Four essential steps to digital marketing optimisation

Four essential steps to digital
marketing optimization
How marketers can dissolve silos and turn visitors into repeat
customers through continuous engagement across digital channels
and devices

2
1 2 3 4
Siloed marketing is no
longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
Dissolve analytic silos Deliver an omni-channel
experience
5 6 7
Maximize the moment Continuously measure,
manage and improve
Accelerate your path the value
with IBM Digital Marketing

Four essential steps to digital marketing optimization
longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
Dissolve analytic silos
Deliver an omni-channel
experience
Maximize the moment
Continuously measure,
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
IBM Digital Marketing
3
Today’s customers don’t think in terms of channels. But
marketers do. And that’s one of the greatest challenges
facing marketing today.
Customers expect a consistent and relevant experience
whether they engage over a laptop or mobile app, social
media or inside a store, a marketing email or your call cen-
ter. Marketers, meanwhile, are busily optimizing channels
silo by silo. While that’s good, it’s no longer good enough.
To drive revenue and loyalty, marketers need to raise their
sights toward achieving continuous customer engagement
across all channels. Traditional marketing silos need to be
dissolved so that each channel works in concert—not in
competition—with others. Digital marketing is inherently
measurable and generates data that can be used across
all channels, and is therefore naturally at the center of
omni-channel marketing.
Siloed marketing is no longer good enough
longer good enough
That’s especially true as smartphone and tablet usage
continues to soar.
Consider: Mobile devices accounted for 40 percent of
all US online retail web traffic on Black Friday 2013, up 34
percent from a year earlier, according to the IBM Digital
Analytics Benchmark service. Black Friday mobile sales
also grew, to 22 percent of all online sales, a 43 percent
increase over 2012.
With mobile devices and social media, customers have
rewritten the rules of how they interact with brands and
purchase goods and services. As customers hopscotch
across channels and devices, marketers who offer a valued
experience at every touchpoint will reap the rewards of
better marketing performance and profitability.
21% increase
in online retail sales
45% increase
in mobile traffic
55% increase
in mobile sales
Figure 1: U.S. data for Cyber Monday 2013. Source: IBM Digital
Analytics Benchmark.

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
4
Delivering a consistent customer experience across all
channels is a top priority in marketing in all industries. In
retail, for instance, 84 percent of marketers name a con-
sistent experience the most important aspect of an omni-
channel strategy, a Retail Systems Research survey found.
Yet vision remains far from reality.
Out-innovating your connected customers
A key reason: Customers have leveraged technological
innovation in smartphones, tablets and social media,
leaving marketers to play catch-up. Can digital marketers
counter this wave of innovation with innovations of their
own? The answer is a decided “yes”—and leading com-
panies are already doing so.
Out-innovating your
connected customers
IBM is committed to equipping digital marketers with
solutions to move from marketing siloed in email, website,
social media, mobile and advertising toward a cohesive
framework that uniformly and continuously engages
customers across all digital channels. And this pays off.
Many IBM customers achieve results such as 3x higher
sales per email sent, 15x higher ROI on display ads and
70 percent increase in cross-sell revenue.
With a focus on a single customer view across all touch-
points, real-time offers, analytics and cross-channel
integration, leading marketers are dramatically more effec-
tive than the majority that labors on with the status quo.
For instance, leaders are 5.6x more effective in their use
of optimization technology across channels, according to
IBM’s annual survey of global marketers for 2013.
How do you get there? The move to digital marketing
optimization involves four essential steps of dissolving
analytic silos, delivering an omni-channel experience,
maximizing the moment with real-time engagement, and
continuously measuring and improving results.
Silos between analytics marketing
execution, merchandising and content
From: To:
Break down silos
to better engage customers and deliver
exceptional customer experience
Silos between channels and devices
Omni-channel marketing
delivering the right experiences via the right
channel every time
“One-size-ﬁts-all” marketing
Maximize the moment
with real-time and predictive analytics to delight
customers in context
Average success rates Consistently measure and improve results
such as conversion rates, repeat sales
Figure 2: The four essential steps to digital marketing optimization.

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
5
Step 1
Each of your customers is unique. Ideally, your marketing
communications to customers would be as unique as
they are, with a personalized flavor that reflects their
interests and activity. That’s not possible when you have
a fragmented customer view across channels, devices
and programs.
Satisfying the ever-growing customer demand for a seam-
less brand experience requires analytics that stitches
together a single customer picture from all digital channels
—website, email, mobile web and app, SMS text, social
media and digital advertising. As channel and device
choices continue to grow, this need is only increasing.
The best marketers treat each customer as an individual
within a system of engagement that creates mutual value
at every touchpoint. By matching higher customer expec-
tations with deeper customer insights into who they are
and what they want, marketers are delivering the right
message to the right person over the right channel at the
right time.
IBM Digital Analytics supplies a unified data foundation
that spans devices and channels, analytics and marketing
execution, digital marketing and merchandising, and other
areas to form a single picture of all customer transactions
and interactions. For example, pathing capabilities in
IBM Digital Analytics let you explore interaction sequences
leading to conversion (Figure 3). With these insights, you’re
positioned to engage each customer at points most likely
to succeed.
And with the IBM Tealeaf®
customer experience manage-
ment solution, you can go beyond the “what” of digital
activity to understand the root-cause “why” behind
online conversion or transaction failure or other issues.
Figure 3: Pathing in IBM Digital Analytics illustrates interaction
sequences, across time and devices, leading to conversion.
IBM Digital Analytics:
Gain insight from digital analytics and
comparative benchmarks using a cloud solution.
ibm.com/software/products/digital-analytics

