With the progressive digitalization of our economy, automation tools will be gaining increasing popularity. In some sectors, like in the telecommunications industry, they’ve already become a fundamental part of the business process. Others are slowly moving in this direction.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the expansion of automation leads to downsizing. Quite contrarily – it can optimize the effectiveness of the employees, allowing them to focus on more creative and demanding tasks instead of taking care of the most mundane ones.

Which automation solutions are worth considering when it comes to improving the digital customer journey in the field of telecommunications services? The examples below may come in handy regardless of the sector of your company.

The chatbots

In the last few years, from a fledgling tool, chatbots have turned into standard automation solutions allowing businesses to scale up at a fast pace. Any service provider needs to stay available for the customer, and chatbots allow maintaining that availability 24/7 without hiring additional staff. In the telecom industry, which is strongly based on customer care, using chatbots brings tangible benefits within a short time span.

With chatbots, the telecom companies can take some burden off the employees’ back by doing a pre-selection and sending only the most complex requests to their consultation. The bot can answer the simpler ones, speeding up the whole process, and send the requests to the telecom operators without the intervention of the customer service agent.

Recommendation system

In many sectors, particularly streaming services, accurate recommendations are essential. They increase customer retention and improve the overall user experience. If you are searching for an automation tool that will deliver measurable business outcomes for internet companies, the recommendation system based on effective algorithms may be a good choice, resulting in an enhanced customer experience. Note, however, that using it requires effective data management.

Automation marketing

These tools are used mainly in e-commerce, but the service providers are also getting convinced of its benefits. Sending automated mailing for the abandoned carts, personalizing the marketing e-mails based on the user data, or measuring the customers’ engagement – all these are possible with the automation marketing tools. It’s significant not only for e-commerce businesses but also the telecom service providers and cable companies in order to sell their deals on wire and mobile networks.

Aside from these tools, it’s also worth considering investing in a CRM platform to optimize business operations. When choosing your partner in digital transformation, try focusing on companies specialized in IT Solutions for Telecommunications. This way, you’ll get access to innovative solutions and deep expertise.

The post How to enhance digital customer journeys with the automation tools for telecom? appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Back to our title, like other functional areas, digital transformation is embraced by marketing and finance; providing new opportunities for collaboration between previously “siloed” or even adversarial departments. Following are details on how marketing and finance can collaborate, along with the Top 10 Marketing key performance indicators (KPIs).

Today, marketing technology (MarTech), marketing automation, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), supports detailed and timely reporting including analytics, sales conversion data, return on marketing investment (ROMI), and other KPIs (Top 10 Marketing KPIs below). While finance and accounting employ Business Intelligence (BI), Financial Planning & Analysis tools (FP&A), and other tools that support advanced sales and profitability analysis.

Before digital transformation, marketing and finance collaboration may have been limited to budgeting, forecasting, annual or perhaps strategic planning. Finance likely viewed marketing as a cost center.

With digital transformation, marketing and finance can more thoroughly integrate marketing, business, financial, and strategic planning. Marketing and finance can meet and report frequently, sharing real-time information. Marketing and finance can work as a team, investing in marketing programs and campaigns that achieve key performance indicators (KPIs), and reducing or eliminating initiatives that do not “measure up”. Let’s take a look at some of the top KPIs.

Top 10 Marketing KPIs

1. Sales conversions
2. Lead registrations
3. Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI)
4. Website analytics: unique visitors, traffic sources, bounce rates, etc.
5. Email: open rates, click through rates (CTRs), bounce rates
6. Paid Search: cost per click (CPC), sales conversions
7. Search engine optimization (SEO): Domain Authority, keyword rank, etc.
8. Social media listening and analytics
9. Average Sales Cycle
10. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Marketing and Finance Collaboration Roles and Skills

Modern marketing employs analytics, tests and optimizes campaigns, and reports on KPIs to accounting and finance teams to truly collaborate on achieving mutual objectives. This is typically the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), VP Marketing, or Marketing Director.

On the finance side, the roles might include the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Controller, or Vice President titles. Modern Marketers and Contemporary Controllers, working together via digital transformation.

Where do you get these skills?  Marketing curriculums increasingly offer digital certifications. In accounting and finance, continuing education and professional certification is often required. Member associations like the Controllers Council, have programming and resources that support digital transformation.

Relevant Resources:

Marketing and Finance – From Adversaries to Allies

Why Collaboration Between Marketing and Finance is Essential to Growth

Digital Marketing Transformation Guide – Top 12 Strategies

Business Intelligence for Marketing – A Shiny New Silver Bullet

The post Digital Transformation Supports Marketing and Finance Collaboration appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

To help understand DMT better, the experts (nerds) at Modern Marketing Partners researched and developed a comprehensive Digital Marketing Transformation Glossary of Terms.

