DATA IS THE NEW CREATIVE OF THE Real-Time WEB

With 600 Tweets, 34,000 Google searches, and 700 Facebook posts per second, marketers
are no longer in control of their brands, thanks to the real-time web. But that doesn’t mean
marketers have to accept defeat and succumb to these new challenges. It’s possible (even
easy!) to successfully embrace real-time marketing and evolve from campaign management
to conversation management—turning previous challenges into ROI opportunities. The key
simply lies in establishing data as the new marketing creative.

What's Inside?
3 Past Meets Present: The History of Marketing Creative
4 The Pervasiveness of the Real-Time Web
5 Defining the Data of Real-Time Marketing
5 Traditional Meets Emerging: The Winning Data Combination
7 “Making Data Actionable” in the Real-Time Era
8 New Challenges, New Opportunities
9 Solving Real-Time Web Challenges with the Interactive Marketing Hub™
10 Real-Time Marketing with the Interactive Marketing Hub™
11 Sustaining Real-Time Marketing on the Real-Time Web

© ExactTarget All rights reserved 01-10292010

 Real-Time Marketing: Data is the New Creative of the Real-Time Web www.ExactTarget.com

Real-Time Marketing:
Data is the New Creative of the Real-Time Web
Past Meets Present: The History of
Marketing Creative
Developing out-of-the-box creative to connect customers to a brand
has been a marketer’s mission for more than a century. More than
20 advertising agencies were well-established on New York City’s
Madison Avenue in 1861, and for more than 100 years, the advertisers
of this infamous street have invested time, money, and endless hours
of research trying to optimize their creative campaigns. Consider a
snapshot of recent marketing trends:

• Pre-1990s: Driven by offline channels like print, broadcast, and direct mail, marketing creative
was targeted to consumers based on a rough knowledge of their demographics or interests.

• Mid-1990s: Driven by online channels like desktop, PC, and portals, marketing creative was
aimed at providing content based on campaigns, interactions, and exported data.

In the current real-time web environment, developing effective creative that will resonate with customers
and increase ROI isn’t as formulaic as it used to be. While traditional creative campaigns were based
on customer insights gleaned from focus groups and quantitative research, they were developed for the
masses, based on common traits that the majority of a marketer’s audience shared. But in the era of
real-time marketing, generic marketing messages are at best ignored, and at worst a reason for
consumers to opt-out of a brand’s messages forever.

“ Even as the consumer is moving faster, corporations are still plodding along. How long does your

”
bank make you wait on hold for service? Why are they designing mass marketing programs months in
advance, when people can get instant feedback on what to buy from their Facebook friends?

— Josh Bernoff, author of Empowered, The Huffington Post blog, (September 2010)

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“
The Pervasiveness of the Real-Time Web
The real-time web has completely redefined and revolutionized consumer expectations, and as a result, If there is one
it’s completely changing the way marketers develop marketing creative and execute campaigns. With universal truth
an average of 600 Tweets, 34,000 Google searches, and 700 Facebook posts per second, consumers about the web, it’s

”
have access to infinite amounts of instantaneous information. Additionally, the massive growth in mobile that people want
usage among consumers has also contributed to this expectation for real-time information. According to it now.
data released from comScore, Inc. in October 2010*, the number of smartphone users accessing mobile
content through browsers and applications now surpasses that of non-smartphone users. — Tom Krazit, Making
the Real-Time Web
So what does this new era of real-time marketing—and all the statistics that accompany it—mean for
Relevant
modern marketers? It means that their brands are already being discussed across the real-time web,
(April 5, 2010)
through hundreds and thousands of real-time messages a second. A marketer’s brand becomes the
sum of those conversations, and it’s not enough to remain idle or stand by and watch.

Customers are discussing what a company’s products can do, whether they’re worth purchasing, where
to find the best deal, and sharing stories of customer service successes—and failures. As Josh Bernoff
and Ted Schadler explain in their newest book, Empowered, “We’re all in the information business now…
The information economy is the economy, since information surrounds every product, real or virtual.”
Marketers no longer have a choice about when and where they converse with their customers.
They must join, manage, and facilitate conversations on the real-time web if they hope to preserve
their brands and survive this new era of real-time marketing.