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
6
Video: Know your customer Video: Optimize the customer experience
Marketers need to go beyond demographic
segments to understand customers individually.
Visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=b82Quinl7ac
Identify and eliminate problems customers
experience in digitally interacting with your brand.
Visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXZE71KddZE
Know your customer to optimize their experience
Today, the vast amount of data that customers are
generating lets marketers understand customers not
just as segments or targets, but as actual individuals.
Leading businesses are leveraging this understanding
of their customers to deliver relevant experiences that
drive loyalty and profitability.

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
7
With a single customer portrait from a unified data founda-
tion, you’re ready to put insight into action, either with
automation or a couple of clicks. IBM gives you the tech-
nology you need to continuously engage customers in a
relevant and interactive dialogue based on current and
past behavior, across any digital channel.
With digital campaign management, you can synchronize
personalized marketing across touchpoints. For instance,
if a registered customer browsed a product on a website
or abandoned an item in a shopping cart, follow up with
a personalized product-specific or brand-specific email or
mobile message. IBM lets you create a “surround sound”
marketing environment and the seamless omni-channel
experience that customers want.
Retargeting site visitors with display ads, either immedia-
tely after they leave a site or in the days to follow, reminds
shoppers of your brand and drives return visits and con-
version. Location-based targeting to GPS-enabled devices
opens new avenues for businesses to incent customers
when they’re in or near a store.
You don’t need a legion of marketers and IT personnel to
succeed. IBM marketing customers typically report double
-digit and triple-digit gains in productivity because of ease
of use. Marketers have hands-on control and flexibility to
scale hundreds of campaigns across many thousands
of customers in an integrated and automated environment.
experience
White paper: Omni-channel Product
Recommendations: Maximizing Impact
and Customer Engagement
Read this white paper
discover the benefits of
omni-channel recom-
mendations, and learn
best practices for driving
increased revenue and
customer engagement.
Visit: ibm.biz/BdRV7t
Deliver an omni-channel experience
Step 2

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
8
There’s no better time to interact with customers than
when they’re engaging with your brand. Marketers who
lack capabilities for real-time personalized interaction
are leaving money on the table and opening the door for
fickle shoppers to depart without a purchase, and with
no incentive to return.
To maximize your returns, look to maximize the moment.
The best marketing teams are backed by real-time tech-
nology that lets them orchestrate engagement at points
of peak consideration—when customers are browsing
a website or Facebook page, writing reviews or using a
mobile app. You win more than a single purchase. You
also build loyalty and return business by demonstrating
that you understand the customer.
For instance, real-time product and content recommen-
dations are proven to enrich customer engagement and
drive revenue. IBM technology automates presentation of
cross-sell or alternative products as a shopper browses
a site or prepares to check out, using current session,
historical data and business rules for personalization.
Displaying data-driven offers increases conversion and
average order value. Similarly, for businesses that are
oriented to delivering content instead of products, dis-
playing related content, from a how-to guide to a user
forum, extends time on site.
Maximize the moment
Real time can expand beyond digital channels to encom-
pass physical and call center environments with IBM
Cross-Channel Marketing Optimization. For example,
brick-and-mortar retailers can engage in-store shoppers
with mobile apps, and equip store associates and digital
kiosks with capabilities to deliver a personalized based on
a customer’s presence in-store. Similarly, call center agents
can access unified customer records and pitch recom-
mendations based on that customer’s history.
Video: Real-time marketing
Learn how IBM real-time marketing can help
you engage customers at points of peak interest.
Visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=G10m6vFpoAg
Maximize the moment
sees 75%
sales leap
S&S Worldwide, a distributor of arts and crafts and
sporting goods products, upgraded from a manual
approach to IBM Product Recommendations to
deliver real-time personalized recommendations to
site visitors. Recommendations-driven sales leapt
75 percent, while related IBM marketing solutions
helped S&S gain 33 percent in click-to-order
conversions and 50 percent in its email open rate.
ibm.biz/BdRVWx
Step 3

