Making the Jump to a Digital-First Business Strategy: A Marketer’s Guide to Pivoting During COVID

Making the Jump to a
Digital-First Business
Strategy
A Marketer’s Guide to
Pivoting During COVID

Today’s Speakers
Karen Wood
Senior Director, Product
Marketing, Acquia
Joe Stanhope
Vice President, Principal
Analyst, Forrester

Harness Customer
Obsession to Survive,
Adapt, and Grow in 2020
Joe Stanhope

© 2020 Forrester. Reproduction Prohibited.
Disruption isn’t new to marketers
Source: “Modernize Your Martech Stack For Moments” Forrester report.

The pandemic accelerates the shift to digital

The pandemic will change consumer behavior
forever

Compare recoveries:
Marketing spend will fall in any scenario
Source: Forrester Research, “The 2020 COVID-19 Crisis Will Stun US Marketing” report.
Media
• 2020: Media money will move to branding.
• 2021: Radio, print, and out-of-home will collapse.
Services
• 2020: Contracts will be sacrificed to save headcount.
• 2021: Services will lose 22% in two years.
Headcount
• 2020: Spending will dive, even with government stimulus.
• 2021: Organizations will run skeleton teams.
Technology
• 2020: Martech budgets will hold for essential tools.
• 2021: Marketing automation will save martech from decline.

© 2020 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
Recovery offers marketers the
opportunity to innovate.

Marketing should
drive customer
obsession at your
firm.
Customer obsession: Putting the
customer at the center of your
leadership, strategy and operations.
Customer led
Insights driven
Fast
Connected
FROM
Customer aware
Data rich
Perfect
Siloed
TO

Customer obsession
is a worthy goal.
Customers who believed that a business
solved their problems quickly were:
More likely to stay
with the business.
More likely to
spend more with
the business.
More likely to
recommend the
business to
others.
8X
7X
8X

© 2019 FORRESTER. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.
Apply an adaptive approach to drive
loyalty.
1

Offline media and promotions
will see the largest drop in a late
2020 recovery
Media spend overall will decline 23% from
2019.
Promotions and offline media will fall the
most since consumer mobility is limited.
Events and buy-now ad budgets will shift to
branding, customer experience, and
support.

Modern marketers
have a different
purpose and scope
of responsibility.
• Build communications that deliver greater
authenticity.
• Solve problems in your customers’ lives.
• Deliver the right offer at the specific moment of
need.
Source: Three Steps To Modernize Marketing Thinking Forrester report

Create value for
your customers.
Value is created when a
customer perceives that she
gets more than she gives up.
Source: Value For Customers: The Four Dimensions That
Matter Forrester report

Replace legacy
processes with
people-led
planning.
Source: Forget Everything You Think You Know About
Marketing Planning Forrester report

Update your technology
strategy for agility.
2

Except for advertising tech
(adtech), marketing tech
(martech) will stay fairly intact
Multiyear tech contracts can’t be shut off
immediately.
Adtech will follow the decline in online
media.
Data and analytics tools and marketing
automation will see a slight lift over the next
two years.

Invest in customer
insights:
Customer
understanding
fuels loyalty.
Source: How To Be A Loyalty Company Forrester report

Invest in the core
components:
Consistency and
speed drive agility.
Source: The Future Of Enterprise Marketing Technology Forrester report

Tech priorities
vary with your
current context.
Source: CMOs Should Increase Their Marketing Technolog Investments
In The COVID-19 Recession Forrester report

Job Number 1:
Don’t stop marketing!
Studies of past recessions show that
companies that continue marketing recover
faster.
Shuffle priorities if you must. Emphasize
product, placement, and price innovation.
Prioritize customer experience
improvements to drive loyalty.

Harness Data to Increase
Loyalty, Engagement,
and Agility
Karen Wood

MACHINE
LEARNING
ORCHESTRATION
SITES
SERVICE
S
DATACONTENT
CHANNELS
MODALITIES APPLICATIONS
SUPPORTSERVICEDIGITAL CROSUPPORTSERVICEDIGITAL CRO CMO CIO
Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP)

AWARENESS INTEREST ENGAGEMENT PURCHASE LOYALTY GROWTH
UNIFIED CUSTOMER DATA
WEB
RETAIL
ASSOCIATES
DIGITAL
ADVERTISINGWEARABLES EMAIL CHAT CALL CENTER
POS
Event
Registration
CRM ESP
Third Party
Data Append
Customer
Service
Website
Behaviors
...Any Other
Data Source
Deliver Relevance at Every Touchpoint

Identit
y Data
E-commerce
Systems
CRM
Analytics
Acquia
Personalization
POS & Inventory
Systems
BI Systems
ESP
ACQUIA CDP
﹣Data Ingestion
﹣Identity Resolution
﹣Single Customer View
﹣Analytical Insights
﹣Machine Learning
– Email
– SMS
– Chat
– Mobile App
– Call Center
– Loyalty
– Social
– Clienteling
– Direct Mail
Interaction Channels
Align Your Data to Your Business

What types of brands leverage
Acquia Marketing Cloud?
Customers with:
– A business model that relies on in-person
and digital customer engagement
– Frequent touches with their customers;
including frequent transactions
– Key business metrics of loyalty, retention,
and lifetime value
– Operational eﬃciency as a priority
– Focus on good quality data and giving
diﬀerent teams access to this data

