Don't DIY: the case for specialist marketing automation tech

The commercial imperative to deliver a relevant digital experience or offer to the right customer at the right time has never been more important to brands - depending on the product, between 56% and 85% of a consumer's purchase cycle occurs digitally, prior to their first interaction with a live sales person.

"Technology is also allowing consumers to apply their own preferences to their purchase choices in near real-time, making the need for brands to engage at speed and scale on a mass personalised basis critical to a brand's success," says Nick Orton, CEO of Grapevine. "Exploiting opportunities within the purchase cycle by offering targeted information based on accurate customer profiles, at speed and scale, is the foundation of effective marketing automation."

He adds that many marketers are under the impression they've got marketing automation under control, implementing simple "batch and blast" programmes with vanilla calls to action. "Another panacea seems to be: 'If we can't do it ourselves, let's just hand it all over to our digital agency.' While digital agencies have their place in the value chain in terms of strategy, creative and production, at the end of the day the brand needs to commit to a marketing automation technology infrastructure (in the cloud) that will provide ongoing returns, leaving agencies to provide their specific value-add to individual campaigns and activations."

According to Orton, finding an experienced marketing automation technology partner that provides massively scalable technology in the cloud, underpinned by omnichannel delivery at a price point that is relevant to the cost of acquiring your customer, is an important consideration in jump-starting the process.

"Brands don't necessarily need expert technical skills to manage marketing automation campaigns," says Orton. "All they need to know is what the technology can do, and what is practical and possible. Managing the technology can be left to external providers, who can assist with setting up the required automations. The technology provider's job is to shield and insulate the brand from these complexities of data, devices, channels, IP blacklists, POPI, tech, compliance and more.

"Brands and consumer businesses that don't invest in marketing automation technology will quickly find themselves unable to compete for share of market or share of wallet in a highly competitive and challenging digitised consumer market."