Category: Marketing & e-commerce (Page 31 of 73)

The most popular and pervasive meme at the recent Gilbane Conference on Content and the Digital Experience was certainly “marketing technologist”. There were many other topic streams but none quite so critical to marketings’, and marketers’, future (and not only marketers, but that’s another story).

One of the three questions we posed to our speakers prior to the conference was, Is there a “Marketing Technologist” role in your organization or in organizations you know of? Should there be? What should their responsibilities be? A number of speakers, including Scott Brinker, provided answers in our speaker spotlight series. Scott also delivered the keynote What is a Marketing Technologist? where he shared a graphic he had created of the marketing technology landscape that illustrates what a marketing technologist has to deal with. Last week he published the new substantially enhanced version below that is now a must-have reference tool.

What makes Scott’s latest version dramatically more valuable for marketers and IT, or anyone involved in digital experience strategies and architectures is the organizational structure he added. As Scott says this is not perfect or the final word. But the six technology categories and structure are certainly a courageous stake in the ground.

Be sure to read Scott’s full post, where he explains what he has done in more detail, provides links to high resolution .png and .pdf versions of the marketing technology landscape super graphic 3.0, links to additional resources, and answers the many comments he has received.

Web content management

Scott’s new landscape also provides some food for thought regarding a second major theme at the conference, which we included in another of the three questions for the speaker spotlights: Do you think “web content management” should be the hub of digital experience management implementations? If so, should it have a new name to match an expanded role? If not, what should be at the center? A slightly different way to think about this is to ask where the center of gravity is in marketing technology architectures.

Scott places WCM and all its variations (CEM, CXM, DXM, etc.) in the Marketing Backbone Platform category. This is surely where it belongs, but it raises lots of questions about just how it ties in with or ties together all the other categories and the variety of technologies within them. And of course there is overlap and competition for the center-of-gravity crown between e-commerce, CRM, and marketing automation platforms, though some of them may not realize it yet. This will be a very interesting game to watch in 2014 (and certainly one we’ll be addressing in this year’s conference). See Scott’s thoughts on this in his CMS Wire post on 9 Key Facts about Web CMS in the Marketing Technology Landscape.

Misty has been collecting posts about this year’s Gilbane Conference. If you see any we are missing please let us know via comment or email. You can also check tweets at #gilbane, or via Topsy, find conference presentations at http://gilbaneconference.com/Presentations.aspx, and see speaker spotlights.

Media Sponsors

CMS Myth
• http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/12/best-bets-at-gilbane-2013-which-sessions-ill-be-attending/
• http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/12/when-will-end-users-overwhelming-love-their-cms/
• http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/12/how-marriott-is-rethinking-content-delivery-across-70-countries-and-3800-hotels/
• added 12/17/13: http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/12/redefining-success-for-web-cms-project-teams/

CMS Wire
• http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/5-ways-marketers-can-improve-the-cms-experience-023410.php
• http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/should-cios-report-to-marketing-ridiculous-its-beginning-to-happen-023396.php
• http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/notes-from-gilbane-business-model-first-customer-experience-second-023388.php
• http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/forrester-4-things-about-customer-experience-management-gilbane-023373.php
• http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/sap-says-link-revenue-to-social-media-to-show-roi-gilbane-023362.php
• http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/cio-reports-to-cmo-technology-under-marketing-gilbane-023356.php
• added 12/20/13:  http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/tips-from-an-industry-user-on-making-web-cms-work-023587.php
• added 3/4/14:  http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/should-the-cio-report-to-the-cmo-024370.php

eContent
• http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/Context-at-Gilbane-93598.htm
• http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/Content-Strategists-vs.-the-CMS-at-Gilbane-93615.htm
• http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/Content-Management-and-Your-Mobile-Strategy-at-Gilbane-93637.htm
• http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/The-Internet-of-Things-Comes-to-Life-at-Gilbane-93641.htm
• added 1/13/14: http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Column/Content-Throwdown/The-Rise-of-the-Marketing-Technologist-93907.htm

Fierce Content Management
• http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/marketing-technologist-could-act-bridge-between-cmo-cio/2013-12-03
• http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/multichannel-delivery-means-its-time-separate-content-creation-presentation/2013-12-03

Blogs

4 hoteliers
• http://www.4hoteliers.com/features/article/8056?awsb_c=rss&awsb_k=xfeed

Accidental Taxonomist
• http://accidental-taxonomist.blogspot.com/2013/12/taxonomy-governance.html

Bluebill Advisors
• added 1/9/14: http://bluebillinc.com/2014/01/findability-issues-impact-everything-work-related/
• http://bluebillinc.com/2013/12/beyond-customer-experience-management/

Chief Marketing Technologist
• http://chiefmartec.com/2013/12/marketing-technologist-neo-marketing-matrix/

Citeworld
• http://www.citeworld.com/social/22751/sap-social-media-streamlined
• http://www.citeworld.com/consumerization/22747/customer-attention-challenge

Creative Virtual
• http://www.creativevirtual.com/blog/?p=821

Curata
• http://www.curata.com/blog/content-marketing-event-gilbane-conference-2013-wrap-up/
• http://www.curata.com/blog/content-marketing-technology-wrap-up-gilbane-2013-video/

