MarTech Interview with Dan Silver, CMO at ZineOne

Dan Silver, CMO at ZineOne shares more on how B2B marketers can boost results with improved intent-based marketing tactics:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Dan, tell us about your marketing journey through the years and more about your role at ZineOne…

My journey into marketing began with my love of print advertising. I was always fascinated with the different ways to style copy and fell in love with creative campaigns. My grandfather was a successful creative director during the high times of the ad agency business, so I grew up with a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the creative process.

The brand storytelling component of my background led me on my journey into marketing. Now as the CMO of ZineOne, we’re redefining the way marketers and eCommerce leaders target their online audiences through innovations in a new category that we call in-session marketing.

Tell us about some of ZineOne’s core features and how it enables industry marketers?

ZineOne enables top eCommerce brands with the potential to convert 100% of their website traffic, even if their online customer base is anonymous. We’ve seen in the majority of cases up to 90% of all website traffic is anonymous, meaning you can’t tie the identity of online visitors to any known data points, such as an email or rewards account.

However, through machine learning and real-time behavioral data, we can better understand consumer intent and deliver more effective personalized experiences without relying on any historical data or personally identifiable information (PII). This means creating a highly personalized experience for the site visitor, which can lift existing conversion rates by more than 60% for on-the-fence consumers.

Can you explain what “in-session marketing” is and the role it plays in digital marketing?

In-session marketing is the ability to engage active site and app users in real-time, based solely on their current contextual behavior. Today’s brands are facing a data conundrum. With the death of third-party cookies and pending privacy regulations looming, the way we target and identify consumers has to change. Simultaneously, consumers are extremely hesitant to share their data and continue to expect brands to deliver a personalized experience.

In-session marketing answers this problem. Through in-the-moment, contextual data, businesses can deliver a more relevant experience in real time without requiring the site visitor to provide PII.  As acquisition-based targeting becomes more difficult and remarketing activities less powerful, the ability to convert consumers at this “golden moment” when they’re active on a brand’s property is critical for long-term success.

When it comes to better understanding intent data and using it to drive impact, what should marketing and sales teams do more of?

We’ve reached a point of data overload. Data has been somewhat endlessly available, which has made us overly reliant on particular data points that just create noise in the end. Moreover, consumers’ shopping habits change so rapidly that historical data can’t predict their next steps accurately. For example, I was just visiting a site for a retailer I’ve purchased clothing from in the past, but this time I was buying a gift for someone else.

Throughout my shopping journey I was consistently shown items that were similar to previous items I’ve purchased, but I wasn’t looking to purchase something for myself. The website completely missed the mark. Rather, by relying on in-session and real-time intelligence, the retailer would have been able to deliver a more relevant experience to me at that time. The best way marketing and sales teams can better understand intent data is by reconsidering their definition of intent and stop the over-reliance on historical data.

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Can you talk about some of the ways in which leading brands use intent-based marketing tactics to drive their overall ROI?

Leading brands will see intent-based marketing as an opportunity to create efficiency for their business rather than just another way to drive ROI. If a consumer visits a brand’s website with the intent to purchase, the best thing a brand can do is remove any friction to making that purchase.

Brands have different methods they can rely on to help nudge a sale, but the very best marketers only use these methods when they are the optimal path to driving a purchase or lead to a higher order value. Intent-based marketing tactics that are used to understand all types of consumer purchase pathways can be leveraged in substantial ways to significantly increase ROI and customer loyalty

As a modern-day CMO, what are some of the core strategies and martech that you rely on often to drive your own marketing goals?

I see the biggest challenge of CMO’s these days as the ability to strike the right balance between short-term results and long-term objectives. CMOs are consumers, too, and we are bombarded with new products and tools each and every day. We want to see how these new solutions work, but we can’t at the expense of undercutting our long-term objectives. The most effective marketing objective has not changed. It’s still all about building a trusted brand that delivers value consistently. For me, delivering relevant content is the core strategy to achieving this goal.

Martech is a vessel to help deliver, measure, and optimize that content. If you can be successful at reaching your target market with the right content and know how to make it scalable and replicable, you are going to be successful. But striking the right balance in testing new solutions that bring value to your business objectives will enable long-term success through innovation.

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Some last thoughts on the future of martech and B2B marketing?

I don’t see a future where martech makes the job of marketing considerably “easier.” This is largely due to the fact that nothing stays the same when it comes to innovation or consumer demand. Major marketing assets, like apps, weren’t even a widespread concept 20 years ago, and TikTok, for example, is less than five years old, but the concept has proven to be unique and therefore successful.  So for the future of B2B marketing, marketers must be willing to lean into new product offerings that make sense for their goals and not settle for the familiar habit of complacency.