One trend over the past few years in ecommerce and omnichannel companies is the rise of the tech-savvy CMO. Technology drives digital awareness, experience and action. Technology also measures the impact of marketing strategies and keeps the CMO accountable. Increasingly, CMOs have direct reports in technical roles and handle part or all of IT budgeting.
In the Huffington Post, our own CMO Matt Dion shares his top 5 obsessions every digital CMO must embrace to keep pace with ebusiness today:
- Own the customer experience and lifecycle across all channels. The days of physical plus Web are over thanks to the smartphone. Also, the blissful ignorance of customer behavior across channels is over thanks to data and analytics. Keep experience siloed at your own peril.
- Embrace marketing technology. Matt suggests gaining an in-depth knowledge of the available digital experience platforms, such as marketing clouds and API frameworks. We’ve discussed the concept of “platform-as-a-store” on GetElastic, and how leading edge ebusinesses use ecommerce as a centralized hub to a platform of interconnected technologies. Forrester Research’s Adam Silverman suggeststhe retail store of the future will “realize greater value by connecting enterprise and point systems together to enable the digital store to operate in real time.”
- Tear down silos. According to a recent survey by Forrester Research commissioned by Elastic Path, more than 60% of digital experience projects fail. If the CMO and CIO don’t work closely together and don’t share the same customer-obsessed vision, failure is more likely.
- Be data driven. Matt reminds us that pragmatic marketers know gut feelings won’t cut it. “Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.” Smart CMOs’ lives depend on data and analytics.
- Embrace the mobile mind shift. Though mobile accounts for more than half of email opens and ecommerce traffic, one in four CIOs have no mobile strategy. The technology-and-customer-experience-obsessed CMO must embrace and drive a mobile mind shift in the organization, making its investment a priority.
Image credit: CC by Monika