Globalization Partners
• added 12/19/13: http://blog.globalizationpartners.com/insights-into-gilbane-conference.aspx

Engaging Times
• http://engagingtimes.com/battle-ready-offer-global-customer-experience-notes-gilbane-frontline/

I-Cubed
• added 12/17/13: 

Jeff Cutler
• http://jeffcutler.com/social-media-blogs/gilbane-conference-2013-content-marketing-track-qa-session-review/#.UqdJXvRDs8w
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6HyjzloD3U

Marketing Think
• http://marketingthink.com/sap-got-social-media-act-together/

The Parallax View – Winter 2014
•  added 3/4/14:  http://www.parallax.ca/?page_id=4665

Zia Consulting
• http://www.ziaconsulting.com/blog/gilbane-conference-2013-recap/

Other

Seen.co
• added 12/17/13: http://seen.co/event/gilbane-conference-2013-boston-ma-2013-527/

I was gratified to have the opportunity to do a presentation on the Global User Experience at the Gilbane Conference, as well as moderating several sessions in the technology track. For those that missed my presentation, I’ve posted a short recap here and a further exploration of the topic.

A common theme throughout the conference sessions was digital experiences and the role of mobile, web, content management, and other technologies in providing superior experiences to customers. That’s to be expected as creating superior customer experiences is a strategic imperative for most organizations, and also the current focus of most content software solutions in the marketplace, including content management systems. What is often overlooked (and the subject of my presentation) is that the CMS doesn’t just support delivery of the customer experience—it also has to support the behind the scenes players that create the customer experience.

Providing a compelling digital user experience is a complex undertaking no matter what the nature of the business or enterprise. It requires a range of talents including authoring, curation, story telling, design, and development, testing and deployment—and the tools to effectively support those diverse skill sets.

The heart of that experience is a modern CMS; in fact, delivering compelling digital user experiences is virtually impossible without one. But selecting the right CMS is challenging—after all, there are many to choose from and it can be difficult to differentiate products—most promise to deliver superior digital user experiences.

But one thing that is often overlooked is that creating great customer experiences requires an orchestrated approach by the “other users” of the CMS: editors and developers. It also requires the integration of tools and content that may reside outside of the CMS. In other words, the quality of the customer experience is directly related to the quality of the experience that a CMS provides to content creators, developers, and integrators.

Digging a bit deeper, content creators are actually a diverse collection of roles and skill sets, not just authors and editors. What’s common across those roles is that many are not full time professional content authors, which makes the quality of the content creator experience vitally important. Content creators want to use tools that are easy and familiar with a short learning curve. Most of all, they want to be able to focus on telling stories and creating great content, not mastering complex tools.

Developers, like content creators, also value ease of use and familiarity. They want to use tools, languages, and frameworks that they are familiar with and that work well in the technology environment in which they live. Most importantly, they want and need to be involved in the process of selecting a CMS—failure to include IT will lead to increased time to operation, and a risk that the chosen solution won’t work well in the enterprise’s IT environment.

The integrator experience involves the developers, partners, and vendors that have to integrate the CMS with enterprise systems and applications (the installed base), but also with solutions from other vendors that help provide the customer experience. If integration is difficult, it will take more time or, worse yet, not be done. Poorly done integration drains energy, productivity, and innovation leading to later, less desirable results.

The solution to providing the global user experience is a well-architected CMS that provides comfortable and easy-to-use core functionality while easily integrating with enterprise and third party tools and applications. The selection of that CMS requires a concerted and cooperative effort on the part of all stakeholders that will ultimately use the content management system. Selection of a CMS is not a technology decision, it’s a strategic business decision that warrants the time, effort, and participation of all business and technology stakeholders in order to render the best decision.

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed a couple of our frequently asked questions to speaker Karl Wirth, CEO and Co-Founder of Evergage. We’ve included his answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

Speaker Spotlight: Karl Wirth

Co-Founder and CEO

Evergage

What is the best overall strategy for delivering content to web, multiple mobile, and upcoming digital channels? What is the biggest challenge? Development and maintenance cost? Content control? Brand management? Technology expertise?

I believe the best overall strategy is delivering relevant content to audiences. Thanks to Big Data and technology, organizations now have the ability to serve their users and visitors dynamic, personalized content, based off of their behaviors and actions. Increasing relevancy and interacting with people in real time will capture attention, drive engagement, and ultimately increase conversions.

Real-time behavior-based personalization:

• Is always relevant
• Drives customer engagement
• Compels action
• Increases conversion rates

The biggest challenges that we have observed are:

• Lack of resources – a customer success manager or marketer may not have the time to utilize a new technology
• Budget constraints – organizations may not have budgeted for a new marketing tool
• Content control – content may be managed by different departments creating inconsistencies and ownership confusion

The truth is that the days of static and irrelevant content are over. In our customer-driven world, organizations should invest to get to know their customers and tailor content to their actions.

Catch Up with Karl at Gilbane

Product Labs

K. From static to real-time web marketing in 45 minutes
Wednesday, December 4:  3:30 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Find out more about this session and our other conference sessions here.

Be sure to follow Karl @Evergage

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