Real-time marketing
Encyclopedia
Real-time marketing is marketing performed "on-the-fly" to determine an appropriate or optimal approach to a particular customer
at a particular time and place. It is a form of market research
inbound marketing
that seeks the most appropriate offer for a given customer sales opportunity, reversing the traditional outbound marketing
(or interruption marketing) which aims to acquire appropriate customers for a given 'pre-defined' offer. The dynamic 'just-in-time' decision making behind a real-time offer aims to exploit a given customer interaction defined by web-site clicks
or verbal contact centre
conversation.
(CRM) solutions in major retail banking
, investment banking
and telecommunications companies. The intrinsic and prevailing 'heavyweight' nature of the key CRM vendors at this time, who were generally focused on major back-front office system integration projects, provided an opportunity for niche players within the campaign management application
arena.
expert consultants and often would follow an earlier outbound marketing solution implementation. This relatively lightweight delivery model had obvious attractions within the vendor sales cycle and customer procurement context but was ultimately to prove a disincentive for major systems integration services providers to partner with real-time marketing vendors.
and supporting client components such as a 'fat-client' desktop campaign studio / rules editor, browser-based marketing user reporting interface and enterprise application APIs such as web services / Java
components. Vendors typically will also provide legacy interfaces for COM, sockets and HTTP integration.
Vendor solution approaches to real-time learning naturally vary but commonly, the underlying models utilize a naive Bayesian probability
classifier, recognising that despite their apparently over-simplified assumptions, these classifiers have worked well in many complex real-world situations. To help gain acceptance with in-house specialist data mining
stakeholders, the real-time solutions also support external model scores and execution within offer decision making.
The dotcom 'bust' of 2000 inhibited the further development and implementation of item-based collaborative filtering
techniques which, having been incorporated within real-time marketing solutions through the 1990s, should have been immediately attractive to online retailers managing hundreds of thousands (or millions) of products as opposed to a retail bank with a hundred propositions across savings, credit card
and mortgage
product lines.
(MRM) which 'sits above' real-time marketing, began to emerge during the early 21st Century, albeit in a fairly bespoke and implementation-specific guise. The essence of this abstraction layer is that the MRM application orchestrates strategy, stakeholder sign-off, budgeting, program planning, campaign execution and effectiveness reporting across inbound real-time and outbound marketing disciplines.
In some respects, these early real-time marketing customer implementations were ahead of their time despite acknowledged revenue realization within the early adopters.
Hosted real-time marketing solutions are an obvious and increasingly prevalent means of provisioning organisational demand for this critical enterprise capability. A remaining challenge for such solution vendors is to fully convince enterprise clients that the customer data profile (often comprising up to 1000 source or derived attributes) involved in the decision making and targeting processes is fully secure. Packaged 'private' cloud solutions are already appearing alongside 'cloudsourcing' management consultancies.
Gartner's predictions for the Gartner Top 10 Technologies for 2011 suggest that whatever the nomenclature, real-time marketing will continue to evolve, crucially to embrace mobile platforms underpinned by an awareness of customer context, location and social networking (collective intelligence
) implications.
Customer
A customer is usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services...
at a particular time and place. It is a form of market research
Market research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...
inbound marketing
Inbound marketing
Note: The sole purpose of this article is to disambiguate two pairs of meanings of inbound and outbound marketing. Please see the linked articles for in-depth information on the respective meanings....
that seeks the most appropriate offer for a given customer sales opportunity, reversing the traditional outbound marketing
Outbound Marketing
Interruption marketing is a pejorative term that refers to promoting a product through continued advertising, promotions, public relations and sales. It is considered to be an annoying version of the traditional way of doing marketing whereby companies focus on finding customers through advertising...
(or interruption marketing) which aims to acquire appropriate customers for a given 'pre-defined' offer. The dynamic 'just-in-time' decision making behind a real-time offer aims to exploit a given customer interaction defined by web-site clicks
Clickstream
A clickstream is the recording of the parts of the screen a computer user clicks on while web browsing or using another software application. As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage or application, the action is logged on a client or inside the web server, as well as possibly the web browser,...
or verbal contact centre
Contact centre
Contact Centre may refer to:*A Child contact centre, a centre for children to maintain contact with an absent parent*A contact centre , an extension of a call centre*A Call centre...
conversation.
History
Real-time marketing techniques developed during the mid 1990's following the initial deployment of customer relationship managementCustomer relationship management
Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...
(CRM) solutions in major retail banking
Retail banking
Retail banking is banking in which banking institutions execute transactions directly with consumers, rather than corporations or other banks. Services offered include: savings and transactional accounts, mortgages, personal loans, debit cards, credit cards, and so forth.-Types of...
