The document discusses the importance of real-time marketing in enhancing customer engagement and loyalty by delivering relevant offers tailored to individual customer needs and behaviors. It highlights best practices for implementing real-time decisioning, balancing business objectives with customer needs, and breaking down organizational silos to facilitate effective marketing strategies. Additionally, it presents real-world examples of successful real-time marketing initiatives and promotes IBM's Enterprise Marketing Management suite as a comprehensive solution for managing complex marketing interactions.

1. IBM Software Enterprise Marketing Management
Thought Leadership White Paper
The Right Time for Real-time Marketing:
Deliver more relevant offers, increase response rates, and create happier,
more profitable customers

2. 2 The Right Time for Real-time Marketing
A leading global hotelier is using real-time marketing to It’s the right time for real-time marketing
enhance loyalty and increase the amount of money spent In a climate of rising customer expectations, now is the right
during each hotel visit. A major financial institution is using time to refine your use of inbound channels – it’s the time to
event-triggered transactional and real-time communications to go real time. Whether you are serving pre-defined static offers,
increase product penetration and turn customer behaviors into no offers, or siloed offers, marketers who continue the status
profitable product investments. These are just two real-world quo are missing a huge opportunity. Even some of the forward-
examples of the impact of real-time marketing. thinking marketers who adopted inbound marketing in its early
days (i.e. the first Internet bubble) may have disparate systems
Selecting the right offer for each customer is a complex in place that silo inbound and outbound marketing. These early
challenge. Customers have taken control of the dialogue and systems have been left largely untouched, and while they are
relationship with your brand as they interact with traditional, delivering some value, they are stagnant; new channels exist
digital and emerging social and mobile channels. Keeping that are not served. Integration between inbound and outbound
your customers engaged requires investing in customer-centric, data, or an upgrade initiative may be on the “to do” list, but
interactive marketing. A cross-channel, real-time marketing global economic challenges forced many businesses to back
strategy that leverages customer-initiated interactions in burner this effort. Although the global economic picture is
inbound channels (call center, website, kiosk, point-of-sale, slow to improve, online marketing is maturing, and interactive
or ATM) enables you to market more effectively. marketing solutions are advancing, so the time is right to
capitalize on this vast opportunity.
Applying real-time marketing practices even further, adding the
ability to integrate customer behavioral data from all channels Best-practice marketers are deploying real-time marketing
(outbound, social, mobile, etc.) delivers even greater marketing strategies to generate offers that are based on deep customer
precision and improves customer engagement for the long profiles, transaction histories, and other rich, real-time context
term. Customers who engage with your brand on their own about the current interaction. The right offer for the right
terms, and share their needs and wants are much more receptive customer, delivered at the right time, is marketing that is so
to marketing offers. Moreover, real-time decisioning takes into relevant it feels like a service. High relevance and the appeal
consideration the context of the customer’s current interaction of personalized customer care help ensure optimal marketing
to identify, prioritize, and deliver the most appropriate message results and lifetime customer value.
in any channel.

3. IBM Software 3
Here are four proven best practices in real-time inbound 3 Use real-time decisioning
marketing that can produce bottom-line results: Traditional marketing relied on historical interactions; today
customer actions in inbound channels can disrupt your best
1 Make it personal laid plans. Real-time decisioning lets you adjust to customer-
Despite your best intentions, you can no longer expect results initiated interactions in the here and now. As interactions
from generic marketing messages where every customer become more digital, marketers have more data that drives
receives the same communication or batch push offers based the need for sophisticated real-time decisioning technology.
on historical data. Your customers expect you to know them, These self-learning systems use complex, automated
to take into consideration the context of their current interaction, algorithms to figure out which offer each customer is most
and to deliver personal, relevant messages. One of the likely to respond to, based on their customer profile and
Netherlands’ leading financial institutions uses real-time their current behavior.
marketing to deliver personal offers to customers whose
savings accounts are underutilized. As a result, they have 4 Enable collaboration
increased savings revenue by 5 percent. One of the most common obstacles to achieving real-time
marketing is the typical marketing organization’s siloed
2 Balance business objectives with customer needs organizational structure. Channel silos create barriers to
You can achieve business goals while delivering real-time effective centralized decisioning, and hinder agile, real-time
marketing. It’s possible to steer customers to options in marketing, so organizational buy-in, coordinated marketing
products and services that meet their needs and your business campaigns, and clear commitment are essential to success.
objectives. For example, a leading global loyalty program
service provider shows loyalty program members that by
purchasing “this” versus “that” (when “that” is a product with
a higher profit margin) they can earn more points and bigger
rewards faster.