But effectively engaging in conversation management—and changing one’s mindset from programs to
dialogues—is easier said than done across the real-time web. Increasing internet usage, the connection
of billions of devices, and the massive adoption of social media among consumers puts recent estimates
of monthly internet data flow at around 21 exabytes of data. While an impressive statistic, it leaves
many marketers feeling overwhelmed about how to even begin analyzing and interpreting this customer
information.

That’s why the new era of real-time marketing isn’t about print, broadcast, exported data, or interactions
alone. It’s about strategically combining and using what marketers know about their customers
(key data insights) in order to develop marketing creative. Data—not colors and vector files—is
the new creative of the real-time web.

*Footnote: comScore, Inc., “comScore Reports January 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share: Use of Social Media via Mobile Sees Considerable Gains
in Past Three Months,” http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/3/comScore_Reports_January_2010_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Mar-
ket_Share (March 10, 2010)

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“
Defining the Data of Real-Time Marketing
What hasn’t changed as a result of the real-time web is a marketer’s goal for creative. Marketers still want CCCM [cross
to understand and engage their customers with compelling content and design based on core customer channel campaign
insights. But where those core customer insights come from must change. Focus groups and surveys that management]
lead to one-size-fits-all messages in the form of batch and blast emails or generic Facebook updates no vendors—despite
longer work. In fact, they’re driving customers away. the call to expand
traditional channels—
To engage in meaningful dialogue—regardless of whether one is conversing with a friend or a business
prospect—one must first know something about the person he’s talking to in order to build a healthy continue to struggle
relationship. That’s exactly why marketers need a combination of new and traditional data—from to incorporate social
CRM and analytics to social and real-time web data—to effectively build relationships with their insights into their
customers and maintain them across channels and over time. solutions. As a
result, only 15% of
If marketers can capture and use this winning combination of data to impact creative elements before
marketers use their
they’re even created, marketers will be able to deliver more targeted, relevant, and engaging messages—
CCCM applications
across channels, and specific to each customer’s unique perspective.

”
to send social media
messages.
Traditional Meets Emerging: The Winning Data Combination
The key to a winning strategy in the era of real-time marketing is to provide customers with the — Trends in Cross-
right content, at the right time, through the right channel. In order to do that, marketers must use Channel Campaign
key customer insights (a.k.a data) to impact their marketing messages. And although the concept Management:
of using customer data to inform marketing strategies isn’t new, the chaotic nature of the real-time Emerging Channels
web has yielded new forms of customer data that can be combined with traditional data sources Outpace Existing
to strategically impact creative content and design. Solutions, Forrester
Research, Inc.
Let’s first examine the traditional data that many marketers already store in existing internal sources:
(April 14, 2010)
• CRM: From well-known providers like Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, CRM is
often the center for housing all data about customers, prospects, and their engagements with
that organization.

• Web Analytics: Systems like Omniture from Adobe, Coremetrics from IBM, and Webtrends
provide marketers with rich information about online, mobile, and social interactions that an
individual consumer is having with a brand and their online properties.

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• eCommerce Technologies: ATG, Bazzarvoice, and Certona provide marketers with

everything they need to know about an ecommerce property—from product catalogs and
online purchase history to ratings and reviews.

In addition to these traditional data sources, the real-time web has created new forms of customer data that can
help inform marketing creative:

• Real-Time Web and Social Data: From Tweets and Likes to Check-ins and Clicks, real-time
web and social data captures customer activities and actions on the web. Using information
such as which sites customers visit or what their social graph relationships look like can help
marketers craft creative campaigns that are appropriate for a variety of online channels.

Despite the fact that marketers have had access to traditional data beginning as early as the mid-1990s,
they’ve often struggled to take full advantage of it—not to mention the difficulty they’ve had using new
forms of social and real-time web data. According to Trends in Cross-Channel Campaign Management:
Emerging Channels Outpace Existing Solutions, a research article published by Forrester Research,
“marketers don’t wish to switch between tools to plan and manage programs.” That’s why a single tool
that can integrate both traditional and emerging data into one messaging platform is so important.

