For the second post about the near-term future of digital marketing, I want to discuss the technology behind our favorite products.

In part 1, we discussed human trends and how they’re closely tied to today’s technological advancements. The dream (or nightmare) of robots that can not only interact with humans but display and read emotion is closer than ever before. Samatha from “Her” is becoming a real possibility as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to improve.

What does this mean?

It means chatbots are expanding the personalized experiences for millions of people with easy to use tools like Dialogflow, Acobot (Which is used on this blog), Landbot, and dynamic content that continues to improve as adoption across organizations increases.

Powered by technology, inspired by human nature. 

I said it before and will say it again. Human nature is closely tied to the technological advancements we enjoy today.

What does this mean?

It means that by understanding humans, we can project where technology is going, but it also means that technology can sway humans in a certain direction.

Confused yet?

I hope not. Technology tries to replicate human nature, hence my reference to “Her.” But really technology drive human nature as well. From clocks providing an exact time (or timer) to watches becoming smart to transition lenses. Technology when at it’s best can change human nature.

So, what does all of this have to do with the immediate future of digital marketing?

The simple answer, a lot!

We often break marketing down into a couple of big buckets – acquisition and retention. Of course, there are lots of smaller buckets that fit inside these two larger ones, but at the core, these are the two main categories

1. Acquisition – Getting something or someone new
2. Retention – Keeping something or someone that you have  

Acquisition marketing.

Today users make decisions faster than ever. Some studies suggest that users make up their minds in less than 1 second after landing on a website. This shows how important the first impression can be. When it comes to acquisition marketing this is important, you only get one chance to make a first impression, so to ensure that first impression is good we often spend time projecting what different users will want and ensuring that they can find it as part of our digital experience.

One way we project what users want is by analyzing the data of previous users. We often ask questions like – What did other users click? What types of content did they interact with? What websites of devices did they come from?

By knowing this we can write rules that tell the systems to show different variations of content to different users. In other words, we use dynamic content.

This sounds super easy, right? But how can an organization scale this to ensure that the thousands of people that visit their digital properties are having the best experience? Manually doing analysis can take a lot of time. So, how can we spend less time doing analysis and more time creating the right content for the right person to be seen at the right time?

The answer is technology.

A big part of a lot of organizations is their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform. Platforms like HubSpot and Pardot to name a couple are becoming more integrated across experiences because they combine marketing and technology. These platforms analyze user information in a fraction of the time it takes to manually do this allowing more time to be spent creating content.

These platforms also have ML built in so that they get smarter the more data they collect. This is important because as these systems get smarter their recommendations and projections for what will have the greatest impact on a consumer will get better. In other words, their predictive marketing ability increased.

Acquiring new users is often the toughest part of marketing. It’s not easy to persuade a user to change their preferences without reason. Think about it, I use the same beard cream I always have, buy the same brand of batteries, and the same brand rice and cheese. I do this because I trust these brands. For a new brand to persuade me to change they have to speak to me. They have to give me a reason to make a change. They have to show me some sort of value.

Again, technology can help make this happen. Using dynamic content it can ensure that I’m seeing relevant messages at the right time. Maybe this is through ads or embedded in various content. Maybe it’s seeing their brand associated with other products that I trust on physical and digital shelves. Or maybe it’s something completely different.

Predictive marketing is growing because our ability to understand and quickly analyze success patterns with today’s technology is increasing. 

Retention

A big part of all retention marketing is personalized push communications. Things like email, text, messengers, and other forms of pushing information to users when and where they want it.

This presents a challenge as an organization’s user bases grow. We live in the world of now, so how can all users get quick, accurate, personalized communication?

The answer technology. Specifically, AI and ML technology. 

Retaining users is not all about pushing personalized communication. It’s often just about authentic content. Content that reinforces that the user thoughts and feelings.

While this may not sound like a technological issue, ensuring the user sees the content and is able to interact with it is. From ads and enhanced bidding software to A/B testing software to dynamic content creation to any number of other technologies that ensure there’s a connection between organization and user.

This connection really is what makes a brand. As I explored on this blog earlier, brands are really just perceptions that users have of organizations.

So, what’s the future hold?

Today’s digital marketing landscape is complex. Consumer behavior is complex. Often technology is complex. So, is the future complex?

Over the next few years, we believe technology will continue to grow in complexity, but the UI and UX will continue to become more inclusive and easy-to-use. Think about website building platforms like Wix and Squarespace. The technology will always be complex, but the products themselves are getting better when it comes to the usability (more on products in part 3).

Voice and personalization have improved over the past few years. This will continue as digital experiences will better be able to replicate human interactions across devices. It also means things like ADA compliance technology will continue to grow when it comes to importance as organizations attempt to ensure there are no users left behind.

CRMs allow more data to be analyzed faster. In the immediate future, these platforms will continue to become more integrated into experiences.

Content variations will continue to increase as technology will allow these to be dynamically generated. Not only will systems get better at creating content, but they will get smarter when it comes to identifying new audience segments and alerting admins. 

As consumers embrace new ways to interact with organizations cross-channel opportunities will continue to grow. Products like Smart TVs, voice assistants, smartphones, and wifi connectivity means more people have more access in more places. Personal devices are growing, think about it, 5 years ago your phone was your most personal device. Today a lot of people would say their smartwatch is their most personal device. The family computer used to be THE shared device, but today it’s the TV, laptop, tablet, voice assistant, car, fridge, etc. Each device offers a new way to interact with users. 

These are a few of the ways my team and I are thinking about the immediate digital marketing future. There’s a lot of opportunities that we did not discuss, but common trends emerge when it comes to technology. Replicating human interactions and behavior, better and faster analysis of data, and convenience.