“How many of you have the feeling of a fire hose just staring you down?” That’s how Craig Hayman, general manager of industry solutions for IBM, kicked off the opening session of the 2014 IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Tampa.
The main takeaway of the conference was clearly this: Brands need to maximize real-time customer interactions using the data at their disposal. While that could mean doing anything from running a happy birthday email campaign to crowdsourcing their next product, one thing is clear across the board: Brands need to be relevant or be gone. Well, their customers will be gone if they’re not relevant, which, in essence, amounts to the same thing.
“The biggest challenge in a marketing organization is the torrent of data coming at you,” says Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop, IBM’s most recent acquisition. “It’s what you do with the data, how you take the data from the audience segment level to have an understanding of each individual customer.”
It’s a trend IBM has firmly latched onto with the launch of customer experience solution ExperienceOne, which aims to combine a variety of IBM tools (marketing, sales, and service) into a single portfolio in an effort to understand customer behavior and maximize customer lifetime value.
As event MC and social and content strategist Jay Baer noted: “The most important element of relevancy is that it enables us to create amazing relationships—one-to-one relationships between customers and clients at scale.”
“Make everything personalized. Make everything relevant.” Raj De Datta. #SmarterCommerce pic.twitter.com/BteACbaX0p
— BloomReach Inc. (@bloomreachinc) May 14, 2014
Digital customer experiences must be engaging, compelling, consistent & relevant. @shellkillebrew #SmarterCommerce pic.twitter.com/wSKzXzInGo
— Daniel Davis (@danielkdtwt) May 14, 2014
Smart companies are differentiating with personalized customer engagement #SmarterCommerce
— Jeremy Wilson (@Jeremy_W_Wilson) May 13, 2014
@ElaineMikesell: #SmarterCommerce personalization is offering relevant recommendations and next best action
— Elaine mikesell (@ElaineMikesell) May 14, 2014
RT @Edgebound_mx: SHIFT HAPPENS
41% of #Millennials Buy via Smartphone vs
11% Boomers #mobile
#SmarterCommerce pic.twitter.com/CqZMuldfLB
— Edwin Tajonar (@EdwinTajonar) May 14, 2014
#SmarterCommerce This is not an era where passive wins, it’s an era where passion wins – makings moments matter starts with you.
— RIS News Insights (@risnewsinsights) May 14, 2014
In other news: Apparently the summit trended internationally for a few minutes on Twitter; Ron Howard stopped by for a session about storytelling; and America’s Got Talent winner and performance artist Kenichi Ebina moonwalked on his knees at the morning general session and performed other feats that would kill me if I tried them.
Oh yeah, and there was a selfie contest, of course. Winners won a meet-and-greet with the BareNaked Ladies, who closed out the summit with a concert on its last night. (“If I had a million dollars…if I had a million dollars…I would invest in analytics.” Wait. That’s not how the song goes. Anyway…)
@shellkillebrew Brilliant comment from a master storyteller. I learned a lot from hearing @RealRonHoward speak today at #smartercommerce.
— Brian Moran (@brianmoran) May 13, 2014
Kenichi Ebina at the #smartercommerce summit https://t.co/rRkqnBAltG
— Corey Pudhorodsky (@CoreyPud) May 13, 2014
Crazy! @matthewstryker @ldguy1 @LEGO_Group #selfie #SmarterCommerce #legoduckman pic.twitter.com/1Hc8kYeHyQ
— Laurie Summers (@ldguy1) May 13, 2014
