case for it – so an action is relevant for him.

• considers the recipient's location: if the customer is near your store, you can reach him with extra discounts. At the same time, actions for customers who are away on vacation are in vain.

• reach the customer via the currently used and preferred channel. This can be e-mail, social media, SMS – or even a telephone call.

• contains relevant content. Relevance arises from current personal interests and preferences.

Information without context is spam – and spam is ignored and creates a negative impression of the sending company.

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�Customer experience architecture

In order to be able to implement all of these technical requirements, we need a customer experience architecture that consistently receives customer signals such as surfing behavior, tweets, transactions, visits to stores, in-app navigation, and also advertisements, etc.

Incoming data can be processed further via an open platform in compliance with current data privacy regulations. Therefore, companies will be in a position to address customers purposefully with information relevant to their current context.

Important components of this platform are integration, expanded analysis possibilities, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. These components make it possible to find an optimal response to incoming signals and thus enable ever-relevant customer interactions. And this happens at all times, with constantly changing customer desires, in real time.

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�The role of SAP Hybris Marketing

This is where SAP Hybris Marketing comes into play. For SAP Hybris Marketing consolidates what once were disparate systems so that you can rely on a single, clean data stock. This is the basic requirement for achieving a 360 degree view of the customer and in the end, creating a consistently positive customer experience.

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The use of SAP Hybris Marketing produces measurable results, as Forrester Research's 2017 study “The Total Economic Impact of the SAP Hybris Marketing Solution”, which was based on the experiences of 45 SAP Hybris customers, indicates. For a “reference company” among the companies surveyed, Forrester Research found significant advantages within three years after the introduction of SAP Hybris Marketing:

• The Average Order Value (AOV) increased by 5% • The e-mail conversion increased by 40%

Financially, this means: • An amortization time of less than 12 months • A ROI of more than 300% within three years • Savings in the amount of 40% of previous expenditures thanks to a

consolidation and integration of the various applications.

And we can confirm this data from our own customer experience.

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�Solution overview

You can achieve these results with SAP Hybris Marketing since the system supports the entire customer cycle: from procuring information about customer events and interactions in various source systems to the execution of marketing campaigns, which are orchestrated consistently across all connected communication channels. Reactions to these campaigns, in turn, create events and interactions that complete the cycle.

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Thus, customer profiles are established, enriched, and combined step by step. These profiles enable companies to determine the customer's interests in the current context and make concrete predictions about his future behavior. This is how SAP Hybris Marketing puts you in a position to approach your customers in scaled, individual form and address them in a way that is relevant to their context.

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�In order to assist you optimally, SAP Hybris Marketing builds on eight pre-configured scenarios:

• Consumer and customer profiling for the dynamic collection and enriching of customer profiles from all connected sources for a 360 degree overview. This enables the gaining of insights into customers’ intentions in real time.

• Segmentation and campaign execution for accurate and individual addressing of your customers in real time.

• Commerce marketing fires up your e-commerce strategy and provides personalized shopping experiences thanks to the use of the enriched customer profiles.

• Marketing analytics provides you with detailed real-time information about your marketing activities and enables you to control these based on performance and ROI.

• Marketing resource management allows you to effectively manage all aspects of your marketing efforts; furthermore, improves their transparency and cooperation on the team.

• Marketing lead management improves cooperation between the marketing and sales teams thanks to a hand-off of qualified leads and success monitoring. This puts you in a position both to generate more leads and to increase the effectiveness of your sales team.

• With customer loyalty management1, you convert customers into loyal advocates of your company by offering digital experiences that fit your brand message seamlessly.

• The customer journey manager2 allows you to generate loyalty and sales by planning and optimizing each touch point, placing them dynamically on customer journeys in order to provide your customers with the right information in the right place.

Our services

Products and services, technologies, methods, and trends keep changing. Therefore, you have to answer the questions “what do my customers want and why do they buy from me?” anew each day. Only this way can you inspire customers and make them want to come back. We keep asking about the customer cycle “Want. Buy. Have.”

The focus is on considerations such as these: How do customers inform themselves and how do they find the product or service they are looking for quickly? How can offerings, services, and processes be improved? We will show you how you can identify your customers’ wishes in Big Data and in real time with SAP Hybris Marketing. Come with us and experience future-proof, innovative scenarios and solutions that suit your company and help you answer the following questions:

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In the course of a wide variety of projects, we have successfully answered this question together with our customers and made SAP Hybris Marketing a valuable tool for context-relevant customer engagements. Profit from our experience.

We offer you the following services:

• Definition of requirements • Modeling of software architecture • Modeling and implementation of business processes • Revelation of best practices • Integration of SAP Hybris Marketing into your specific environment • Definition and implementation of the necessary interfaces • Conducting of workshops for the planning of the optimal capturing of short-

and long-term benefits • Management of your SAP Hybris Marketing project

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Emotions  How can I address my customer emotionally so that he won’t look any further and will compare products?

Real time  What does my customer need at precisely this moment and how can I address him appropriately and individually in real time?

Experience How can I provide the perfect buying experience across all channels?

�Contact us

If you have questions or need specific advice, please contact Thomas Wieberneit at the following e-mail address or telephone number:

thomas.wieberneit@cec.valantic.com +49 (151) 239 21 386

About the author

Thomas Wieberneit is responsible for the Hybris Marketing portfolio at valantic CEC. In his more than 20-year CRM career, he has helped many companies around the world with their digital transformation. He is an expert in digital projects in the customer experience sector.

From the definition of the business model, the modeling and optimization of business processes on through to the technical implementation of complex functionalities, he has already assisted customers at SAP and valantic CEC with positioning themselves strategically on the market, improving internal processes, and finding the optimal and future-proof technical solution.

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