Alterian works alongside a global network of trusted Partners who provide the domain and services expertise to implement and execute integrated marketing strategies and solutions.
Alterian’s Partners range from the largest database hosting and list sales organizations to the
leading marketing agencies. Alterian provides software to its Partners, which enables them to deliver closed loop marketing solutions to their clients. Alterian’s Partners are increasingly improving their own business operations by expanding their investment in Alterian to deliver new solutions to their clients, save cost, gain additional revenue and increase customer loyalty.
Over the last 12 months, Alterian has witnessed a blurring of services and capabilities in these segments – with the integration of marketing comes the necessary integration of marketing supplier capabilities.
An emerging category – Customer Engagement Agencies
Mastery of the Customer Engagement Cycle will require investment in new systems, training of marketers to adopt new working practices, more accountability and change management. Marketers cannot make this transition on their own. Already operating in a partner-centric paradigm, often utilizing services from many different partners, it is to this trusted resource they will now turn to fulfil their new marketing objectives.
The revolution in marketing calls for a revolution in the strategies of the providers of services to marketers. Over the next decade, this revolution in customer engagement will establish a necessary repositioning and reinvention of the marketing agency and marketing services providers. Marketers are not the only category to have generally operated in silos, collecting data about individuals based only on their own view of the world. Often, the suppliers that help marketers tend also to focus on narrow views of the customer, but the emergence of new channels and new data assembled around the customer will increasingly apply pressure on the foundation of such silos.
A 360 degree view of what?
As customer engagement demands two-way marketing based on the individual, a single view of data for customer engagement is required. A coordinated process for this, and subsequent execution, is provided by the Customer Engagement Cycle. Suppliers will have to also look at how they operate to help deliver the customer engagement their clients will demand.
We have seen an emergence of a new type of partner – a class of agency who are leading this integration and innovation in the customer engagement market.
Customer Engagement Agencies take a multi-dimensional approach to marketing across all channels, to cost-effectively produce rich, relevant experiences through unique capabilities that combine three traditionally separate skills and deliverables:
- Creative capacity to develop persuasive content
- Technical know-how to deliver messages via multiple channels
- Data-driven intelligence driving cross-channel/segment dialogue enabling positive financial impact through the proper selection of the right message for the right audience at the right time
Because of their ability to look at customer engagement across the full spectrum of operations, these emerging Customer Engagement Agencies will inform ‘the brand’ in a new and differentiated way, and will ultimately earn the ear of the board of an organization due to the intimate insight they will have on the individual customer. And they will be able to maintain their board level influence (in the same way as traditional advertising agencies have in the past) based on much fuller insight, predictability of future campaigns success, and shared risk/reward models.
Want to learn more?
View our Customer Engagement Brochure