Priorities when disruption strikes
Key business objectives we solve across verticals:
Migrate revenue stream
to digital channels;
become digital-first
Engage customers in
new ways to keep
them loyal
Future-proof marketing
infrastructure for whatever
changes may come
Retail:
- Migrate store
shoppers to
ecommerce
- Keep high value
shoppers loyal
Higher Ed:
- Deliver in-person &
digital instruction
- Drive enrollment
although the
experience will be
different in COVID
Travel:
- Keep loyalists
invested even
though travel may
not be possible
- Prepare for gradual
re-opening with
new precautions
Restaurants:
- Support takeaway
and delivery service
- Support social
distant dining while
maintaining profit
margins; keep
customers loyal

How can a CDP help when
disruption strikes?
A unified data strategy gives you:
– Visibility into your entire business
– Accurate understanding of how disruption
has impacted your business
– Clear sight into how effective your
campaigns to engage customers are
during disruptive times vs. normally
– Insights to measure and plan for local
closures and re-opening
– Understanding of channel migration
effectiveness
A unified data
strategy built
around the
customer
experience
enables success
during
disruption.

The power of a unified data strategy
Golden
Customer
Record
Analytical
insights
with ML for
all teams
1:1
segmenting
with ML for
orchestrating
experiences
Online and
offline
data
Cleanse,
dedupe,
stitch data
into single
profile
Direct query
access and
data sharing
for BI teams

Golden
Customer
Record
Analytical
insights
with ML for
all teams
1:1
segmenting
with ML for
orchestrating
experiences
Online and
oﬄine
data
Cleanse,
dedupe,
stitch data
into single
proﬁle
Direct query
access and
data sharing
for BI teams
Use Case: Give me a clear picture of who
my loyal customers are; not just those who
have enrolled in our points program or use
our whitelabelled credit card.

Golden
Customer
Record
Analytical
insights
with ML for
all teams
1:1
segmenting
with ML for
orchestrating
experiences
Online and
offline
data
Cleanse,
dedupe,
stitch data
into single
profile
Direct query
access and
data sharing
for BI teams
Use Case: Send
an email offering
free delivery
service for all
customers with
high lifetime
value, and those
likely to become
high value in the
future.

Golden
Customer
Record
Analytical
insights
with ML for
all teams
1:1
segmenting
with ML for
orchestrating
experiences
Online and
oﬄine
data
Cleanse,
dedupe,
stitch data
into single
proﬁle
Direct query
access and
data sharing
for BI teams
Use Case: Use
Power BI to
understand
customers who
haven’t engaged
with our brand on
any channel
since we closed
our stores.

A uniﬁed data strategy helps
you:
1. Reduce costs by eliminating
technology redundancies
2. Increase marketing agility;
quickly pivot to new
campaigns, new analyses,
new messaging and oﬀers
3. Prepare for whatever
changes may be coming in
the future
Build resilience into your
marketing approach

Introducing Acquia’s
COVID ANALYSIS DASHBOARD
Gain insight into how COVID-19 has
changed your business, including:
– Overall business impacts
– Shift in consumers’ product
preferences
– Eﬀectiveness of consumers’ channel
migration
– Changes in online buying behaviors
– Newly acquired customers’ buying
behaviors, retention rates, and
preferences
– Guidance on how to re-open stores
with maximum long-term revenue
growth

Conversion from Physical Channel Buyers to
Digital During COVID

Top Online Product Categories Pre-COVID
vs. During COVID

Ecommerce Activity by Gender Pre-COVID
vs. During COVID

Top 15 States of Online Acquisition During
Local Closures

Top States by Transactions After Re-Opening

Key Takeaways
By aligning your business around uniﬁed data, you can:
Boost customer loyalty,
satisfaction, retention, and
lifetime value
1.
Navigate channel closures
due to COVID-19 with the
right business metrics and
insights
2.
Increase the proﬁtability of your
existing customer base3.
Boost marketing and operational
agility to stabilize and
future-proof your business
4.
Increase conversion and revenue
through more relevant website and
ecommerce experiences
5.

Start planning now
toward where you
want to be in 12 to
24 months.
• Drive loyalty and retention.
• Invest more in keeping customers than in acquisition
• Fix broken customer experiences and create value
• Stay sensitive to immediate customer needs and available, accessible
products
• Lead with customer obsession.
• Keep the customer at the center of your leadership, strategy, and
operations
• Determine how customer obsession will manifest for you post-crisis to
drive growth
• Replace legacy processes with people-led-planning
• Diligently map what talent, process, locations, insights, and
governance you will have at your ideal state. Compare this with the
resources that you have in each area today
• Pivot from adaptation to innovation.
• Maintain or accelerate investments in customer and marketing
insights to understand and serve customers' needs and motivations
• Automate where possible
• Eliminate redundant programs, technologies, and partners

EXPERIENCE
DIGITAL FREEDOM
October 20-21, 2020
SAVE THE DATE

Making the Jump to a Digital-First Business Strategy: A Marketer’s Guide to Pivoting During COVID

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Making the Jump to a Digital-First Business Strategy: A Marketer’s Guide to Pivoting During COVID