Oracle has improved the Cross-Channel Orchestration Canvas within Oracle Marketing Cloud. The new interface allows users to create workflows and customer paths easily using a drag and drop graphical interface. From a single canvas marketers can create cross channel experiences simply and easily to help ensure that customers receive the most engaging journey possible.
The use of the drag and drop feature makes it possible to set up automated interactions such as SMS messaging should a customer abandon a cart item prematurely. This new generation of marketing canvas is not about creating a specific journey path for users either. Paths can be adaptive, bringing all channels across a company including in store, online, mobile, email, SMS. The journeys also adapt to actual customer behaviour rather than just desired behaviour. The aim of this is not for customers to feel forced down specific channels and cull de sac’s but to be assisted in their shopping experience. This in turn helps to create and build loyalty that more linear experiences alienate.
Steve Krause, Group Vice President Product Management, Oracle Marketing Cloud commented: “Effectively orchestrating cross-channel marketing activities can be extremely complex for brands, but it is an area that marketing must tackle as discrepancies in experiences, and sometimes prices, erode trust and distance customers from a brand. To help our customers address these challenges, we have broken down the silos that typically separate marketing teams with our new cross-channel marketing solution. This will help improve collaboration and empower marketing to orchestrate relevant real-time experiences.”
New enhancements
Oracle have enhanced their canvas, first launched in 2009 as the “Program Canvas” with four new features.
Adaptive Customer Path Creation and Optimization:
Customers are often unpredictable and different customer profiles utilise channels in different ways. The Orchestration Canvas allows marketers to create event driven and behaviour driven adaptive paths that let customers control their path to purchase. This creates less friction for customers during the buying process and improves the buying experience for them.
True Cross Channel Orchestration
Cross channel marketing often means saying the same things across different channels. This is not an optimal approach. It can make messages irrelevant and often weakens the customer loyalty. There is also a risk of duplication that floods different customer channels and merely alienates rather than encourages them. The Orchestration Canvas helps marketers to connect all customer identities to reduce the risk of that happening. This also allows greater targeted information to be collated about individual preferences. in turn this leads to improved personalisation across customer preferred channels.
“Marketer-Friendly” mobile Testing
Marketers can use a code-free, drag and drop interface to test and optimize mobile application experiences. The functionality includes a range of tools from simple A/B tests, to complex multivariate testing and segment personalisation. Additionally, marketers can leverage customer preference and behavioural data across different channels. For example, data collected mobile campaigns is available to other channels within the Oracle Marketing Cloud such as email.
Integrated Stack and Ecosystem
With a single integrated stack of data. Companies are able to bring a single view of the customer across the whole of the customer experience chain. This enables teams from marketing to sales, commerce and customer service to deliver a richer and personalised experience to all buyers. Understanding what makes a difference between an order winner and an order qualifier. The new enhancements also have pre built integrations with the Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Cloud. Hence delivering the ability to leverage preference and behavioural data from across all interactions to further enhance customer profiles.
Enhancing Marketing
These enhancements will allow Oracle marketing cloud customers to deliver consistent and a personalised customer experience across channels. Customers are expecting a personalised experience more and more. This is a welcome enhancement from Oracle. It further enhances its marketing tools, already considered by some to be market leading. The new interface is slick and simple to use. The click and drag interface will allow non developers to create experiences for consumers leveraging the marketing teams expertise directly.
The new Mobile App visual editor also allows marketers to create, test and improve mobile experiences for customers. This means that companies will be able to deliver an experience that they can be happy with. Avoiding some of the issues of poorly executed customer journeys. As an aside, it is a shame that auto attendant call systems are not similarly tested! Perhaps Oracle might extend the marketing cloud to deliver a similar experience for these too, as this is not mentioned.
Conclusion
This latest update enhances just one aspect of the Oracle CX cloud. This product delivers a complete end to end experience for customers. That solution includes Oracle Commerce, Oracle Configure, Price, and Quote Cloud (Oracle CPQ Cloud), Oracle Marketing Cloud, Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud, and Oracle Social Cloud. What will be interesting is to see some case studies that show the successful implementation of these new features.
