MAKING MARKETING + TECHNOLOGY ADD UP

Adding technology to the marketing equation is a must. Here’s how to ensure that doing so is a plus.

Sponsored by

Nearly 60% of marketers polled say they adopt-ed new marketing technology solutions in the past year, according to recent research by Sky-word. But many of those marketers may not be getting the most they can from those tools. Only 38% of the marketers surveyed have reorganized their teams around these tech solutions — a key part of the integration and optimization process.

Given the significant investment companies make to purchase, integrate, and use today’s

robust marketing technology solutions, mar-keters must have a solid strategy in place for not just selecting those solutions, but optimiz-ing them as well.

In this eBook, we offer up recent DMN content that provides information marketers need to solve key problems in the marketing tech equa-tion, including how to select the right technolo-gy and how to get the most out of it.

A View to a Thrill 4

3 Pitfalls That CanRuin Marketing andIT’s Collaboration 6

The Merger of AdTech & Mar Tech 7

Is Marketing Techas Innovative as

Vendors Claim? 9

Is “MarketingExperiences” Technol-ogy Risky Business? 11

Marketing TechChanges Everything 12

Marketers FeelMisunderstood 13

DemystifyingMarketing Tech 15

Marketers WantS’More Technology[Infographic] 16

Imagine building a unified view of more than 100 data sources. Such a feat can seem insurmountable. Xanterra Parks and

Resorts traversed risky terrain to reach this marketing pinnacle and capitalize on former-ly unseen opportunities.

Xanterra is a diverse hospitality brand, with properties and presence ranging from hotels and cruise ships to campgrounds and horse stables. With hundreds of unique operations across so many categories — and more than 20 million annual visitors across the entire portfo-lio of properties — Xanterra’s marketing lead-ers recognized that storing customer data in more than 100 different systems, each with its

own level of detail and complexity, was hurting visibility and causing the company to overlook countless opportunities.

“Our systems didn’t talk to each other. Even for someone who stayed at Yellowstone and then had dinner at the Old Faithful Inn, we nev-er consolidated those two details into the same customer profile,” says Andrew Heltzel, director of marketing and CRM at Xanterra.

Xanterra engaged RedPoint Global to pro-vide a unified interface for cross-channel cam-paigns across heterogeneous data sources. With a wealth of new information from vari-ous Xanterra properties, as well as third-party data integration, Xanterra gained insight into as

many as 300 new characteristics and attributes for each customer.

WHO ARE YOU, REALLY?An expansive data set is nothing without con-text and perspective, so Xanterra’s next priority was to develop customer personas. This bucket-ed customers into seven main categories, rang-ing from the retired, semi-active Nature Experts to the youthful, affluent Laid-Back Luxury seg-ment. These personas not only help Xanterra develop targeted messaging that brings each communication closer to a one-to-one ideal, but also helps the company identify cross- marketing opportunities between brands.

Xanterra takes a flexible approach to perso-na assignment, filtering customers into multiple categories and tweaking the underlying per-sona characteristics over time. In analyzing its data to find better ways to address customers who do not readily fit an established persona, Xanterra’s marketers discovered a small but im-portant segment of Country Walkers, a group of solo travelers with strong potential for re-peat and cross-sell business. The company has expanded messaging to include supplementary material for singles and solo travelers to appeal to this new category.

“It’s another way we can use data to do more than just spray-and-pray,” Heltzel explains.

Extensive persona analysis also revealed Xanterra’s upscale, near-retirement Luxe Lov-ers are ideal crossover candidates between Windstar Cruises and Vermont Bike Tours (VBT). And among the active senior Sensible Explorer category, women are far bigger fans of the VBT experience. These insights led to a new pilot campaign designed to combine vacations across both brands.

