In nearly every one of my technology consulting engagements with enterprise clients, I’ve seen a trend: marketing technology is purchased and executed without a customer strategy to guide it. As a result, organizations find themselves in need of a marketing technology evaluation and roadmap reset project, not because their tools are outdated or broken, but because an ad hoc and accidental architecture was created due to the lack of a customer strategy.

Are you attending the MarTech West Conference, which starts today and runs from April 23-25, 2018 in San Jose, CA? This is Merkle’s first time participating as we’ve had many clients give the event enthusiastic reviews.

As technology evolves, so do consumers’ expectations — and their demands. While this may seem like common sense, or at least an inevitability of the information age, what it means for brands and retailers is that forward-leaning technology needs to be a centerpiece of your loyalty strategy.

Targeting and personalization are key components of online marketing. By tailoring your marketing messages for the individual visitors to your website, instead of making them overly-generalized for a broad audience, you can increase the chances that they will become a customer and a repeat customer.

Here are four keys to maximizing your role as a valued digital messaging partner.

For the past few years I have been working with a financial services organization to define its marketing technology roadmap. This organization has no shortage of great technology assets but lacked an overall plan for how to use these technologies.

Many of our clients ask how they can future proof their marketing technology investments. To understand what needs to be future proofed we need to take a quick look back to see how marketing technology has changed over the years.

A BSA’s role is to identify and accurately document the customer requirements and business needs to drive sustainable results as part of a solution. Keeping the “I want to get it right, not be right” motto top of mind will yield that exact result by serving our clients best interests, staying truly agnostic on delivering the best solution, and building strong relationships through a trusted process and honest approach.