The Lowdown

Lockr’s Alternative Identity Manager (AIM) is a unified container for identity and data management.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

AIM helps publishers seamlessly integrate and activate alternative IDs such as authenticated traffic solution, unified ID 2.0, ID5 and more.

Who It’s For

Publishers are already suffering from resource constraints, given their dwindling teams, re-directed engineering teams and development cycles based on guesses where the most demand will be.

What It Solves

AIM offers a complimentary, comprehensive and self-service solution for publishers to test and deploy several identity solutions, clean rooms and CDPs simultaneously to maximize revenue in the evolving digital advertising landscape.

What Makes It Special

AIM seeks to prioritize publishers’ control and secure ownership of the data. Offering unparalleled flexibility and control over their first-party data, the records can be conveniently pushed to publishers’ platforms of choice, such as cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or CDPs. AIM works seamlessly with industry-standard platforms, including Google Ad Manager, Prebid, Amazon Publisher Services and more, to ensure compatibility and ease for publishers.

Contact

Lockr

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But marketers haven’t jumped in with both feet yet, as a staggering 67% question whether their company’s data setup is equal to the task. While large datasets offer massive opportunities for marketers, they also present huge data privacy risks, and not every company has the vendor partnerships and technology they need to keep customer data safe.

Think of generative AI as a brand-new Lamborghini Huracán. Do you have the license and driving skills to handle such a powerful machine safely? Do you have a destination mapped out? Because if you don’t, you could spin out of your lane and end up facing oncoming traffic.

It’s a dilemma because there’s a sense of urgency. Revenue officers are expecting huge results, customer expectations are high and it’s imperative to take customer data privacy seriously. But there’s also no time to lose because 2024 is the year gen AI will finally make it possible to create omnichannel journeys and personalized experiences in the moment. So, as you buckle up and get ready for the ride of your life, keep the following tips in mind.

1. Define The Perfect Customer Journey

You wouldn’t take a long road trip without a destination in mind, and the customer journey is no different. The old rules of the road don’t apply in the age of generative AI because there are so many functions you couldn’t perform just a couple of years ago that are now possible, such as:

• Real-time creation of highly personalized outreach like product offers; and
• Recommendations delivered via text messaging and email marketing.

According to research cited by Forbes Advisor, personalized experiences like these encourage 46% of customers to buy more. So, it’s time to create an omnichannel journey for your customer that perfectly matches your product set and the brand values you believe in. Now that gen AI is here, it’s ready to help you deliver the perfect customer journey.

2. Get Your Data & Tech Stack Right

Are you confident about the origin of all your customer data? Did the customer share it, did it flow into your company via APIs or did you buy it? Are you sure you have customers’ permission to use it? Has the chain of custody been secure? Are you sure your cybersecurity policy covers martech data mishaps?

A terrifyingly high number of data exchanges still happen via email, and processes are only as safe as the personal workarounds people create, such as spreadsheet downloads. Cross-reference your customer journey against your existing vendors and tech stack to make sure you have the expertise and platform you need, including secure and compliant data management that answers all these questions.

3. Start Your Engine & Drive

Marketing technology is moving so fast that you don’t have the luxury of waiting until everything is perfect to rev up campaigns and customer outreach with generative AI. Get on the road as safely (and quickly) as you can and start anticipating customer needs and personalizing messages at scale as only generative AI can. You can start now and build your capabilities at the same time, perfecting your tech stack, vendor relationships and datasets while you’re underway.

Remember how data was going to change everything? To be fair, it did. But until the advent of generative AI, marketing technology was merely scratching the surface of what’s possible with data.

Now the moment marketers have been waiting for is here, so it’s time to start executing on your biggest and boldest brand vision — safely and imperfectly. With generative AI and the right vendors and technology to handle your data, you can make it happen.

Welcome to 2024 — it should be a fun ride.

Tara Kelly is the Founder, President and CEO of SPLICE Software, a customer engagement company that specializes in using big data, small data and AI to create messages that drive customer engagement and the desired call to action.      

The post 3 Ways To Rev Up 2024 Marketing With AI While Avoiding Data Privacy Pitfalls appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

As part of the new partnership, the companies will release G2 TechBlend, a new content solution that blends TechTarget’s contextually relevant editorial content with the insights, news and trend analysis from G2. The companies will also introduce new site features to the TechTarget website, such as more than 2.4M peer reviews from the G2 marketplace.

“Today’s B2B tech buyers are progressing further through the buying cycle than ever before speaking to a vendor,” said Rebecca Kitchens, President of TechTarget, in a statement. “Throughout this journey, they look to trusted online sources to educate themselves on the specific solutions that will help their organizations address the challenges they face. TechTarget and G2 provide are both leaders in their respective areas, and each offers robust content experiences and different but complementary traffic sources. When combined, they add tremendous value to self-service buyers at the exact point of their research – no matter what buying stage they’re in. By exposing our content to each other’s audiences, we can bring insights that significantly better serve the needs of B2B tech buyers, which is why we are so excited about this partnership.”