Next, we used the Google Algorithm to identify keyword search volume of these terms which leads to the Top 10 Digital Marketing Transformation Buzzwords for 2020, that every marketer and business professional should know and understand.

Download the complete Digital Marketing Transformation Glossary of Terms here:

https://www.modernmarketingpartners.com/resources/digital-marketing-transformation-glossary-of-terms/ 

Top 10 Digital Marketing Transformation Buzzwords for 2020

1. HTTPS

With 450,000 average monthly searches on Google, HTTPS ranks first on our list of top DMT buzzwords. HTTPS is an acronym for Hypertext Transport Protocol Secure which provides security services for transaction confidentiality, authenticity and integrity between HTTP servers and clients for web browsers and can be seen in the domain line of a website. HTTPS is now a search engine ranking factor.

2. CRM

Customer Relationship Management or CRM ranks second with 175,000 monthly searches on Google. CRM is the term used for the way a business collects and manages data about its clients. Companies use CRM software to keep track of all the information they collect on clients, such as service calls made, or previous products purchased. This helps businesses close future deals and grow relationships with customers.

3. Analytics

Analytics ranks third with 165,000 monthly searches on Google. Analytics is a catch-all term for a wide variety of different business intelligence (BI), and application-related initiatives. Analytics is the process of analyzing information for a particular domain, such as website analytics. Or Analytics is applying the breadth of BI capabilities to a specific content area (e.g. service, sales, supply chain, etc.). Often BI vendors use the “analytics” term to differentiate their product from competitors. Whichever the use case, “analytics” is used to describe statistical and mathematical data analysis that clusters, scores, segments, and predicts scenarios. While Analytics use started with IT professionals, interest has grown to include accounting/finance, operations, marketing, and others.

4. Mobile

This may be a general term, but for marketing specific, it ranks fourth with a search volume at 155,000 monthly. A mobile responsive design is when a website, email or App is displayed on a mobile device and it automatically adjusts it’s sizing, layout, and proportions to display in a legible manner on the device. Mobile web design is also a search engine ranking factor.

5. Social Media

Social media along with social media marketing ranks fifth with 150,500 searches on Google. A form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach.

6. SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO ties for sixth with 135,000 average Google search each month.  SEO is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the website appears high in the search rankings or position in a search engine results page (SERP). SEO includes both on-page and off-page techniques.

7. Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality or VR ties for sixth with SEO, with 135,000 monthly searches on Google. An artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment. of tasks along with its sequence.

8. Artificial Intelligence

AI ranks eighth with an average of 110,000 searches monthly. Software or “apps” that are capable of intelligent behavior. AI involves simulating a number of capabilities, including reasoning, learning, problem solving, perception, and knowledge representation. Chatbots are a simple form of AI.

9. Ecommerce

Making the Top 10 Digital Marketing Transformation Buzzwords for 2020 is Ecommerce, ranking ninth, with 90,500 monthly searches on Google. Ecommerce is defined as commercial transactions conducted electronically on the Internet.

10.  KPIs

Rounding out of the Top 10 Digital Marketing Transformation Buzzwords for 2020 is Key Performance Indicators or KPIs, with 90,000 monthly searches on Google. KPIs are quantifiable measures used to evaluate the success of a business, organization, entity, employee, etc., in meeting objectives for performance. Examples of marketing KPIs might include website traffic, or registration form fills.

Have a suggestion for a Digital Marketing Transformation term? Please submit via the Modern Marketing Partners contact form here.

Please download the complete Digital Marketing Transformation Glossary of Terms here:

https://www.modernmarketingpartners.com/resources/digital-marketing-transformation-glossary-of-terms/

The post Top 10 Digital Marketing Transformation Buzzwords for 2020 appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

There’s good reason for this too. Business intelligence solutions can leverage data from dozens of sources, centralize it, and transform it into something even the least tech-savvy executive can use.

The Case for Business Intelligence

Imagine combining CRM, marketing automation, and Google Analytics into a single platform to better understand the behaviors, demographics, and process through the funnel. Now imagine using this information to tailor your content strategies, enhance your buyer personas, and better predict what will be the most effective marketing.

The case for business intelligence has never been clearer, and even marketers in less ‘tech-savvy’ industries are taking note.

In fact, according to research from the Business Software Education Center, executives are putting top priority on analytics and business intelligence solutions.

