Chief Marketing Officers are confirmed custodians of “Customer Experience” in 2019. In countless interviews that we have done with Marketing Technology leaders, we have found out a universal opinion from the CMOs and their counterparts developing the MarTech product. It is —”Customer Experience is at the pinnacle of MarTech ROI. Brands that build the best, real-time customer experiences are the ones who have mastered their MarTech stack and have full control on four inter-related capabilities: Data Management, Content Marketing, Analytics, and AI.”

In 2019, CMOs should be lazer-focused at developing their Marketing Technology stack for leading them to the Customer Experience. In short, customer experience is your insurance to surviving the fierce competition from emerging players.

Forrester also named these Customer Experience professionals as equal stakeholders in the way businesses demonstrate and adopt customer experience as a discipline across their organization.

• Chief Customer Officer
• Chief Experience Officer
• Director of Customer Experience
• VP of Brand Experience

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In a recent chat, Darren Guarnaccia, Chief Product Officer, Crownpeak, said, “Success lies in tech that works in a simple, more easily adopted way that improves a marketers’ effectiveness and agility.”

As a custodian of delivering and managing Customer Experience with Marketing Technologies, you could focus on these platforms for 2019:

• A Unified Customer Data Platform, to unify online/offline customer data.
• Predictive Analytics with Big Data Capabilities, to analyze insights from customers, sales teams and marketing operations.
• Conversational AI and Contextual Marketing tools, to understand the sentiment and real-time behavior of customers when they interact with your brand digitally, or physically at stores or at events.

However, we are also wary of the reasonable MarTech arms race that CMOs could indulge in their effort to scoot into Customer Experience territory without preparation.

Darren warned, “In recent years we have seen marketing platforms balloon in complexity and breadth, causing frustration among marketers. Technological advancements have led to an explosion in software components causing the ‘feature-adding’ arms race that we see today.”

“Not only are these platforms’ ‘bolted-on’ features complex and often unnecessary to the marketers using them they also tend to be largely disconnected from one another, causing a lack of efficiency. As we head into 2019, I see a return to best of breed technologies and a move towards more simplified and streamlined MarTech solutions and processes,” he added.

Apart from optimizing the MarTech stack in 2019, CMO’s compass should also direct efforts in optimizing the customer journeys, fine-tuned with personalization across the Website, Social Media, Email and Event tech strategies.

Putting things into better perspective, Anthony Hearne, Chief Commercial Officer at Rokt, added, “Customer journeys cross over an increasing number of channels and devices, becoming even more complex with every newly connected device that is launched. Adopting more scientifically rigorous measurement methods, such as incrementality, is now essential for anyone looking to understand the true value of every customer interaction.”

In a recent report, the “essential elements” of delivering positive customer experiences were:

• Speed (customers want a resolution of their queries in 10 minutes or less!, via Conduent)
• Convenience
• Customer Service Quality

Also Read: Marketing Technology Primer on “What is Sentiment Analysis”

To ensure these essential elements stay in sync, technology has to be top-notch and well-oiled with Automation and Performance analytics.

Though we are still at the beginning of 2019 and hearing what CMOs have to say about the ‘State of Marketing Technology for Customer Experience’, the role of internal business policies, employee management and extent of automation have only grown bigger and shinier.

What are your expectations from Marketing Technology in 2019? Drop us a line at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com.

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