This partnership closely follows TechTarget’s acquisition of Informa Tech’s digital businesses, which the company absorbed to help create a global platform in B2B data and market access.

The post TechTarget Partners With G2 To Help Provide B2B Technology Buyers With Decision Support Content appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

“Historically, brands have relied on third-party data like cookies to track website visitors, improve user experience and collect data for personalization techniques in their marketing efforts,” said Manu Mathew, CEO and Co-founder of brand customer network and engagement platform Cohora. “For better or worse, this is simply how it’s been done for years. Stringent legislation promoted by privacy concerns have left major browsers to phase out support, leaving publishers to face potential losses of more than $10 billion, as reported by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.”

As Chrome plans to extend those restrictions to 100% of users by Q3, only 8% of marketers feel fully prepared to adapt to the changes, while 22% indicated they are mostly prepared. For the 70% who haven’t prepped their alternate strategies, the clock is quickly ticking.

“Marketers may feel unprepared for the phase-out of third-party cookies for various reasons,” explained Carol Howley, CMO of email signature management platform Exclaimer. “The heavy reliance on these cookies for tracking user behavior, targeted ads and campaign measurement is a huge challenge. A lack of familiarity with alternatives adds to the sense of unpreparedness, as some marketers struggle to understand and implement new technologies or strategies.”

The Impact Of The Phase-Out On Marketers & Buyers

With about five months until the privacy hourglass runs out of sand, just 17% of marketers no longer rely on third-party cookies — meaning that the 83% still leveraging that data source are in for a rude awakening.

“The phase-out will have significant implications for marketers, especially those still heavily reliant on tracking user behavior for advertising and analytics purposes,” said Howley. “This will have potential impacts on advertising, analytics, personalization and privacy efforts. It will become more difficult for advertisers to track users across different websites, limiting the precision of targeted ads. Additionally, tracking and attributing conversions will become more complex.”

Despite the complexities associated with third-party alternatives, the shift toward opt-in collection processes will ultimately benefit both sides of the buying journey. Mathew explained that third-party data often restricts brands from interacting with customers meaningfully, because that data is often given to marketers in segments instead of at the individual level. On the flipside, prospects and customers benefit from more control and ownership over their purchasing process.

“By and large, when a consumer allows third-party data gathering through cookies, they don’t know what they’re consenting to or how their data might be used,” said Mathew. “Eighty-six percent of consumers care about data privacy, demanding transparency and control over how businesses use their data, and 47% of the respondents have switched companies due to poor data policies and practices. Because of this, brands are now pushed to find ways to access zero- and first-party data sources that foster a transparent relationship between brands and consumers.”

Analyzing The Alternative Data Sources

As first- and zero-party data bubble up to take the wheel, marketers need to increase the incentives and benefits of information sharing for prospects. Because of this move toward alternative data sources, marketers will be forced to become more creative and in-touch with their customers.

“Marketers need to look for alternatives and create a plan that will move the needle for their business,” said Howley. “This is an incredible opportunity to shake up marketing and do better by your customers and prospects.”

She continued that marketers can explore the possibilities around AI and machine-learning as effective third-party stand-ins. She continued that predictive analytics and customer behavior models built from on-site interactions can replicate the personalized experiences that once hinged on cookies. However, leveraging these tools requires tight internal alignment.

“Collaboration will become an indispensable tool for marketers,” explained Howley. “Strategic partnerships will create paths for shared benefits and strengthened brand identity while preserving user privacy. Marketers will see that the best way to foster trust will be 1:1 communication.”

How To Leverage Alternative Resources For Increased Personalization

With opt-in information becoming the new currency for marketers, zero- and first-party data will be the cashflow that supports practitioners’ initiatives. Although these data sources might be more difficult to collect — as they require more cooperation from the buyers themselves — it’s ultimately more valuable.

“Direct ownership of zero- and first-party data allows a company to have a much more personalized and intimate relationship with their customers, since they have insight into an individual customer’s interests and preferences,” said Mathew. “In turn, this enhances the overall customer experience by personalizing every step of the journey, not just the initial offer.”

Additionally, Howley explained that content-driven strategies will be marketers’ biggest support in their strategy for collecting first-party data. In fact, 62% of marketers plan to increase their database investments in the new year. When it comes to the top reasons for investing in data collection and enrichment practices, 73% of practitioners want to generate better insights to personalize content and messaging.

“We’re now in the era of focusing on creating a strong human-centric brand and the personalization of content at scale,” Howley. “We need to craft every message, every campaign with the individual in mind. The future belongs to brands who adapt and venture down new paths in data management and customer engagement. Marketers have an opportunity to not just adapt, but to thrive and redefine the marketing playbook in a post-third-party cookie era.”