According to the C-Suite Software Sentiment Study, when asked which strategic initiatives they are implementing heading into the coming decade, executives saw business intelligence solutions in their top five—sitting behind only cloud, mobility, and digital transformation initiatives.

4 Marketing Benefits of Business Intelligence

If you’re still not sold on business intelligence, know this: Your competitors likely are. Here are four benefits to marketers who use business intelligence.

Centralize Data, Integrate Your Technology

We recently just looked at how diverse the marketing technology stack is, noting that there are tens of thousands of applications used across dozens of categories. Each of these applications generates usable data—but only if you know how to use it.

For too many marketers, trying to track this data across dozens of applications is cause for concern. Trying to combine it is even harder.

Maybe if you can afford someone to compile data, analyze it and present it, you can get something out of it. It’s more likely, however, that you are leaving money on the table. Blind spots are costly, and the shotgun approach to marketing rarely succeeds.

Business intelligence tools can contribute significantly to a fully integrated marketing approach. By bringing data together from your entire MarTech stack, you can use this to convey a unified message, tailor it scientifically, and improve results. Integrated marketing technologies provide customers with consistent messaging across platforms and can make a brand stick out in the mind of a customer, and ultimately be a determining factor in a purchase.

Automate Processing, Reduce Errors

Have you ever made a typo? Of course you have. Now say you are about to embrace some major initiative or present some big change to your boss. He or she is going to expect you have accurate information, and you’re a finger slip away from recommending something that could either harm your credibility or take your company down the wrong path.

On the other hand, you can set up a business intelligence product to grab data from the source, combine it with other information, and present it with a couple clicks. But it gets better.

Present Data More Effectively

Most people process information visually. It’s a reason that people love infographics, and it’s a reason you’ll love using BI software.

Like the dashboard of a car gives the driver a visual of the most important information he needs to keep driving safely and successfully, a business intelligence dashboard provides a marketer with an overview of the progress of the company. Now, you can track what’s going on by looking at a visualization—not a spreadsheet. Now when presenting this great idea, you can show why something works (or will work), rather than trying to explain every detail. There are many different types of visuals you can utilize and heat maps are definitely one of the more effective.

See the Future

It’s awfully hard to look forward if you’re spending all your time living in the past. You already know just how fast the marketing industry moves, and if you’re spending all your time analyzing historical concepts, you might miss something right in front of you.

Not only can a business intelligence solution save you time on the processing and analysis of past data, it can help you see the future. Predictive analytics leverages past trends to present accurate forecasting information. Information about how one prospect acts can inform you how another will act.

Whether you are using it to improve your messaging, buy ads, or to plan your ecommerce demand, predictive analytics will continue to become a bigger part of business intelligence and marketing as a whole.

2020 is Coming: How Clear Is Your Marketing Vision?

It’s an exciting time to be in marketing. Innovations are coming seemingly every day, new technologies are improving small or large facets of your business, and the little guys continue to beat out the old guard. However, you have to be smart. A smart company with a shoestring MarTech budget can run circles around a global player who pumps millions or billions into marketing.

Business intelligence gives marketers the power to combine, track, and utilize data in new ways, and will continue to become a bigger part of the marketing world.

Looking to learn more? Go check out the entire report from the Business Software Education Center and see how smart your website is with our free website analysis.

Additional Business Intelligence Resources

5 Key Considerations When Implementing a Modern BI

Business Intelligence 101
How to Use Business Intelligence for Marketing Effectively?

The post Business Intelligence for Marketing – A Shiny New Silver Bullet? appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

So how does marketing fit into Digital Transformation? Or is Digital Marketing Transformation its own shiny, new buzzword that can have its own acronym, DMT?

Please allow the gurus at Modern Marketing Partners to provide insights and tips for implementing Digital Marketing Transformation (DMT for brevity) including a Digital Marketing Transformation definition, perspectives about the new Digital Marketing Mix, along with a list of the Top 12 Digital Marketing Transformation Strategies. We share some details on the increasing role of marketing technology or MarTech. And for those that seek additional information, several Digital Marketing Transformation Resources are provided.

Digital Marketing Transformation – Defined

Experts agree that we are in the midst of a marketing revolution, with rapid change, evolving from traditional marketing to digital. To be sure, many traditional marketing strategies are either obsolete, or certainly less emphasized by brands of all types. In fact, for many brand scenarios (business and consumer), traditional marketing tactics are fast becoming obsolete, or secondary at most. Direct mail and print advertising are examples of traditional marketing tactics in decline.

