As online shopping becomes increasingly popular among consumers, brands find themselves in fierce competition with one another to win consumers’ business – and keep it. In today’s ecommerce environment, marketing technology is a key differentiator when it comes to brands trying to improve digital experiences for their consumers.
MarTech, such as CRM software or content marketing platforms, helps marketing teams reach their strategic goals and objectives more efficiently and effectively. It’s a necessary tool for marketers wanting to create smarter content, build stronger relationships and enhance the overall consumer experience.
Here are the 4 MarTech trends marketing teams need to know about in 2022:
1. Data science, first-party data, and data privacy will be key elements of brand success.
Data-driven brands will see the most success in 2022. Leveraging data science has helped brands gain a deeper understanding of their consumers, improve product and content recommendations, and optimize the consumer journey across channels.
This year, there is an increased focus on consumer privacy and how organizations collect, share, and use consumer data. Brands are making a major shift towards first-party and zero-party data, meaning they’re likely to invest in solutions that help them manage and use their data, as well as comply with new data regulations. By focusing on collecting data directly from their own consumers, marketers will have deeper insights that they can use to improve content and product recommendations and create a more relevant, personalized consumer experience across channels.
2. Artificial intelligence will be a standard capability in every brand’s tech stack.
While many brands have given up manual processes in favor of automation in recent years, artificial intelligence is going to be the real competitive advantage in 2022. With consumer expectations at an all-time high, brands need to be able to predict changes in a consumer’s behavior, preferences, or needs in order to create personalized experiences.
Especially as D2C channels become more popular and brands have more control over their entire consumer experience, predictive personalization at scale is a must-have. Without AI, marketing teams are stuck curating experiences for a select few audience segments, while the right solution allows them to scale their efforts and free marketers up to focus on the bigger picture.
3. Predictive personalization will replace A/B testing.
Personalization is in high demand for retail and consumer goods brands, both of which are looking for ways to create highly personalized digital experiences at scale. As brands look to build out their data science capabilities, there is an increased demand for AI-powered personalization solutions.
Marketers today are asked to create campaigns that appeal to a wide range of consumers, but they also need to produce tangible results. In the past, A/B testing was used to lead users to a certain page or test copywriting, but this type of rules-based personalization required marketers to set up personalized experiences manually to predefined audience segments.
Predictive personalization, on the other hand, uses machine learning to curate the best possible experience for each individual user on a brand’s website, using AI to adjust the experience in real-time based on consumer data and behaviors. When it comes to personalizing experiences in 2022, brands that move beyond A/B testing to enable predictive personalization at scale are the ones that will see the most success.
4. Marketing and tech teams will start to merge.
The day-to-day roles of marketers are evolving, requiring more technology and data than ever before – but most marketers don’t have deep technical knowledge in their skillset. As brands adopt more holistic approaches to personalization, closer collaboration between marketing and tech teams is a key element of success. Without bringing these teams together, brands may find it difficult to personalize the digital consumer experience.
Marketing teams need support from tech teams to help them integrate new technologies, leverage data science, and reach their personalization goals. Brands that find ways to reduce friction between marketing and tech teams and align the two under a single vision will move their personalization efforts forward and see real results quickly.
As we head into 2022, it’s clear that marketing technology is a major differentiator for brands looking to optimize and personalize the digital consumer experience. Companies that are eager to embrace new marketing technologies, expand their tech stacks, and approach problems from a data-driven perspective are likely to see those efforts pay off in the months to come.
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