A couple years (give or take) into the marketing technology revolution and it’s still difficult for marketers to find the right technology.
Companies that are effectively harnessing the most powerful tools do so because they are methodical and prudent about what technologies they buy and why. For a majority of companies, however, the infamous Donald Rumsfeld quote about “known knowns” comes to mind.
Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
Indeed, there are many things CMOs and their teams still don’t know about what technology to purchase and how to pick the right vendor. While there is no panacea for this uncertainty, we’ll be tackling some steps to take in making smart marketing technology purchasing decisions at the upcoming eTail West, February 28th.
Joining me will be Tommy Lamb, director of loyalty and retention for the premium flower delivery service Teleflora. In our pre-conference conversations, he’s highlighted some key points we’ll discuss.
Prioritization: You likely can’t buy everything at once, or have every tool available immediately, so what’s the most important.
Research and planning: Marketing tech decisions require a ton of research before even making the case to management about the need for any products. You have to know the various costs, whether you are renting or buying the technology, and how much staff you’ll need to actually take advantage of it.
Talk to the right people: You will know a marketing tech firm is confident in their wares if they set you up with their clients. Even better, you can ask the type of questions that the service providers would be reluctant to answer – like, what’s the worst thing that happened when implementing their technology.
We’ll discuss the and many more on February 28, so please join us if you’re at eTail West.