In support of this pilot, Xanterra began an open exploration of its database for trends and affinities. This process revealed custom-ers with European itineraries that allowed for

A View to a ThrillA unified view of more than 100 data sources helps Xanterra Parks and Resorts capitalize on formerly unseen opportunities. By Jason Compton

back-to-back vacation experiences. Xanterra now searches the database for customers with profiles that indicate the means and free time to start with a bike tour and end with a week-long cruise, and early results are promising. Fu-ture pilots will work with the company’s exten-sive database of national parks visitors, offering outdoor adventure vacations in other destina-tions around the world.

PULLING THE TRIGGEROne of the centerpieces of Xanterra’s direct marketing transformation is the upscale Kings- mill Resort in Virginia. The resort has intro-duced a multi-stage trigger campaign that be-gins with soft welcome messages eight weeks before arrival. Six triggered steps throughout the two-month span can present offers for ac-tivities such as spa and golf bookings, restau-rant visits, and room upgrades when available.

The first email includes a click-to-play video and seasonally appropriate images, along with invitations to share details of the upcoming trip on social media. The next email, five weeks from arrival, offers a room upgrade if available and in-vites customers to extend their stay by a single night, if the reservation ends early in the week.

If no upgrade is available or the stay ends on a peak night, a more generic email is sent instead. This stage, and later messages that include activity-planning guides and addition-al upgrade offers when available, includes re-mailing after six days when a customer has not responded. The campaign logic stops upgrade messages if one has been purchased, and sup-presses some later emails if customers have al-ready committed to a second, later reservation, to cut down on overlapping email.

Xanterra is also uncovering new ways to use data more effectively within the confines of a single brand. Kingsmill Resort includes a mari-

na, so some customers arrive by boat. Track-ing that information and then acknowledging avid boaters in email and offering more marine activities has produced positive results.

“It’s about using those additional attributes as a way to create more personal, relevant, and timely messages,” Heltzel notes. “And we’re seeing across the board that using those in-sights leads to higher conversion.”

MOUNTING THE SUMMITWith one year in the books since the RedPoint integration began, Xanterra is seeing significant

returns. Using targeted messages to selected personas, Xanterra has increased revenue per email by more than 800% at one resort. Each message contained images and narratives uniquely appealing to the top three personas that visit with the resort.

One segment, the active, tech-shy, lower- income senior group Xanterra called Sensible Explorers, showed a nearly tenfold improve-ment in revenue per email, despite being less active online than other segments. In another case, intelligent remarketing to established cus-tomers with a modest discount on a weeknight

stay boosted revenue per email more than 1,400% at a state park lodge. “Our lead gener-ation is definitely improving, because we can do things with digital marketing to drive more leads to our properties than ever before,” Hel-tzel explains. “And we’re seeing higher conver-sion rates on leads we share across brands.”

Although trigger campaigns such as the Kingsmill Resort example now generate more touches than in years past, Xanterra’s overhaul actually includes a deliberate push for quality over quantity. “For those folks who are not en-gaged with our brands, we’re trying to figure out ways to reactivate them, or permanently re-move them from our list,” Heltzel notes. “Send-ing the same messages to people who are not opening our email for six to 18 months can neg-atively impact our reputation.”

Next steps include more sophisticated data integration with Xanterra’s CRM platforms. One goal is to give Windstar Cruises deeper insights into the wide range of travel activities and incli-nations that intersect with Xanterra’s other di-verse brands. It will also make it easier for Xan-terra to develop a more granular picture of the channels that contribute to conversion.

“Right now, when we ask the consumer, they generally attribute the sale to the touchpoint they saw last,” he says. “We want to develop more insights into the channels that led them to start interacting with the brand in the first place.”

Also in the cards is expanding outreach from email to social media, and applying the same techniques to Xanterra’s B2B relationships.

“We’ve proven to the marketing leaders across our properties that when we do smart profiling and segmentation, and put relevant, timely of-fers in front of folks, it works,” Heltzel says. “Now that we can deliver a one-to-one experience in email, we’re looking at how to communicate that way across all our customer touchpoints.”