, investment banking
Investment banking
An investment bank is a financial institution that assists individuals, corporations and governments in raising capital by underwriting and/or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of securities...
and telecommunications companies. The intrinsic and prevailing 'heavyweight' nature of the key CRM vendors at this time, who were generally focused on major back-front office system integration projects, provided an opportunity for niche players within the campaign management application
Campaign management tools
In the past, political campaigns were conducted using traditional methods of personal contact, such as television and radio media purchasing, print advertising and direct mail...
arena.
Solution delivery
The implementation of real-time marketing solutions through the late 1990s would typically involve a 10-14 week delivery project with 1-2 FTEFull-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent , is a unit to measure employed persons or students in a way that makes them comparable although they may work or study a different number of hours per week. FTE is often used to measure a worker's involvement in a project, or to track cost reductions in an organization...
expert consultants and often would follow an earlier outbound marketing solution implementation. This relatively lightweight delivery model had obvious attractions within the vendor sales cycle and customer procurement context but was ultimately to prove a disincentive for major systems integration services providers to partner with real-time marketing vendors.
Technical overview
Real-time marketing solution implementation classically involves the server-side installation of a multithreaded core decisioning application server / interaction transactional-biased schemaSchema
The word schema comes from the Greek word "σχήμα" , which means shape, or more generally, plan. The plural is "σχήματα"...
and supporting client components such as a 'fat-client' desktop campaign studio / rules editor, browser-based marketing user reporting interface and enterprise application APIs such as web services / Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
components. Vendors typically will also provide legacy interfaces for COM, sockets and HTTP integration.
Vendor solution approaches to real-time learning naturally vary but commonly, the underlying models utilize a naive Bayesian probability
Bayesian probability
Bayesian probability is one of the different interpretations of the concept of probability and belongs to the category of evidential probabilities. The Bayesian interpretation of probability can be seen as an extension of logic that enables reasoning with propositions, whose truth or falsity is...
classifier, recognising that despite their apparently over-simplified assumptions, these classifiers have worked well in many complex real-world situations. To help gain acceptance with in-house specialist data mining
Data mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
stakeholders, the real-time solutions also support external model scores and execution within offer decision making.
The dotcom 'bust' of 2000 inhibited the further development and implementation of item-based collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering is the process of filtering for information or patterns using techniques involving collaboration among multiple agents, viewpoints, data sources, etc. Applications of collaborative filtering typically involve very large data sets...
techniques which, having been incorporated within real-time marketing solutions through the 1990s, should have been immediately attractive to online retailers managing hundreds of thousands (or millions) of products as opposed to a retail bank with a hundred propositions across savings, credit card
Credit card
A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
and mortgage
Mortgage
A mortgage is a security interest in real property held by a lender as a security for a debt, usually a loan of money. A mortgage in itself is not a debt, it is the lender's security for a debt...
product lines.
Marketing vision
Over time, it became apparent to solution vendors and maturing customers alike, that 'traditional' outbound and emergent inbound marketing initiatives should be consolidated within a coherent and coordinated enterprise marketing strategy. To this end, a class of marketing application known as marketing resource managementMarketing Resource Management
Marketing Resource Management provides the software infrastructure to support Marketing Operations Management. Marketing Operations Management is the alignment of people, process and technology to support marketing activities and improve marketing effectiveness...
(MRM) which 'sits above' real-time marketing, began to emerge during the early 21st Century, albeit in a fairly bespoke and implementation-specific guise. The essence of this abstraction layer is that the MRM application orchestrates strategy, stakeholder sign-off, budgeting, program planning, campaign execution and effectiveness reporting across inbound real-time and outbound marketing disciplines.
Unrealized promise
The term "real-time marketing" has the potential weakness of self-limiting the underlying decisioning server capability to cross/up-selling despite the observation that this particular function is generally the most compelling aspect of the application class. Vendors therefore found themselves re-branding real-time marketing products to suggest a more holistic appreciation of enterprise interaction decision management.In some respects, these early real-time marketing customer implementations were ahead of their time despite acknowledged revenue realization within the early adopters.
Hosted real-time marketing solutions are an obvious and increasingly prevalent means of provisioning organisational demand for this critical enterprise capability. A remaining challenge for such solution vendors is to fully convince enterprise clients that the customer data profile (often comprising up to 1000 source or derived attributes) involved in the decision making and targeting processes is fully secure. Packaged 'private' cloud solutions are already appearing alongside 'cloudsourcing' management consultancies.
Gartner's predictions for the Gartner Top 10 Technologies for 2011 suggest that whatever the nomenclature, real-time marketing will continue to evolve, crucially to embrace mobile platforms underpinned by an awareness of customer context, location and social networking (collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
) implications.