The New Rules of MarTech Integration

In order to deliver on this example, the integrated marketing technology platform would need to be aligned to the core tenets through a set of capabilities to identify an individual from either group and leverage data about that group to decide what message to present. In email settings, this can be relatively straightforward. In a real-time setting, it is more complicated. If you add personalization and real-time, dynamic decisioning to the mix, it becomes highly complex. Decisioning in real time is where marketing is today.

Beyond the basics of technology integration, there are three key areas to master specific to marketing technology integration: identity management, the marketing data fabric, and decision management.

Identity Management

First and foremost is the concept of identity management. The definition of identity management is different in the marketing realm. In the CIO’s world it is a means to secure systems and prevent fraud, and in the CMO’s world, it is a means to identify a specific person no matter what channel and media they are engaging with. Today, people can be identified by a series of identity signals: names and address, social handles, cookies, device identifiers, and email addresses. Some of these may not resolve completely to a specific named person, but they can resolve to a unique entity with whom you are communicating. The identity management capability allows us to construct a web, or graph, of associations that can be traversed to identify someone so that we can commutate personalized messages to that person.

Data Fabric

Next is the importance of the marketing data fabric. This fabric stretches across a series of data stores: the data lake where data scientists explore the data to derive new insights, the marketing data warehouse where marketers are defining audiences of customers and prospects, and the digital data stores ranging from data management platforms (DMPs) to other real-time data repositories. This data fabric is unified by the identity graph that allows data to be associated with any event in any channel or media in which the event occurs. This capability is comprised of both mechanisms to distribute and collect data. In this capability, there is a tight coupling of traditional ETL and services architectures with digital components like web analytics and tag management solutions. The challenge with the marketing data fabric is understanding all the players and developing a strategy that encompasses them.

Decision Management

The final key area is decision management. Like the data fabric area, there is a multitude of decision components ranging from web personalization to product recommenders. In this area there is a two- tiered system: channel and media based decision engines and the decision engine that guides those decision engines. These engines are where insights are integrated. In the past, the website personalization engine would make a series of decisions on how to tailor the site and the call center decision engine would make a series of decisions that would guide the agent’s script. The issue was that these decisions may be completely different. This has given rise to a centralized decision engine to rule all others. More robust engines, like those that had been used in instances of case management and underwriting, are now controlling the key marketing decisions around offer and message. This leaves the channel decision engines with the purpose of controlling content. In turn, these centralized engines ensure consistency in the marketing decision process. Overall, while traditional technology integration is still key, marketing technology requires mastering an additional set of items.

Some would argue that these key integration areas are merely slight adaptations to past challenges, but I would argue those are the first people to fail. The unique circumstances that arise today in technological integrations that are aligned with the business strategy of the CMO are that the integration challenges have moved beyond anything we have seen outside of the MarTech realm. The good news is that this is more collectively recognized, although there is still a specialized group driving innovation and change. In the end, to prepare an organization to be part of the larger marketing technology world, its strategy must adhere to the principles of data democratization, audience portability, and integrated insight. A future-leaning organization must adopt an integration that is powered by identity, data fabric, and decision management to move forward with a competitive advantage.