(Take-aways from the Digital Velocity Europe 2016 event hosted by Tealium)
Mobtimizers just returned from a two-day conference and training session in London at the Digital Velocity Europe 2016 event hosted by Tealium. The main theme of the conference was to discuss how brands and companies can produce more profitable omnichannel experiences by orchestrating their customer data. We have collected a few headlines from the presentations and discussions.
From browser to mobile first
As we are currently witnessing the biggest shift in data experienced in the last 20 years – the shift from browser based to native mobile will change the future. Keynote speaker, Anthony Thomson, Founder & Chairman of the much hyped mobile bank, Atom Bank, established in April 2014, as the world’s first mobile-only bank, said:
“The considerations to go mobile only were based on our insights into mobile behaviour. You check your phone as the first thing in the morning – and the last thing before you go to sleep at night. Therefore, it should be easy for our users to access us via mobile. We have used data to understand the current and future financial situation of the consumers to build a strong platform – and to give our customers, who embrace mobile a better product and a better experience.”
He continued: “The future for successful businesses lie in our ability to use data and analytics – and to bring data together to understand the customer needs. We will experience a shift in focus from being customer led – to being customer obsessed. It is becoming increasingly important to understand and get insights from your customers to build a meaningful customer centric brand for mobile.”
The results of the customer centric approach – among others in creating Atom Bank – are features such as seven different personalized logos, face and voice recognition used as login instead of pins and passwords, and an option to switch between left and right handed menus.
Move!
Jordi Roura, Technical Product Analyst, Schibsted, seconded: “The future is definitely not just about collecting data, your success is about how you use it and how fast you can move. So it’s about embracing technology and finding the right tools to do things like A/B testing in hours instead of months and then quickly being able to adapt and change. Agility is going to be the key to future marketing and a vital part of our business, because the traditional IT processes are too slow.”
Phil Bevan, representing Digital Optimisation of Vodafone, emphasizes that the speed of development of the technology is a challenge. When talking about how to optimize the global digital experience he adds, “App analytics are still more immature than web analytics and the costs of maintaining and releasing apps is still a challenge to deal with for many businesses who want to go mobile. Today, apps are harder to track and optimize, so when wanting to go mobile it is necessary to have a clear idea about what you want to achieve in terms of business objectives and KPI’s. And always start small and scale up from there.”
Know your customer – the group is dead
In the panel session, Jay Calavas, Chief Innovation Officer of Tealium gave the coup de grâce to segmentation, “traditional segmentation as we know it is dead. Now we have to deal with audiences instead.” He was supported by Mike Fong, Senior Manager Service Expert, from ObservePoint, “The problem with traditional segmentation is that it does not consider the fact that people can fit into many different boxes, so the discipline is now evolving into a more individual level. Consumers are constantly shifting behaviour and moving between different segments. Here A/B testing can be used as a way to find out what triggers the individual in the moment – a form of dynamic real time segmentation as we go.”
Focus on the individual: Huge potential in retail
Mark Chaudhry, Head of Customer Data Services, Coop Denmark – the country’s largest retail chain and currently working with Mobtimizers on several projects – presented the chain’s recent experience working with digital transformation. He acknowledged, “For the first time ever Coop is working with a customer strategy based on data. And the most important starting point is the people – not the technology. We have decided upon a strategy where the individual consumer is center, not personas or already boxed segments of consumer types, because we believe in being customer obsessed, which matches our mission of existing for our clients primarily.”
Coop is currently building an entire new digital department based on strong customer data strategy. The traditional organisational silos are being broken down. The company is reorganising into new, more agile units, that can collaborate across the different department silos incorporating the swift technological innovation taking place throughout the entire organization and which is crucial for the customer centric approach. The aim is to speed up the digital processes that usually take months to just minutes.
Mark Chaudhry adds, “As a result of this new way of working we are implementing an omnichannel and cross device strategy into all of our customer communication with personalized display advertising. In our member communication, for instance, we have experimented with offering more individually relevant membership offers in banners on external websites and the results are increased conversion rates and higher profit in the physical stores. So there we have our first technical proof of concept, it works.”
Read more about the conference here