L ife is better when marketing and IT work together. But organizational inconsis-tencies can prevent this collaboration

from developing.Based on data from the Leapfrog Marketing In-

stitute’s 2015 CMO Digital Benchmark Study, here are three organizational gaps marketing and IT professionals should avoid.

MISMATCHED EXPECTATIONSMarketers are much more optimistic about having a collaborative relationship than their IT comrades. After analyzing 131 B2B and B2C U.S. executives (81% in marketing, 19% in IT), the Leapfrog Market-ing Institute revealed 30% of marketing executives consider their relationship with IT very collabora-tive and productive; however, only 13% of IT leaders feel the same way. And although 20% of market-ers say working with IT has significantly improved alignment, just 4% of technology executives agree.

“Marketers, by their nature, are optimists,” says Jim Carey, adjunct professor at Northwest-ern University’s graduate Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Program and researcher for the study. “And, of course, we believe every-body likes us because we’re charming.”

UNESTABLISHED SUCCESS METRICSHowever, optimism isn’t the sole cause of this divergence. Carey also attributes this lack of alignment to the idea that marketing and IT pro-fessionals define success in different ways. This is one area where executives from both depart-ments agree: 63% of respondents in both mar-keting and IT say they do not share incentives or metrics for improved alignment.

So, what does success look like to each de-partment? From a general standpoint, Carey says IT professionals measure success based on functionality, such as whether a website is up or an app is working; marketers, contrastingly, have to benchmark their performances against not only their customers’ standards, but also those of industry leaders.

“Marketers who are good at their job look outside of the organization,” Carey says. In other words, what could be a complete success in the eyes of an IT executive could be an utter failure from marketing’s perspective.

Conflicting opinions about omnichannel experi-ences help illustrate this point. Both marketing and IT executives agree their companies deliver omni-

channel consumer experiences, 54% and 50%, re-spectively; however, one third of IT respondents consider these experiences developed, whereas just one fifth of marketing executives agree.

In this case, Carey suspects IT respondents are measuring developmental success based on func-tionality. For example, if a customer logs into his account, does the system link back to his custom-er ID? Meanwhile, marketers are comparing their omnichannel experiences to those generated by leading companies, such as Amazon. So, although the execution of the omnichannel experiences may be satisfactory from an IT perspective, the meet- ing of expectations may be subpar from market-ing’s point of view.

It’s possible this disparity causes mismatched prioritization. After all, about half of marketing respondents consider omnichannel consumer experience important to their companies, but just one third of IT respondents place it that high on the to-do list.

INADEQUATE SKILL SETSIt’s difficult for marketers to fully understand IT’s expectations and success metrics when their own skill requirements are evolving. “Change is hard,” Carey says. “We’re no longer going to be doing the things that we’re really good at.”

Consider the following data from the study: 60% of marketers say data tracking and analytics are extremely important for achieving marketing objectives. Mobile and Web (52%), SEM and SEO (43%), and omnichannel (35%) are also consid-ered extremely important areas.

However, marketers may not have the skill sets that they need. According to the study, mass marketing (offline ads) is where most marketers say they’ve built their expertise (44%), followed by data tracking and analytics (41%) and mobile and Web (40%).

Only 27% of marketers have expertise in SEM or SEO and only 15% are knowledgeable about omnichannel marketing.

3 Pitfalls That Can Ruin Marketing and IT’s CollaborationDisparities in expectations, KPIs, and skills can leave the two departments misaligned. By Elyse Dupré

Marketers and advertisers have two crucial goals in common: Both want to drive reve-nue and each group works to drive the ac-

tions of consumers. It’s no surprise in recent years there’s been a convergence between advertising technology and marketing automation.

“Both ad tech and martech are getting at the same problem: the huge explosion of data in the

ecosystem,” says Matthew Greitzer, cofounder and COO of programmatic media buying compa-ny Accordant Media. “And while trying to make sense of that data, the legacy systems that have existed for the last decade or more are simply no longer sufficient. So, new technology is need-ed to help marketers and advertisers power the data-based decisions they want to make.”

