Marketing changes a lot — arguably more than any other business function. While our goals remain the same — drive revenue through acquiring and engaging customers — the ways that we do this today are vastly different than they were even a decade ago.
Along with the growing responsibilities of being a modern-day marketer, we’re inundated with new tools and technologies, while still trying to get the most out of what we have, and still lacking the means to effectively engage our customers — at least without the process being cumbersome, expensive, and just downright clunky.
As experienced marketers and marketing technologists, we were feeling this pain — both in our own day-to-day lives, and with our clients. We knew there had to be a better way — and we’re pretty confident we found it.
Data is the crux of many marketing problems — we don't have enough of it (due to lack of access), we have the data we need but it's unusable, or we have the data but lack the resources to make it actionable. So, let’s start there.
The ideal solution would be that we have all the data we need — from across the organization — at our fingertips, in a way that’s easy to use to digest, make decisions with, build audiences from, and activate effective marketing across channels.
Customer data platforms, or CDPs, are usually positioned as the necessary tool to achieve this ideal, and they’ve been gaining a lot of traction lately. While the idea of a CDP — which promises a centralized customer view and actionable data — isn’t new, the technology itself is relatively nascent. An increased demand for CDPs can be seen as the result of several factors — including the increase in digital business accelerated by the global pandemic, the need for companies to take a privacy-centric approach to collecting and managing first-party data, and the increasing fragmentation of marketing tech stacks.
There are a lot of CDPs on the market – which we’ll discuss more in future blogs (shameless plug: you should sign up for our newsletter to ensure you receive it), but Twilio Segment dominates the market (it was ranked the top CDP by IDC in 2020) because of its ability to be seamlessly stitched together across an entire business’ tech stack. Segment delivers on its promise of real-time insights and activation capabilities — made even more powerful by its ability to flexibly connect into company-specific solutions, numerous software providers (through their 300+ plug & play integrations) as well as the broader Twilio ecosystem — capturing the billions of customer interactions that take place across a company’s channels and business units.
Segment’s flexible API to connect a myriad of data sources and its ability to actually make the data usable is a dream come true for marketers. It enables marketers to harness data in a new and powerful way — not only to deliver personalized experiences for our customers, but to gain deeper insights into the customer journey across the business and identify areas for optimization to drive brand loyalty and ultimately, more revenue.
The best thing about Segment is that it is positioned to be the foundation of a marketing-tech stack, meaning that Twilio’s customer engagement platform is foundationally built for the data-first marketer. Better data = better experiences = better outcomes.
Now that you probably get where we’re going (if you don’t, we’ll be more clear: we believe Twilio and Segment are at the forefront of the next era of marketing technology), let’s move on to what better data means for marketers.
It seems that every day, a report comes out with new data and statements like 51% of customers expect personalized experiences, and 40% of customers have been up-sold because of personalization, etc., etc.
We know personalization is important, and we know it’s hard work to implement, and sometimes, even harder to define. But we know that, when done well, personalization drives loyalty, builds relationships, and can help cut through the overload that people are feeling by serving them with relevant content.
Which is why, as marketers, it’s time to adapt our mindsets: in order to acquire and grow our relationships with customers, we must be focused on intentionally engaging them and providing them with meaningful experiences — rather than blasting out emails and ads for the sake of it.
We have to rethink how we use technology to power our customer experiences and put engagement at the forefront.
Twilio is also at the forefront of this highly necessary shift: categorizing their platform — which offers access to real-time data, expansive messaging capabilities, and marketing orchestration — as a customer engagement platform, rather than a marketing automation platform. But make no mistake: it’s a tool for marketers — especially the ones who are ready to enter into this new era.
Twilio’s very foundation was built around the idea of being a scalable, flexible, and customizable solution for companies looking to engage their customers at scale.
With the constantly rising amount of marketing technology solutions available, and the inevitable evolution of customer expectations, it’s clear that a ‘one size fits all’ tech stack is not the future. Having a solution in place that can be easily stitched together with new technologies (and existing technologies) will be instrumental in how marketers continue to adapt and iterate on their customer engagement strategies — all while having the ability to create something that is truly unique to your brand.
Stitch is the world’s first consultancy exclusively dedicated to Twilio and Segment for marketers. We’re a team of highly-experienced marketing technologists, with multiple decades of experience — including working with and for Salesforce, ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce), Marketo (acquired by Adobe), and IBM — and we’ve chosen to invest in becoming the premier partner to marketers using Twilio and Segment, because we firmly believe it presents an incredible solution for marketers looking for better data, better engagement, and more flexibility.
As a partner solely dedicated to helping marketers with the Twilio platform (which includes Segment, SendGrid, Messaging and Engage), our primary focus is on helping marketers realize their full potential with the platform, optimize their ways of working, and maximize their investments in the platform. We bring deep technical capabilities and marketing strategy expertise to the table to help you drive marketing success for your team — with a focus on faster time-to-value, ongoing partnership, and helping you constantly level up in your use of the platform.
Want to learn more about why we’re betting on Twilio for marketers? Listen to our podcast, or get in touch.
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