(Image credit/Pixabay/Thomas Steiner)Customer journeys just got interesting with the announcement that Lytics has integrated its customer data platform into the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The company says marketers can focus on experiences that meet strategic marketing objectives with real-time visibility into what drives conversions.

The move reflects a growing desire among marketers to manage and orchestrate customer journeys by integrating best-of-breed solutions into existing technology stack. Lytics’ campaign orchestration capabilities extend into Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Facebook, SendGrid, and many other popular marketing technology tools. This enables marketers to deliver more targeted campaigns and improve the customer journey.

Holy grail for marketers

One-to-one marketing at scale is the holy grail for marketers. However, it rarely involves just one platform, instead drawing from dozens of different best-of-breed tools. With Lytics’ integration capabilities, marketers have access to a single point of view that stretches across the entire customer journey. The integration allows marketers bring insights such as customer behaviour, content affinity, and best time and channel to the forefront. Such insights answer questions such as what’s driving clicks and conversions into their campaigns.

Integrating Lytics’ platform with Salesforce will allow marketers to import existing campaigns to build experiences within the Orchestrate Journey canvas. This allows them to leverage those insights gained from their Lytics’ experiences to deliver more targeted campaigns. Those experiences can then be sent to SFMC for delivery.

Delivering more targeted campaigns

  • Audience segments can be exported from Lytics into Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to continue the customer journey.
  • Customers’ events (e.g., opened email, a new purchase) captured in the Lytics platform can instantly trigger a new experience. (e.g., an email or text message) in SFMC.
  • Marketers can switch between Lytics and SFMC within the same customer journey to deliver optimal combination of channel and message.
(Image credit/LinkedIn/James McDermott)
James McDermott, CEO of Lytics

According to James McDermott, CEO of Lytics: “The best customer journeys are an open road. That means giving marketers the freedom to choose multiple paths by integrating with their existing marketing technology stack.

“Our customers love how simple it is to build, view the actionable insights, and manage campaigns in our Journey Canvas. It’s about helping marketers deliver the best customer experience using a best-of-breed approach.”

Enterprise Times: What does this mean for business?

Businesses are still seeking the holy grail of the single customer view. Some technology companies like to talk about orchestration because it sounds efficient and sophisticated. And, done right, it is. However, the reality is marketeers manage a plethora of platforms, tools and agencies, often each ‘owning’ aspects of customer data. As a result, campaign orchestration is often very limited. Orchestration looks more like a one-man band than a symphony orchestra. This is due to limited integration with and visibility into the other “players.”

The integration of Lytics into Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a sensible step in the right direction. It provides organisations with customer journey orchestration in a seamlessly manner. The company says marketeers will be able to weave campaigns between Lytics and Salesforce Marketing Cloud using shared insights.

It would have been useful to get a better understanding how the integration layer will work. Will marketeers share a common dashboard or have access to separate dashboards within a shared system? Ultimately the proof will be in the effectiveness of various marketing programmes of enterprises such as Heineken, Yamaha and AEG and the marketing success or failure of current Lytics clients, operating in highly competitive industries.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here