Along with that explosion of data, the recent union between ad tech and marketing automation is on fire because of the rise of programmatic — automated systems — in both sectors. Each set of tools, no doubt, are meant to drive performance for advertisers and marketers, and programmatic fuels the flames. But what sparked this fire? Merg-ers and acquisitions, says Ed Montes, chief reve-nue officer at DataXu, a programmatic marketing platform for brands and agencies.

“There will be more consolidation of the cur-rent providers,” Montes says. “When you look at both categories there’s a tremendous number of new entrants in the space on both sides over the last 10 years.” He adds that many companies want to be platform service providers that meet every part of a business’s needs. “We’ve gone through a lot of hyper-investing over the last decade. Now these companies will start to mature, and as that process happens, you’ll have winners and losers. And I think we’ll see the landscape of providers change over the next few years.”

DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT PASTS; STRIKINGLY SIMILAR FUTURESJonathan Moran, senior product marketer of customer intelligence at data giant SAS, says ad technology and marketing technology have tradi-tionally different focuses. He says in the past, ad technology has focused on audience monetiza-tion, display advertising, location-based targeting, mobile marketing, networks and exchanges, video and television, and, usually, third-party data.

However, marketing technology has had entirely different focuses: campaign management, contact

optimization, customer data, email marketing, event triggers, lead management, and lifetime value.

The intersection of both can be found as strate-gists work to meet several of these goals. Moran ex-plains advertisers can use predictive modeling and lifetime value to inform mobile and display ad con-tent. Marketers can use third-party data, combine it with first-party customer data, and inform market-ing messages and content.

BOTTOM LINE: AD TECH AND MARTECH ARE COMING TOGETHER.“The end state for both of them is the delivery of contextually relevant messages,” Moran notes. “Advertisers who focus on display advertising want to put up a digital ad that’s relevant. They want people to act on it. They want people to convert. The same is the case for marketing tech-nology. It’s delivered in a different manner with marketing technology. But the end state is the de-livery of a personalized message, which someone then acts on — and eventually converts.”

SPOTTING THE BIG TECH TRENDSAnalysts say there are several major trends in ad technology and marketing automation that make this once unforeseen merger inevitable. Echoing much of the same sentiment as Moran, Accordant Media’s Greitzer breaks down the trends he feels are pushing this recent tech fusion.

“The biggest trends in ad tech, I think, are the rise of programmatic media and the ability to deliver messages on a one-to-one basis to con-sumers,” he says. “Marketers and advertisers want technology that enables them to deliver creative specifically based on what they know about the consumer: the ability to pick and choose who they want to deliver an ad to — which they couldn’t do in a pre-programmatic world. It’s a trend that’s allowing the convergence of the two.”

DataXu’s Montes says with certainty he can pinpoint the biggest trend in both technologies. “To me there’s a trend that’s different from the

The Merger of Ad Tech & Mar TechMore companies today are linking advertising technology and marketing automation. Here’s a breakdown of what that union means for customers — and for each industry’s future.

ability to just use data. The trend is acti-vating data,” he says. “Now you have this data, you want to take advantage of it. You want to use it for buying; you want to use it for analysis; you want to use it to inform your creative, etcetera. So, that [data acti-vation] is certainly a trend in both.”

THE EFFECTS OF TECH MERGERS ON CUSTOMERSHigh customer expectations leave advertis-ers and marketers with no choice: Use both ad tech and marketing automation or fall behind. “The whole reason we’re seeing this shift is because of the more educated con-sumer today,” says Bridget Bidlack, then-VP of enterprise products at Rocket Fuel, who is now SVP, global product, cross channel marketing at Experian Marketing Services. “Consumers are tied to their phones; they’re tied to their internet. They basically want to interact with a marketer or advertiser on their terms. And how they interact with a marketer isn’t always the same. It’s whatev-er is convenient at that time.”

