Mark Cattini, CEO at Acoustic chats about the evolving martech landscape and how marketers can use various martech features to drive better customer alignment and experiences in a competitive market:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Mark. Tell us about your B2B tech journey and what you are looking forward to as Acoustic’s new CEO…

I’ve worked in the software industry throughout my career, but I’ve never been more excited about an opportunity than joining Acoustic as CEO. The MarTech industry is ripe for disruption. While there are thousands of MarTech solution providers today, our portfolio of products gives B2C companies across industries the insights they need to craft hyper-personalized digital experiences that drive loyalty and conversion.

But there’s work to be done to continue innovating in this space, which is why I’m thrilled to join a team with such an incredible vision and hunger for questioning the status quo. With our established roots and proven technology, Acoustic has a strong foundation from which to build innovative solutions that help our customers connect to consumers and gain a competitive advantage.

Take us through Acoustic’s 2023 goals/roadmap and how you are hoping to drive team success through various processes…

Our goal is to establish Acoustic as a major player in the MarTech space and that means we’re aiming for exponential expansion in the next few years. The total addressable market is massive, with amazing upside and growth potential. With our differentiated offering, Acoustic can be a significant challenger to legacy players in the space as well as new providers that are popping up with point solutions.

As we enhance our product offerings, we’re focused on helping marketers do more with less. Businesses have high expectations when it comes to how the marketing team contributes to the bottom line. We’re committed to creating easy-to-use solutions that any marketer – no matter their technical acumen – can utilize, helping reduce the need for coding resources or developer support. Because our solutions give businesses a direct path to connecting with consumers, visibility into the customer journey is a critical component of our offering.

When you overlay behavioral data, analytics capabilities, and marketing automation, you can close insights gaps and begin orchestrating customer journeys that lead to long-term growth and loyalty.

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When it comes to the (very important) criteria of not just enhancing customer experiences across digital journeys but also measuring how they impact buying journeys, what would you suggest marketers/advertisers and sellers do more of to keep a stronger hold on this?

The digital landscape is constantly changing as new channels, technologies, privacy restrictions, and Big Tech company policies (e.g., Apple Mail privacy restrictions) emerge. With this complexity, marketers need a partner that can guide them not only from a compliance perspective, but also as they aim to orchestrate meaningful customer journeys. But this has been a challenge historically as marketing orchestration and management capabilities have typically been separate from analytics solutions, causing gaps in marketers’ understanding of how consumers engage with the brand.

Moving forward, it will be critical for marketers to rely on solutions that close these digital experience gaps. To provide personal, relevant, timely, and frictionless experiences, digital experience insights and marketing automation must come together seamlessly. As the go-to-market team continues to grapple with these challenges, Acoustic can be a true partner to guide businesses through the storm.

What are some of the best customer experiences practices you’ve seen across the online commerce market?

One brand that succeeds with orchestrating meaningful customer journeys is Delta Airlines – I’m a frequent flyer and often receive their updates. What Delta does incredibly well is create a holistic digital journey where I can access important, timely flight information when I need it and on my preferred channel. This last piece is key: Delta understands what my communication preferences are and rather than sending me the same message on every channel available, they will target the channels I use most. This example gives us five best practices that I think every B2C business should consider:

1. Deploy marketing automation technology that enables you to create hyper-personalized digital experiences across touchpoints. This means that while your customer may prefer one channel over another, you have one solution that enables your team to easily create personalized messages on any channel – email, SMS/MMS, mobile push, WhatsApp, web forms, etc. This improves both productivity and marketing effectiveness.
2. Create a multichannel strategy that focuses on enabling customers’ channel of choice. With so many brands vying for consumer attention online, your brand doesn’t need to add to it – encourage conversions by using consumers’ preferred communication channel(s). While some marketers think more channels equates to more conversions, it’s really identifying the right channel for each individual consumer that will capture their attention and drive loyalty.
3. Gain a deeper understanding of how and why consumers engage with your digital channels by deploying digital experience insights. With technology that bridges the gap between online interactions and marketing engagements, you can gain a deeper understanding of the customer experience and then use those insights to optimize and personalize it.
4. Harness first- and zero-party data to effectively personalize the customer experience. This helps futureproof your data strategy as third-party cookies deprecate and provides you with deep insight into consumer needs and preferences, which you can leverage to tailor the experience.
5. Break down internal silos so all teams that contribute to the customer experience (e.g., web, sales, customer success/support, marketing, etc.) are aligned to a single strategy. By connecting these teams, you can work in lockstep to orchestrate the customer journey without creating confusing experiences.

Can you highlight some of the near future trends that you feel are set to shape the customer experience aspect of a typical online journey down the line?

The privacy landscape is having a major impact on how we market today and will continue to shape the customer experience for years to come. The deprecation of third-party cookies as well as privacy updates from companies like Apple are giving marketers less visibility into who their customers are and whether they’re engaging with the communications brands send.

On top of this, tech giants like Google and Meta are capturing consumer data and using it to displace businesses’ relationships with their customers by effectively stepping between the brand and consumer, making it more difficult for the brand to leverage customer data effectively. Businesses will need to update their data strategy to focus on first- and zero-party data in order to effectively shape the customer journey moving forward.

Outside of the privacy landscape, the customer journey is increasingly complex as new digital channels arise. Understanding which touchpoints consumers have had with a brand and where the consumer is in the customer journey is complicated by the many digital channels available today. However, if a brand can gain a holistic view of the customer journey and the many digital touchpoints consumers have, it becomes easier to optimize and personalize the customer experience.

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A few common misconceptions about B2B marketing and MarTech that you’d like to dispel before we wrap up?

At the most basic level, it’s critical to understand the difference between B2B and B2C marketing so you can choose the right technology for your business. B2B marketing means a business is marketing to another business with the goal of selling their product or service to the business. These marketers focus on demonstrating how their product or service adds value to the business or solves specific pain points. Additionally, B2B marketers are typically focused on finding new, unknown contacts to target and sell to – lead generation is a primary function.

B2C marketing means a business is marketing to consumers directly – they are the primary audience and the ones who will buy the product or service being marketed. With B2C marketing, making an emotional connection is a key tactic for driving conversion, which typically takes place on the brand’s digital channels (e.g., website or mobile app). Because B2C marketers attempt to engage consumers directly, you typically know who your audience is based on previous engagements with your brand – you have an existing database you can utilize to target customers and attract lookalike audiences. In B2C marketing, understanding the journey planned versus the journey taken is key to unlocking insights that can help you orchestrate future customer journeys.

Because the audiences are different, the technology needed to connect with them is different too. However, there are so many elements of marketing technology that there’s a lack of clarity in the market: B2B companies will consider B2C platforms and vice versa.

If you’re planning to purchase a marketing automation platform or digital experience insights solution, ensure you choose a MarTech partner that specializes in your field and delivers the specific capabilities that meet your business needs. The most robust technology platforms are often too complex for mid-market or even enterprise businesses, while a B2B marketing platform may not have the right functionality to support a B2C company.

Ensure the technology you select is flexible and able to integrate seamlessly with other platforms to create a best-in-breed MarTech stack.