Seamless real-time integrations will not only eliminate the challenges of multiple providers and
disjointed databases—it will provide marketers with one view of their customers (and all of
their customer data and insights). When this single view of all customers is further enhanced with
the emerging forms of social and real-time web data, things like segmenting audiences, automating
programs, and micro-targeting messages become easy.

“ Marketers consider integration first. Ease of integration with other

”
data sources and systems was the top factor for 56% of respondents
when selecting their cross-channel campaign management solutions.

— Trends in Cross-Channel Campaign Management: Emerging

Channels Outpace Existing Solutions, Forrester Research Inc.
(April 14, 2010)

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“
“Making Data Actionable” in the Real-Time Era
While many marketers are just discovering the power of social and real-time web data, the concept Almost half
of using customer data to deliver real-time, targeted communications isn’t new. Marketers are of respondents
constantly bombarded with promises of “robust, actionable solutions” to meet their “real-time selected coordination
marketing needs.” But making data actionable—especially the emerging forms of data highlighted of communication
on page six—isn’t as easy as it sounds. across channels (49%)
and personalizing
According to a recent study conducted by eConsultancy*, 98% of marketers use at least three
messages based on
channels to deliver multichannel messages to their customers, but more than half still store the
data they gather from each channel in separate, siloed locations. In the same study, only 35% consumer behavior
report that they collect data from different sources and store it in a single database. And when (48%) as their top
asked about the challenges of multichannel marketing, 71% cited maintaining high-quality data two challenges…
as a major challenge. Channel complexities
make it difficult for
Why does collecting the right combination of data to effectively market on the real-time web
current applications to
remain a challenge for the large majority of marketers? The very tools that have promised “best-
operate on a program
of-breed solutions” are simply insufficient. For example, campaign management solutions
remain too formulaic, and fail to allow marketers to truly understand and engage a specific type of
rather than channel
customer. These and other static solutions of the past simply don’t accommodate the speed and level, which in turn
complexity of the ever-changing, real-time web. limits how marketers

”
scale their marketing
In addition to insufficient tools, marketers are also still struggling to change their mindsets from programs.
“campaign management” to “conversation management.” Marketers must remember that the
real-time web is a place of conversations and dialogues, and fine-tuning conversational — Trends in Cross-
skills with real-time customer data is simply imperative in the era of real-time marketing. Channel Campaign
Management:
Emerging Channels
Outpace Existing
Solutions, Forrester
Research Inc.
(April 14, 2010)

*Footnote: Richard Lees, “Companies Aren’t Making the Most of Multichannel Marketing Data,” eConsultancy,
http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/6683-companies-aren-t-making-the-most-of-multichannel-marketing-data.

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“
New Challenges, New Opportunities
In the same eConsultancy study*, just over half of respondents reported using intelligence from previous Today, too
campaign performance to impact future campaign creative, and the rest of marketers reported that they’re many marketers still
guided by gut feelings when it comes to executing campaigns—not exactly an empirical formula for marketing plan future programs
success. And with the real-time web being so impactful on brands’ reputations and bottom lines, it’s imperative based on a combina-
that marketers don’t leave their campaigns’ creative to chance. tion of gut instinct
and past behavior.
As interactive marketers in our own right, ExactTarget understands the challenges that many of our marketing
Progressive marketers
colleagues in the industry now face. From fragmentation and silos to budget competition and overwhelming
amounts of data, we’ve decided it’s time to take these challenges and turn them into opportunities. That’s why are focused on using
we’ve created an entirely new way of communicating with today’s modern consumer, based on real-time data a highly-disciplined
insights garnered from the real-time web. Because we believe that marketers must first understand who approach to measure-
they’re talking to in order to develop effective creative campaigns, we’re convinced that real-time data ment as the founda-
is the new creative. And that’s exactly why we’ve created the ExactTarget Interactive Marketing Hub™. tion for optimizing

”
future communication
plans.