Bidlack adds customers expect market-ers or advertisers to tie all of the information together from each of their interactions. And she insists the convergence of ad tech and marketing automation enables companies to meet these lofty demands.

“Those marketers and advertisers who do that — who unite both technologies — really have an edge over their competitors,” Bidlack continues. “They can start where the consumer wants them to start, really build on what they know about that cus-tomer, and then get them the right offer.”

Those right offers made possible by tech mergers are making more customers hap-py, says SAS’ Moran.

“At the end of the day, people don’t want an offer they consider to be spam, is not

relevant to them, or has no application to where they are along their buying journey,” he explains. “And because consumers are getting personalized messages across all media types they’re feeling brands under-stand them more. They feel as if a brand un-derstands where they are and knows what they need to get a goal accomplished. That builds loyalty, and it turns people into brand advocates.”

IMPACT ON THE BOTTOM LINEThat insight and advocacy often leads to one place: revenue.

“It’s a huge opportunity for marketers and advertisers to unlock revenue,” Greitzer notes. “So many opportunities open up, like what they understand about their custom-ers’ needs and what they understand about how a customer wants to be serviced. All of those things can be untapped with the con-vergence of technology. Better relevance drives better performance.”

Of course, most every marketer and ad-vertiser aims to boost revenue. As the sales benefits of using these technologies become more apparent, adoption follows.

“From a revenue perspective, we’re cer-tainly seeing more volume and revenues growing year-over-year. And we’re not see-ing any deceleration of adoption of ad tech and martech. In fact, it’s quite the contrary,” explains Montes. “We’re seeing acceleration. Overall, the market data that I have seen has shown the growth in revenue and growth in technology. That means a continual growth in the intersection between the two.”

In essence, the fusion of technologies makes things better for the customers, and that leads to more revenue. “The more tech-nology enables us to get the right message to the right person at the right time, the bet-ter the return on investment,” Greitzer says.

A MORE CREATIVE AND INTELLIGENT OUTLOOKCurrent trends, customer expectations, and positive effects on the bottom line point to one thing: the eventual disappearance in the distinction between ad tech and martech.

“I do see these two worlds really coming together,” notes Bidlack. In fact, she pre-dicts both technologies will come togeth-er because advertisers and marketers want better tools to understand and map the customer journey, and they need one single view of each customer.

“I see ad tech and martech working to-gether to bridge the known and anony-mous users,” Bidlack continues. “Marketers and agencies don’t want to log in to two different platforms that are telling them two different things. You shouldn’t have to log in to five different platforms to understand your customers and their behaviors.”

She says the convergence of marketing automation and ad technology allows all of the data to exist in a single platform, which provides clarity, frees up time, and sparks new ideas. “As we continue to see this con-solidation of ad tech and martech, we need to be innovating. Especially smaller ad tech companies — and even smaller marketing tech companies — which can take a little bit bigger risks. They can build solutions that are keeping up with the times.”

Keeping up with the times means more satisfied customers and more time to fo-cus on strategy and creative that’ll make a lasting impact.

“Go out. Explore. Discover,” Bidlack notes. “There’s already a lot of great syn-ergy between ad tech and martech. And really it’s just about coming together and sharing information so marketers and ad-vertisers can continue these conversations with customers no matter where they are.”

T he marketing technology business is booming. At this point, the landscape is more like a universe, with nearly 1,900

vendors serving marketers. But, as much as marketers may want it all, there’s only so

much technology any one company can buy — and only so much they really need. The re-sult: Different types of marketing technolo-gies are growing at different rates, as well as being funded to varying degrees.

A cursory look at the “Marketing Technolo-gy Landscape” that Ion interactive CTO Scott Brinker created earlier this year as compared to ones he created prior show significant growth in the marketing experiences area. This includes tools for content, email, mobile, search, social, video, and much more. In oth-er words, technologies that help marketers provide the optimal customer experiences at specific touchpoints.