4. 4 The Right Time for Real-time Marketing
Real-time marketing in action • A major financial institution is using a combination
Today, leading marketers are using real-time marketing with of event-triggered transactional and real-time
great success. From retail to financial services companies, communications to increase product penetration and
real-time marketing is an investment made to convert fleeting proactively turn customer behaviors into profitable
opportunities into profitable customer interactions that increase product investments. A series of event-triggered
bottom-line revenue and build strong customer relationships. transactional marketing campaign strategies have been
Here are two examples of winning real-time marketing strategies. designed to detect significant customer deposits and
withdrawals. Once an event is identified, a campaign
• A worldwide hospitality organization is using real-time leverages lifetime value, response, and cross-sell models
execution as an important component of its overall to determine the most effective offer, if any, for the
marketing strategy to build customer dialogues, enhance individual. If an offer is recommended, the customer is
loyalty and, ultimately, increase the amount of money contacted within 24 hours by a Relationship Manager.
spent during each hotel visit. Upon making a reservation, Real-time campaigns are also being executed via the
a guest receives a confirmation email delivered in a matter web, ATMs, and call centers, based on specific customer
of minutes summarizing his reservation with a tailored up- requests. These event-triggered marketing campaigns
sell offer. Forty-eight hours prior to the visit, he receives have delivered an increase in response rate from 20
another email listing the activities available at the hotel percent to 30 percent as well as significant incremental
during his stay, as well as a promotion to encourage revenue. More importantly, the real-time marketing
participation. The promotion is based on historical activities are integrated into an overall marketing and
customer data, preferences, and predictive analysis. branding strategy, focused on helping the bank’s
When the guest checks in, he receives a tailored letter customers to become “financially better off,” which is
summarizing the daily activities and, again, coupons to leading to increased customer loyalty and profitability.
participate.
L
astly, after check-out, the individual is contacted through
their preferred channel to gather information pertaining
to the visit as well as to encourage future visits. This
timely, relevant and optimized dialogue communication
strategy has increased customer loyalty while increasing
the average revenue generated per visit. The investment
in a flexible and scalable real-time solution that integrates
with a marketing technology platform that handles not
only real-time activities but also periodic and transactional
activities has resulted in significant ROI and impressive
bottom-line results.

5. IBM Software 5
Real opportunity to improve About IBM Enterprise Marketing
marketing results Management
Real-time marketing is a golden opportunity to engage The IBM Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) Suite
customers in meaningful dialogue. Inbound interactions is an end-to-end, integrated set of capabilities designed
represent a time when your company has your customer’s exclusively for the needs of marketing and related organizations.
undivided attention. You are more likely to receive permission Integrating and streamlining all aspects of marketing, IBM’s
to cross-sell or deliver a marketing message during inbound EMM Suite empowers organizations and individuals to turn
interactions. This is your chance to address your customer on their passion for marketing into valuable customer relationships
a personal basis, to present relevant messages and offers that and more profitable, efficient, timely, and measurable business
reflect their most up-to-date needs, preferences, and priorities, outcomes.
particularly as the line between inbound and outbound
marketing begins to blur. Customers are adept at moving across Delivered on premises or in the Cloud, the IBM EMM Suite
multiple channels—for example, researching purchases online of software solutions gives marketers the tools and insight they
but picking up in store. need to create individual customer value at every touch. The
IBM EMM Suite helps marketers to understand customer wants
IBM Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) provides and needs and leverage that understanding to engage buyers
an end-to-end interactive marketing platform that includes in highly relevant, interactive dialogs across digital, social, and
everything you need to be as agile as your customers – to traditional marketing channels.
operate seamlessly across all channels, inbound and outbound,
mobile and social, in a complete range of media. Designed to address the specific needs of particular marketing
and merchandising users, the IBM EMM Suite is comprised
of five individual solutions. Digital Marketing Optimization
enables digital marketers to orchestrate relevant digital
interactions to attract and retain new visitors and grow revenue
throughout the customer’s lifecycle. With Customer Experience
Optimization eCommerce professionals can turn visitors into
repeat customers and loyal advocates by improving the digital
experience of every customer. With Cross-Channel Marketing
Optimization customer relationship marketers can engage
customers in a one-to-one dialogue across channels to grow
revenue throughout the customer’s lifecycle. Price, Promotion
and Product Mix Optimization allows merchandisers and
sales planners to make price, promotion and product mix
decisions that maximize profit and inventory utilization. And
with Marketing Performance Optimization, marketing leaders,
planners and decision-makers can model and assess mix, and
manage marketing operations to maximize ROI.

6. Over 2,500 organizations around the world use IBM EMM
solutions to help manage the pressures of increasing marketing
complexity while delivering improved revenue and measurable
results. IBM’s time-tested and comprehensive offerings are
giving companies such as Dannon, E*TRADE, ING, Orvis,
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For more information November 2012
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