How has your organisation / team dealt with the challenge of the marketing industry and wider digital world evolving at such a fast pace?

Most organisations know they need to evolve to meet the changing technology and customer evolution landscape. However, organisations are in various stages to meet these changing needs due to legacy issues, external environment challenges and most importantly – structure and talent required to execute against a strategy which in many cases may require hard and bold decisions.

OCBC Bank started on its MarTech strategy in 2016 and are now at a stage at getting into executing against the plan. This was a long-drawn effort which involved education of senior management, mapping of resources (both budgets and talent) and nailing down clear objectives for measurement. This has helped drive a single-minded approach to delivering both on customer experience as well as business objectives.

Key to the above journey has been –

starting early with a clear vision tied into customer and business objectives, a supportive executive management team and the right talent to drive the project.

Currently, what are you primarily looking for in your digital marketing efforts? Awareness or engagement? Why?

Marketing can never divorce itself into driving ONLY awareness or engagement and digital marketing supports the overall objectives. Given the propensity for digital marketing to drive better bottom-of-funnel actions, there is a slightly larger focus on driving business results.

However, at OCBC Bank – the focus for digital marketing has evolved into a customer journey focus right though all stages of the purchase funnel and hence, at this point in time, we start with awareness, but measure all actions against the final customer action i.e. engagement and sales.

This helps to focus the team and ensure executive support.

What is your key takeaway piece of advice that you would give when speaking to others on how to evaluate and select a MarTech stack?

Three key points

1. Assess your need: The solution’s are different based on their organisation needs and objectives. What works for someone else may not be right for you.
2. Best in class may not mean best for you: What is touted as “best” may not be the right solution for you. Again, evaluate against your objectives and how the different pieces fit together.
3. Invest in Talent – Building a Ferrari is useless if you do not have a driver for the Ferrari. Build talent before investing in a stack.

How did your MarTech journey begin? Please let us know your top 3 findings and discoveries.

Our MarTech journey began with implementation of Web Analytics in 2015. This was the very foundation of what we did as it opened our eyes to the potential of customer journeys and how we can maximize customer experience and business results.

The top 3 findings for me in the journey are:

1. Start with clear business objectives and get executive support early
2. Be patient – implementation of MarTech requires time and money.
3. Go for a staggered approach –showcase small on a periodic basis.

For you and your team, which is currently recognised as the larger challenge – MarTech integration or MarTech strategy?

Both are big challenges, which take precedence at different times of the journey. In the beginning MarTech strategy is more important as it is the foundation of getting executive support as well as broad based support from other stakeholders.

However, all the above is moot if this is not translated into execution, which is where the integration comes in.

This is a long-drawn process, with requirement for managing various stakeholders and also planning the execution.

I’d say that integration is a process – which can be executed with enough time and money (after stakeholder buying), but formulating and communicating the strategy is critical as it forms the foundation for what will be done.

Have you mainly chosen to adopt established MarTech or have you also looked into the emerging opportunities? Which?

At this stage, we’re more into established MarTech tools and platforms as these are the foundation of executing a great customer journey. This is not to say that emerging opportunities are not being evaluated – rather it’s about maximizing what we have with the resources rather than spreading ourselves too thin – which is an easy place to fall into.

Which MarTech brands have you found have / are close to best meeting your expectations when it comes to customer experience? Let us know of any brands which have exceeded expectations.

At this point, we are working on a “best in class” stack rather than a full-service stack. These have been chosen from 3 consideration points (not in any particular order):

1. What tech works best with each other
2. User-friendly and ease of implementation
3. Cost of technology and history of upgrading

The core technologies we’re using are Adobe and IBM components along with Interwoven and 3rd party data providers. So far, these seem to have met our requirements.

What do you predict as being the top MarTech trends for MarTech in 2020?

The top trends for 2020 will be some recurring and new themes

1. Mobile
2. Hyper personalization at scale
3. Talent