Being a data junky, RJMetrics CEO and Co-founder Robert Moore decided to figure out why the marketing experience category is out-pacing other areas so significantly, and what that might mean in terms of their value.

“Investors want to know where they should be investing,” Moore explains. This includes marketers looking to invest in the “right” tech-nology not only for their immediate needs, but also for longer-term needs. “And entre-preneurs want to know what type of compa-ny they should start next, or how the market they’re currently in is developing,” he adds.

GROWTH MODEFirst, Moore discovered that over the past five years growth in the marketing experiences category has surpassed growth in all of the other categories. For example, 120 marketing experiences companies launched in 2012, as opposed to only 69 new companies across all other categories combined.

Second, he noticed how narrowly focused many of the companies are as compared to businesses in many other categories. Based on that, he surmised these smaller compa-nies might be less valuable. “The billion-dollar question behind my research is, ‘If there are more marketing experiences companies be-cause each of them is more narrowly focused, is the average company worth less?’”

According to Moore’s research, the mean amount of funding that marketing experienc-

Is ‘Marketing Experiences’ Technology Risky Business?The fastest growing area of marketing technology seems to be the least funded, but that might not be a bad thing.

es companies received is $25 million; this is the lowest amount among any category in Brinker’s infographic.

In fact, infrastructure companies received more than twice the funding than marketing experiences organizations. And even market-ing operations companies are better funded than businesses that provide tools for mar-keting experiences.

That said, Moore wasn’t convinced that funding equates to value. As he points out,

it may require less capital to build and run a company that provides marketing experience technologies. So, Moore looked at number of employees, because that tends to be a growth indicator. In this area marketing experiences companies also lag.

However, it seems neither of these issues is negative. On the contrary, seemingly, it takes less capital and staff to launch and run a mar-keting experiences company than it does for other organizations in other marketing tech-

nology categories, Moore surmised. These lower barriers to entry have translated to a flood of new options in the marketing expe-riences area.

For marketers, these findings should be a not-so-subtle reminder to conduct thor-ough research into which martech vendors will be right for their organization’s market-ing strategy, and not rush to judge, positive-ly or negatively, based on factors that might be misleading.

“There’s a lack of innovation in mar-keting technology,” says Robert Tas, then-SVP and CMO of Pegasystems,

who is now VP at McKinsey and Co. In fact, Tas, a marketing veteran whose background in-cludes running digital marketing at JP Morgan Chase, says marketing automation workflow hasn’t changed much since the technology first came to market.

“John Wanamaker wouldn’t know how his ad spending is performing,” he adds. “Marketers today are no closer to knowing than he was. With all the data available, we’re still 10 to 15 years behind where I thought we’d be.”

Indeed, marketers struggling to keep pace with escalating consumer expectations need a solution now — one that will help them today, as well as over the medium term.

“The next five years will be about delivering on the promise of customer experience and connecting systems,” explains Tas, adding cus-tomer experience requires a C-level commit-ment to really make it work. “And with digital driving more interactions, marketers are trying to figure out where they need to invest.”

Of course, it’s hard to plan for the next five years when marketers are still planning for next quarter — and they expect their plans to continually change. As Tas puts it, “There’s no rest in marketing.”

But marketers need to start somewhere. One area Tas recommends paying special attention to is customer interactions. Focusing on customers’ experiences across channels, as opposed to inter-actions with a single campaign, will help compa-nies’ branding come to life, he notes.

“Many companies are too campaign-centric. Branding is and will stay important, but how brands come to life will change,” Tas asserts. “Marketers have to respect customers across processes. A website should know who a cus-tomer is. That site should be connected to the service organization, online community, etc. You can’t not be connected.”

