Marketers understand the value of strong customer relationships, but such things take time, effort and funding to create.
Such long-term exercises can put the marketer at risk of not hitting shorter term revenue goals.
On the other hand, it's possible to focus marketing efforts on 'meeting the numbers', but at the same time anger customers as you bombard them with unwanted communication.
Many companies are facing this two-faced marketing dilemma every day.
To assist with the challenge, Oracle Marketing Cloud recently revealed a range of new tools.
These can be used to better understand customers and provide them with relevant information at the most appropriate time in their buying journey.
Connect data to customers with Oracle ID Graph
As commerce increasingly shifts online, customers are tending to use a variety of devices to interact with their chosen businesses.
A customer might research a product on their mobile device, but then complete the purchase on a desktop computer.
Many marketers say the biggest challenge they face is providing seamless cross-channel marketing in such a multi-device world.
Taking a traditional data warehouse approach and trying to collect each piece of data generated on each platform is both complex and expensive.
Instead, data should remain where it is and be analysed as required.
To support this approach, Oracle Marketing Cloud has revealed Oracle ID Graph.
This new tool pulls together the many identities across marketing channels and devices that comprise a single person, thereby enabling marketers to tie their interactions to a real customer profile.
This in turn allows marketers to create a relevant and personalised experience for each individual.
Real-time marketing
Communicating with customers throughout their 'journey' is a popular current marketing approach.
It involves changing messaging and approaches to match the stage each customer has reached in the buying process.
The difficultly is that that most of these messages don't adapt swiftly enough to match changes in customer behaviour.
Customers typically switch between channels with little predictability, and often change their minds completely.
To overcome this, Oracle Marketing Cloud has launched Rapid Retargeter.
Part of Oracle Cross-Channel Marketing for consumers, this tool lets marketers undertake cross-channel interaction with customers when they reach particular points in the purchasing process.
For example, if a customer abandons an online shopping cart, they might receive an email reminder of its contents or be served display advertising that reinforces the marketer's brand at that critical point.
Rapid Retargeter offers marketers both speed and breadth, helping them to adapt to customer changes in just minutes, even when they are taking place across different marketing channels.
Pulling together the tools you need: AppCloud Connect
Marketers today are faced with a plethora of options when it comes to technology.
Data sources, marketing applications and monitoring tools can be mixed and matched in an often bewildering number of ways.
It can be easy to see this trend as little more than the result of over-enthusiastic technology vendors and some analysts keen to explain how disruptive everything is becoming.
But such technologies do actually hold a lot of potential if you can find a way to make them work for you.
To help in this process Oracle Marketing Cloud has released AppCloud Connect.
This tool provides an open set of frameworks and technologies to pull in the data, apps, and media that a marketer needs to mount effective campaigns.
It's all about the customer experience
When you're trying to build long-term relationships while also meeting short-term financial goals, it's important to remain focused on customer experience.
While the Oracle Marketing Cloud strives to adapt more quickly to customer demands and help marketers deliver more integrated campaigns, it is also focused on the wider customer experience.
With our open platform we are ready to support campaigns that both drive customer growth and help businesses meet their financial goals.
Photo caption : Christian Hyland, Senior Manager - Strategic Consulting.
