The Age of the 24/7 Consumer Creates Emergence of Customer Engagement
Agencies
By Nancy Pekala
The age of the 24/7 consumer is here to stay. Gone are the days of consumers as passive
observers of brands. Today’s customers are actively participating in shaping brands. The
result is an important shift for marketers to a customer engagement agency model. This
new model will require marketers to engage in two-way conversations with customers
regardless of the channel.
Engagement marketing allows companies to place the customer at the center of the
marketing process – integrating data from the on and offline world to create a 360 degree
view of the customer in order to truly engage with them at every step of the customer
lifecycle.
Michael Fisher, senior vice president sales & marketing, the Americas, at Alterian, an
international integrated marketing platform, spoke with Marketing Matters about the
emergence of Customer Engagement Agencies and their impact on the industry.
Recently, Alterian joined forces with several agency partners including RAZOR, Tribal
DDB and Targetbase to address this shift.
Marketing Matters: How can agencies and marketers, in general, prepare and position
themselves to succeed within this new customer engagement model?
Michael Fisher: The Customer Engagement model requires the appropriate level of
integration across data, technology, analytics, creative, strategy, execution and people.
For example, technologists must understand enough of what creative does to ensure the
optimal delivery of content to the customer. Marketers and Agencies alike need to
leverage competencies in all areas to enable the “customer conversation.” Without the
linkage and integration of data, analytics technology and skills marketers run the risk of
talking at customers rather than with customers, and they run the risk of the customer
shopping or finding new relationships.
MM: From a structural and tactical standpoint, how does the customer engagement
agency model differ from the traditional model of today?
June 26, 2009
Marketing Matters
Fisher: Today’s Customer Engagement Agency links the competencies around strategy,
analytics, creative, technology, and execution—dynamically. Such dynamic linkages
allow for seamless hand-off(s), and fewer territorial issues that competency silos present.
Structurally, Customer Engagement Agencies through the kinds of integration outlined in
the graphic below will enable the marketer to access to comingled skills and
competencies that the marketer would traditionally source through multiple service
providers.
MM: What talent and skill sets are required for an agency to effectively become
customer engagement-focused?
Fisher: Customer Engagement Agencies take a multi-dimensional approach to marketing
across all channels to cost-effectively produce rich, relevant experiences through unique
capabilities that combine three traditionally disparate skills and deliverables:
1. Creative capacity to develop persuasive content.
2. Technical and multi-channel data expertise to deliver messages via
multiple channels.
3. Data-driven Intelligence driving cross channel/segment dialog enabling
positive financial impact through the proper selection of the right message
for the right audience at the right time.
June 26, 2009
Marketing Matters
The Customer Engagement Agency looks to fill the gap by focusing skills
on cross functional delivery that is always on and always focused on the
customer.
MM: Will this new model necessitate an increased need for agency marketers to
understand and apply measurement methods, particularly in the areas of sentiment and
engagement?
Fisher: New measurement opportunities are immediately presented to the marketer by
the Customer Engagement Agency. As Trae Clevenger, vice president, strategy &
innovation at Targetbase, a leading Customer Engagement Agency, notes “Analytics and
measurement are at the very core of the Customer Engagement Agency. Optimizing an
integrated, multi-channel approach demands the ability to quantitatively demonstrate the
relationship between engagement and sales and the ability to identify patterns of
engagement. At the aggregate level, the relationship between engagement and sales
drives budgeting decisions and communication strategies. At the customer level, patterns
of engagement are determined to drive customized, optimal communication and content.”
MM: What role will targeted, traditional marketing play in this new agency model?
Fisher: Traditional marketing plays a significant role in the Customer Engagement
Agency, as the direct disciplines, approaches to attribution and accountability that
marketers have grown to rely on from traditional marketers will be leveraged across all
competencies delivered by the Customer Engagement Agency.
MM: In what ways will the emergence of this new model change client expectations of
agencies?
Fisher: Accountability in TV in Radio is difficult to deliver for the traditional agency.
Alternatively, the Customer Engagement Agency identifies where and why media
investments are made, and will identify alternative media, and investment strategies
based on holistic multi-channel empirical measurement disciplines.
For more information on Alterian and its integrated marketing platform, visit
www.alterian.com
June 26, 2009
Marketing Matters