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
9
Continuously measure, manage and improve
Customer behavior is constantly changing. A digital
marketing campaign that excelled six months ago could
flop tomorrow as customer channel and device preferen-
ces change, and new habits and interests emerge. You
recognize the need to closely monitor marketing perfor-
mance, but siloed programs and delays get in the way
of an accurate, real-time picture of your success.
Measuring campaigns and interactions by silos can gene-
rate misleading results, undermine overall performance
and lead you to misallocate marketing spend. With IBM,
you get a unified foundation for continuous measurement
and improvement across all your channels. For example,
sophisticated channel attribution gives you an accurate
representation of the influence of customer interactions
over multiple channels and devices over time.
And with measurement, you gain essential insights into
how your customers use mobile devices. For example,
smartphones are more popular for browsing, but more
customers purchase over tablets, according to the free
IBM Digital Benchmark service, based on data from more
than 800 retailers, which lets you compare your perfor-
mance against your vertical and sub-vertical. Those
distinctions are critical to shaping your mobile strategy.
To align your disparate marketing stakeholders and maxi-
mize results, IBM digital marketing solutions supplies
visibility and control over end-to-end marketing manage-
ment, from campaign initiation to reporting and analysis.
manage and improve
IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark
Compare your website performance against industry
peers and competitors for optimum performance insight.
ibm.biz/BdRVWD
Video: Realizing the value
of marketing attribution
Find out how to gain unprecedented levels of
insight into every campaign and analyze the
impact and returns of marketing. Watch now:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwpao6eMFeU
Step 4
White paper: Digital marketing
attribution: More relevant than ever
Explore how IBM enables
you to measure marketing
success across multiple
channels and campaigns.
ibm.biz/BdRVWc

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
10
Accelerate your path to value with IBM digital marketing solutions
Business expectations for marketing to execute customer-
centric programs and deliver quantified results that streng-
then the top line are higher than ever. As competition
and pressure intensifies, marketers have to move quickly
to realign their processes and systems to the new “custo-
mer in charge” reality.
Putting the customer at the center of the business is the
core principal of IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative. Our
cloud-based marketing solutions are geared for rapid
implementation and ease of use that enable leading mar-
keters to accelerate the path to value. With rich data
collection, analytics and tightly integrated marketing exe-
cution, IBM digital marketing solutions opens new
opportunities to connect with more customers in more
meaningful ways over more channels and devices.
No matter where you are in the journey to digital marke-
ting optimization, the modular IBM digital marketing
solutions solution offers you multiple points of entry with
flexibility to grow. Through the fusion of real-time web
analytics, customer profiles and digital marketing testing
and execution, IBM empowers your marketers to deliver
a personalized and compelling experience throughout
each customer’s lifecycle.
A cloud-based solution, IBM digital marketing solutions
enables you to scale across thousands of campaigns
and millions of customers, with speed not possible with
stand-alone applications. At the same time, it lets you en-
gage each customer one on one with relevant content
and offers that turn site visitors into repeat customers
and brand evangelists.
IBM digital marketing solutions can help you:
• Drive digital marketing with a complete picture
of the customer
• Target customers for personalization across all
channels and devices
• Gain deep analytic insights into customers,
campaigns and channels
• Go from insight to action in a few clicks, and
automate campaigns based on customer behavior
• Accurately attribute success by channel and
optimize your ongoing efforts
When you deliver a meaningful and rewarding shopping
and brand experience consistently across channels and
devices, customers remember you. You gain repeat buyers
and loyal advocates who recommend your business to
others, both via circles of friends and positive reviews of
your products and services. That’s the foundation of sus-
tainable marketing success.
Accelerate your
path the value with
IBM digital marketing solutions:
Turn site visitors into repeat customers and
loyal advocates by orchestrating a compelling
experience through each customer’s lifecycle.
ibm.biz/BdRVWR

longer good enough
Out-innovating your
connected customers
experience
Maximize the moment
manage and improve
Accelerate your
path the value with
11
Smarter Commerce: An integrated approach
IBM Smarter Commerce is designed to help companies
orchestrate the ecosystem to consistently deliver opti-
mum experiences throughout the customer journey and
drive profitable growth. It includes buy, market, sell and
service processes that put the customer at the center of
decisions and actions to improve customer loyalty, profi-
tability and agility.
Smarter Commerce solutions are available on premise
or through Cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
IBM offers more than 100 SaaS solutions that are designed
to help organizations accelerate business process inno-
vation, make impactful and informed decisions through
analytics, and collaborate throughout the value chain to
become a truly customer-centric organization.
The IBM integrated portfolio for Smarter Commerce
includes consulting and services, advanced analytics,
infrastructure, managed services and a set of industry-
leading solutions for the commerce cycle core business
processes of buy, market, sell and service. Learn more
at ibm.com/smartercommerce.

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Produced in the United States of America
May 2014
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Tealeaf and Smarter Commerce are
trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered
in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names
might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list
of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and
trademark information” at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and
may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available
in every country in which IBM operates.
The performance data and client examples cited are presented for
illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary
depending on specific configurations and operating conditions.
THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVID-
ED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF
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to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they
are provided.
1 Retail Systems Research, “Omni-channel 2013: The Long Road
to Adoption,” June 2013.
2 IBM, “The State of Marketing 2013: IBM’s Global Survey of
Marketers,” July 2013.

Four essential steps to digital marketing optimisation

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Four essential steps to digital marketing optimisation