— Trends in Cross-
Channel Campaign
Management:
Emerging Channels
Outpace Existing
Solutions ,
Forrester Research
Inc.,
(April 14, 2010)

*Footnote: Richard Lees, “Companies Aren’t Making the Most of Multichannel Marketing Data,” eConsultancy,
http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/6683-companies-aren-t-making-the-most-of-multichannel-marketing-data.

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 Real-Time Marketing: Data is the New Creative of the Real-Time Web www.ExactTarget.com

Solving Real-Time Web Challenges with

the Interactive Marketing Hub
Consumers are already in control of brands, shaping the conversation with every blog post or update
they write. It’s time for marketers to not only join the conversation, but to amplify and sustain real-
time dialogue with their customers. And having access to timely and relevant insight and interactions
is the only way marketers will be able to successfully engage on today’s real-time web.

“ Most marketing organizations struggle to manage the burgeoning complexity associated with brands,
regions, and channels and the resulting issues around brand consistency, program ownership, and speed-

”
to-market. Few marketing applications are set up to support marketing organizations with these distributed
challenges.

— How Technology Supports Distributed Marketing Organizations,

Forrester Research Inc.
(January 20, 2010)

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Because the worn-out ways of campaign management no longer work, we created the

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Interactive Marketing Hub so marketers could gain a single view of what’s happening
across all interactive channels, in real time. The Interactive Marketing Hub allows

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marketers to act on real data, engage in real conversations, and make real

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connections across the real-time web. And while colors, patterns, and attractive
creative still matter, they must be informed by the specific customer insights that

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only the Interactive Marketing Hub can gather. This data—organized and analyzed

I
through a single dashboard—is the key to real engagement on the real-time web.

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I
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Real-Time Marketing with the Interactive Marketing Hub

The Interactive Marketing Hub allows marketers to practice effective conversation management—not
generic transactional messaging—where simultaneous Twitter, Facebook, and email conversations build
upon one another to provide a complete view of individual customers. Those real-time data points—
among millions of others—are easily analyzed across enterprises.

And because timeliness is the difference between good customer service and public relations
nightmares, we’ve built our Interactive Marketing Hub upon the Fuel Platform™, which currently
powers more than three billion messages a month, stores more than 100 terabytes of data, and
operates seamlessly with a 99.99% average system up-time.

With data as a marketer’s new creative, the Interactive Marketing Hub makes it easy to effectively
engage with customers across Email, Mobile, Social, and Sites—but not with a universal, one-
size-fits-all message. The combination of real-time web, social, and traditional customer data allows
marketers to deliver the right messages with appropriate creative elements, resulting in marketing
communications that not only resonate, but stand out from the competition.

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 Real-Time Marketing: Data is the New Creative of the Real-Time Web www.ExactTarget.com

Sustaining Real-Time Marketing on the Real-Time Web

According to Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, marketers are no longer in control of their brand messages,
thanks to the real-time web. “With your established processes and departmental boundaries, you move
too slowly.” But that doesn’t mean marketers have to accept these organizational challenges. It’s possible
to successfully embrace real-time marketing and evolve from campaign management to conversation
management. The key simply lies in establishing data as the new creative.

ExactTarget created the Interactive Marketing Hub in response to the challenges of the real-
time web, with the guiding theme of “data is the new creative.” As a result, it’s now possible for
marketers to overcome their process and boundary limitations, siloed channels, and disjointed
data sources. By centralizing millions of customer data points and insights in a single location,
marketers will finally gain back some of the control they long ago ceded to the consumer. Not only
will marketers be able to effectively understand their data, understand their customers, and deliver
micro-targeted creative through the right channel, they’ll leave their competitors in the dust of the
real-time web.

Ready to Get Real?

If you’re ready to find out how you can use Real [data
], Real [fast], in Real [time],
visit www.exacttarget.com/hub. Now that’s what we call Real [smart marketing].

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www.ExactTarget.com