Importantly, new digital marketing tactics can be measured with analytics, tested, and reported to management. It is now possible to identify sales conversions, and to calculate return on marketing investment (or ROMI). Whereas traditional marketing often could not measure results, or report sales conversions.

A definition of Digital Marketing Transformation is the transition and evolution from a traditional marketing mix, to primarily digital marketing, including the use of a digital marketing mix (next subject) and new marketing technologies to plan, implement, test, measure, optimize and report results on marketing initiatives, campaigns and programs.

Depending on brand scenario (e.g. B2B vs. B2C), traditional marketing strategies will be required, but tightly integrated with digital marketing. For example, traditional events will be promoted via all types digital marketing including social media.

Digital Marketing Mix

So what is this new Digital Marketing Mix? First, you must know that the term marketing mix was coined by marketing professor Neil Borden in 1953, and later expanded by another marketing professor, E. Jerome McCarthy with the infamous 4 P’s of Marketing (in 1960). The Marketing Mix references the types and combinations of marketing (strategies and tactics) used by brands.

Of course, the Digital Marketing Mix emphasizes digital vs. traditional marketing strategies and tactics. As mentioned Digital Marketing utilizes technology including multiple types of software (See MarTech below). And Digital Marketing uses Analytics and other tools to measure and report on multi-channel initiatives. With Analytics, digital marketers can now test, refine, measure and optimize campaigns. Using MarTech, marketers can plan, coordinate, automate, measure and report on campaigns and programs. Market research, market segmentation, identifying buyer personas, and related activities are still part of marketing planning that determine the Digital Marketing Mix, along with the specific strategies and tactics used. On this latter topic, following are the Top 12 Digital Marketing Transformation Strategies and Tactics.

Top 12 Digital Marketing Transformation Strategies

1. Website Optimization (Incl. Mobile, SSL/HTTPS, Trust, User Experience (UX)
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO incl. visual, mobile, voice search; meta code, link-building, Local Citations)
3. Content Marketing (Incl. blogs, resources, case studies, registration pages, calls-to-action (CTAs), curation, syndication)
4. Paid Search (Incl. pay-per-click/PPC, Remarketing, Display, Programmatic Advertising)
5. Email Marketing (Incl. lists, campaigns, personalization, lead nurturing, trigger emails, optimization of subject lines, Click-Thrus)
6. Social Media (incl. Social Advertising)
7. Video (a form of content, but important enough to be Top 12)
8. Marketing Automation (software, tools and techniques, data)
9. Analytics (Incl. Google Analytics and Marketing Dashboards)
10. Marketing Diagnostics
11. Influencer Marketing
12. Artificial Intelligence (AI, Incl. Live Chat or ChatBots)

Marketing Technology is Now MarTech

No question, Digital Marketing Transformation requires Marketing Technology, often referred to as MarTech. Think of MarTech as the merging of marketing and technology. MarTech is typically software, but might also be applications or apps, diagnostic tools, or AI tools including Live Chat or ChatBots. Examples of marketing software include Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Collaboration or Project Management Software, and Digital Asset Management (DAM) software. Hootsuite is a great example of a tool used for social media post scheduling, coupled with social media placement monitoring and reporting.

Ready for another buzz word?  The “MarTech Stack” is the group of tools and technologies used by marketing. In fact, the annual MARTECH Conference gets much buzz about its Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic that counts 7,040 MarTech solutions in 2019 (up from about 5,000 in 2017). See the “Supergraphic” below, and please click image to enlarge, or link to original image below.

https://cdn.chiefmartec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/marketing-technology-landscape-2019-slide.jpg

Digital Marketing Transformation is More than a Buzzword

Like its predecessor Digital Transformation, Digital Marketing Transformation (DMT) is the shiny, new buzzword in marketing. Experts agree that we are in the midst of a marketing revolution, with rapid change, evolving from traditional marketing to a new digital marketing mix. DMT uses Marketing Technology or MarTech to plan, manage, test, optimize, implement, measure and report on marketing campaigns and programs.

Per the above referenced Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic, MarTech and Digital Marketing Transformation will continue to grow exponentially, requiring new technologies, tools, and marketing skills.

As Digital Transformation promises change and competitive advantage, Digital Marketing Transformation promises a new age of both marketing efficiency and effectiveness. Those who embrace DMT should have a distinct advantage over competitors that do not.  It may truly be the most exciting time in history to be a part of this marketing revolution.

Digital Marketing Transformation Resources:

How is Digital Transformation Changing Marketing? (Digital Marketing Institute)

The Three Keys To Digital Marketing Transformation (Forbes)

The Next Marketing Transformation Is … (CMO.com)

Digital Transformation Blog (Marketing Week)

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