So how can marketers achieve this con-nectivity? One way, he says, is by improving cross-channel processes and viewability into the outcome of their marketing spend. Unfor-tunately, for most marketers there’s “a lack of viewability into the details of their marketing spend,” Tas says, adding few marketers have a well-integrated marketing supply chain — and fewer still can or do report on it.

“Process is a competitive necessity,” he stresses, adding that tools need to adapt to a marketing organization’s workflow, not the oth-er way around.

So, it’s up to the CMO to be the new systems integrator, Tas explains. “You couldn’t build a car with siloed data and disconnected process-es,” he adds. “Marketers need to integrate.”

Is Martech as Innovative as Vendors Claim?One marketing automation insider asserts that marketing technology needs to get back to the future.

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CMOs have a relationship problem. They need to win the hearts of their CIOs, but when it comes to communicating, the two

are more like cats and dogs than colleagues. In fact, only 9% of marketing leaders sur-

veyed think that IT understands what they do, and just 19% of IT leaders polled feel un-derstood by the marketing leaders they work with — according to the Rackspace Digital study “Marketing and IT: Overcoming a Cats

and Dogs History to Create a Seamless Cus-tomer Experience.”

“What surprises me is the fact CMOs and CIOs know what success looks like, but are un-willing or unable to get there,” says Kyle Metcalf, general manager of Rackspace Digital. “Typi-cally, when people define a problem they can start working on a solution. These folks know what they need to do, but very few are actually doing it. It’s incredibly important to overcome.”

One significant disconnect is speed versus quality. Nearly half of marketing leaders polled (46%) say IT doesn’t work quickly enough; con-versely, 47% of IT leaders say marketers want IT to move too fast, which could compromise quality and security.

“The solution here is proper planning up front,” Metcalf advises. “The IT leader needs to be more involved in the timeline from the mar-keting side of the house.” It shouldn’t be a case, he says, of marketing deciding they’re going to build an awesome website by the end of Q3, locking it down, and then IT is an afterthought — assuming IT can meet the goal when it hasn’t been consulted at all.

“Marketing needs to bring IT in at the start of the conversation to ensure what’s possible and realistic,” Metcalf explains.

Doing so is also one way to ensure alignment — another area of disconnect. Consider: 29% of marketing leaders surveyed cite alignment of marketing and the company’s key priorities as a top-three success driver; compare this to 37% of IT leaders who say alignment of IT and the company’s key priorities and 35% of IT leaders who cite collaboration and communication be-tween IT and other departments as two of their top-three success drivers.

“The problem,” Metcalf notes, “is that mar-keting looks at IT as a buzzkill. ‘They’re going to say no and then we can’t do X fast enough.’”

Marketing leaders don’t want to bring in IT early, but they have to or will look bad later when they can’t meet the goals they’ve set, he asserts.

“IT will bring reality into the room, and mar-keting needs to know that that’s important,” Met-calf adds. “A really good IT partner will say, ‘No, but’ and give an alternative solution, such as a realistic timeline with a clear explanation of why.”

Metcalf notes that a third party can act as a translator between the two groups. “They ap-preciate the help in pushing the conversation in the right direction,” he says.

Marketers Feel MisunderstoodCMOs and CIOs speak different languages; taking time to translate each other’s priorities goes a long way toward accomplishing them.

THE SOURCE OF FRUSTRATIONInterestingly, more than half of marketing and IT leaders — 56% and 54%, respective-ly — say the biggest issue between them is their relationship is time-consuming. The reasons for this include active conflict, cited by 51% of marketing and 35% of IT leaders; speaking different languages, say 47% marketing and 43% IT leaders; and fo-cusing on different goals, 42% marketing and 39% IT leaders.

“I read ‘time-consuming’ as frustrating,” Metcalf explains. “It boils down to mis-aligned goals and different languages. Un-til marketing and IT leaders learn how to effectively communicate, their relationship and conversations will go in circles. They need to learn each other’s languages to avoid wasted time and frustration.”

