‘Marketers lack the tech capability to ride the hyper-personalisation wave’

Convenience-craving consumers are in, ditching their virtual trolley at the checkout stage since it is too much effort to complete the transaction on a mobile device.

As marketers pick up the slack, they are waking up to new types of customer interactions they no longer fully control, according to a senior executive.

Welcome to the world of the lazy customer, where technology is leading many down the path of least resistance.

“The high level of automation with machines doing a lot of the work has essentially made each one of us lazy,” said Srishti Sofat, Vice-President, Product Development, Oracle Marketing Cloud, referring to the maturation of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, IoT and blockchain.

She added: “Going online is so easy. Do you have a notebook to remind yourself of important dates, like your grandfather’s birthday? Consumers today are not taking the effort because somebody else is reminding them to send flowers, or buy bread. Consumers expect brands to reach out to them these days and most online channels are doing just that.” Speaking on the sidelines of the Oracle Modern Business Forum (MBF) in Mumbai, Sofat said the concept is not just restricted to the digital realm.

“Even the local grocer, who knows your food preferences like buying 1kg of oranges every Sunday, will pack your things and make it ready for you. The neighbourhood grocer has become the recommendation engine,” she added.

Technology is aiding the transaction given available data, but Sofat believes marketers lack the capabilities, technology and processes to use insights to monetise their data and drive customer experience.

The MBF is Oracle’s flagship event that aims to explore and present tomorrow’s digital, cloud and emerging technologies’ directions within the domains of finance, customer experience, HR and supply chain. At the event, Oracle announced its SaaS availability in the India Gen 2 Data centre.

‘Data is the new asset’

With several consumer habits like discovering, exploring, connecting or shopping on devices leaving a digital footprint, Sofat noted that data has become the new corporate asset class, forcing marketers to learn a new language.

Hyper-personalisation powered by AI is key, said the official, adding the reign of ‘automated marketing platforms’ is over with movement towards ‘intelligent marketing platforms’. “One of the biggest transformations taking place is the digital transformation. A CMO today has a lot more data on his customers and needs to leverage it. Businesses that are able to make the leap and provide a customer-centric experience are going to be the winners in this new age, because it’s a disruptive world,” she said.

Hyper-personalisation is helping lift revenues by 5-15 percent, increasing marketing efficiency by 10-30 percent and reducing acquisition costs up to 50 percent, even as it makes the customer happy.

“Marketers need to look at past customer behaviour...transactional behaviour... at real-time signals that the customers are giving as they walk into a store or as they hit dismiss on a particular push notification, or spend a little extra time on a particular section of the website. All of this data has to be leveraged,” added Sofat.

However, as marketers get in to hyper-personalisation, they can no longer rely on old techniques. “It is not a batch-and-blast mode anymore. It is genuine transformation and easier said than done, given that data is in multiple systems.”

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