Metcalf recommends CMOs and CIOs ditch their ego and say, “I don’t understand what you’re saying” or “Why this time-line?” so they can work through issues to find a mutually beneficial solution. “It can be humbling and challenging, but market-ers need to understand technology and IT needs to be more strategic,” he says. “They need to embrace being uncomfortable.”

They also need to create alignment be-tween the two groups. Despite the discon-nects and frustrations, it is possible.

“Partnership is the key word here,” Met-calf notes. Respondents seem to agree. The path forward, according to the study, is to create a partnership focused on com-mon goals. In fact, 72% of marketing and 55% of IT leaders say building a true part-nership is critical to a successful IT-mar-keting relationship; 64% of marketing and

65% of IT leaders cite a focus on the same goals as another critical factor; and 63% of marketing and 58% of IT leaders say fre-quent communications is essential.

Ultimately, creating a successful IT- marketing partnership requires integration of the two teams. For example, integration into overlapping planning and processes, Metcalf says.

“‘How do I make sure that my counter-part is more integrated into my team and my processes?’ is what marketing and IT leaders should ask themselves,” he says. Although only 14% of marketing leaders and 17% of IT leaders polled say they’re currently very integrated, 92% and 75%, respectively, want more integration.

“They see where they need to be, but are having trouble getting there,” Metcalf continues. “Ego is a main driver of that. They need to put themselves in a more vulnerable position to make forward prog-ress. It can be difficult, but the benefits — bottom line, team success, customer ex-perience — are worth it.”

Embracing and adopting new technolo-gy was a presiding theme at this year’s Marketing&Tech Innovation Summit.

However, it seems that as marketers’ tech-nological options grow, their practical choic-es shrink. This was one of the key takeaways from a panel at the event, which featured Scott Brinker, cofounder and CTO at Ion Interactive; Bhavesh Vaghela, then-CMO at Response Tap, who is now CMO at Paywizard Group; David

Hahn, EVP of strategy at Integral Ad Science; and Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, CEO of AirPR, as the moderator.

When asked how marketers should determine whether a new piece of tech is worth adopting, Brinker said marketers’ strategies should deter-mine what tech they use. However, he acknowl-edged the opposite is often true.

“I think the better way to think of this is a little more circular. There’s so much innovation

coming out of this space right now,” Brinker said. “You don’t want this [innovation] to drive your strategy per se, but you should keep an eye on how some of this innovation is opening up for potential change in your strategy.”

“We’re seeing a dramatic shift in the way marketers are actually reaching people,” Hahn added. “With a fragmented supply chain, and a much broader way of reaching the people you’re trying to market to, you won’t have the capacity without technology.”

This, of course, begged the question of whether marketers should seek all-in-one tech solutions, or explore different tech options for each individual need.

“Tech is never really the limiting factor. It comes down to marketers’ talent with the tech they have,” Brinker suggested. “The whole thing with buying a whole suite, or assembling a stack of tech options is really the wrong approach. We should be focused on how we can actually execute these customer experiences.”

Indeed, the panel seemed in agreement that updating company culture and focusing on the customer should take precedent over updat-ing tech. “The reality is most marketing teams don’t even use a tenth of the technology they have. They’re buying tech because it’s the cool-est thing in town,” Vaghela said. “You’ve proba-bly got all of the data sets you need. What you need to do is connect it up, and then start using that data to help customers.”

Echoing an earlier Q&A session with Mayur Gupta, Vaghela added a company culture that embraces tech from the top down, while focus-ing on the customer, is pivotal to success in to-day’s rapidly expanding digital environment.

“If we believe that we’re in the age of the customer, and we believe that customers have this power of engaging with us in multiple ways, then we really need to understand how we stitch these [customer] journeys together,” Vaghela said.

Demystifying Marketing TechPanelists discussed the role technology plays in marketing, and how marketers should approach new technology at the 2015 Marketing&Tech Innovation Summit. By Perry Simpson