The post Analyzing The Impact Of Google Chrome’s Third-Party Cookie Phase-Out appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Created by senior marketing technology executives and leveraging machine learning, Audyence RTD analyzes more than 17.5 billion firmographic, behavioral and technographic data points to help reduce the operational and capital expenditures associated with planning, purchasing, selling and executing demand generation campaigns.

“The global B2B lead generation industry is already a $21 billion market growing more than 15% per year, but it’s still too dependent on manually managing campaigns and a troubling lack of transparency,” explained Audyence Co-founder and CEO Karl Van Buren in a statement. “That’s where Audyence RTD comes in. To buy leads before our solution, marketers had to work with five or six or more brokers, negotiate with each separately by email or phone call and then manually manage those separate campaigns. We’re automating that entire process from end to end for as many publishers as they want to work with through our marketplace, reducing agency labor costs by 20X.”

The post Audyence Launches Real-Time Demand Platform To Refine Demand Generation appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Specifically, the companies are requiring senders who send significant volumes to:

• Strongly authenticate their emails following these best practices;
• Provide a one-click unsubscribe option and processes those requests within two days; and
• Stay under a .3% spam complaint rate threshold.

“These changes are like a tune-up for the email world, and by fixing a few things under the hood, we can keep email running smoothly,” wrote Neil Kumaran, Group Product Manager, Gmail Security & Trust, in a blog post. “But just like a tune-up, this is not a one-time exercise. Keeping email more secure, user friendly and spam-free requires constant collaboration and vigilance from the entire email community, and we’ll keep working together to make sure your inbox stays safe.”

In the same blog post, Marcel Becker, Yahoo’s Sr. Director of Product, shared a statement that noted, “Yahoo looks forward to working with Google and the rest of the email community to make these common sense, high-impact changes the new industry standard.”

The post Google & Yahoo Implement New Bulk Sending Rules appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Minimizing The Inheritance Tax

When marketing leaders switch roles to a new organization, the Inheritance Tax can lead to unforeseen and often underestimated expenses. To lessen this burden, marketing leaders can take several steps. First, they need to prioritize understanding the originally intended marketing strategy and business goals associated with the inherited martech platforms.

By uncovering the “who” and “how” of the platform’s usage, marketing leaders can effectively navigate the challenges of a new instance. Seeking insights from key stakeholders and utilizing available learning resources, such as customer portals and consultancies, can expedite the onboarding process and minimize the Inheritance Tax.

Uncovering The Context

With more than 11,000 martech tools in 49 categories, it’s important to know the role and responsibility of each tool you’re investing — or currently invested — in. Keep in mind investment isn’t only in terms of software; business process is a critical factor in determining absolute ROI.

Leaders need to gain a holistic understanding of the current business goals associated with each platform and assess for technical updates. Are there new features that have been rolled out in the last year? Are you utilizing the full feature set of the platform relative to the capital expenditure/operation expenditure costs being spent on software licensing? If not, you’ll want to schedule a demo to review your software or consider having an external stack audit.

Identifying Key Stakeholders

Knowing the key stakeholders is crucial when inheriting systems that run your marketing and sales engine, as it enables effective collaboration and ensures alignment with team objectives. Additionally, it’s critical to have a pulse on team usage and adoption, particularly when organizational shifts happen that lead to user base churn. With that in mind:

1. Know your active users versus license holders/seats.

This helps you inform who is a part of the discussion group versus decision-making group on technical upgrades, enhancements and integrations.

2. Determine your super users and know your user productivity calculation.

The productivity calculation is total output/total input, which can help you determine your risk of churn in people and inform your process decisions.

Understanding Capabilities

Extracting performance analytics and information from a new (or new-to-you) platform is important. Equally important is understanding the systems’ capability, function and features. 

Lean into support for product info to ensure you are leveraging your tools and enhanced features. For example:

• Ask for a 20-minute sales demo on the platform and have your team of experts listen for required customizations/configurations to achieve what you need from the tool or identify blind spots to functionality that exists that you may not be leveraging; or
• Consider getting a tech roadmap audit or playbook to quickly identify opportunities, redundancies and challenges within your tech stack.

Understanding Cost Optimization

Knowing where to save and where to spend is critical. To create long-term value, executive leaders must identify spending areas that drive differentiation and support critical capabilities. Organizations can make informed decisions about resource allocation by analyzing the lifetime value of costs and recognizing that not all revenue is equal. This approach ensures that spending aligns with strategic objectives, enabling sustainable growth and profitability.

Streamlining Legacy Martech Tools

Legacy martech tools can become burdensome when they are underleveraged or overly customized, leading to longer ramp-up periods and frustrations during onboarding. Marketing leaders can mitigate these costs by adopting a proactive approach. Regular martech audits, conducted by outside partners or consultancies with unbiased views on the history of the systems, can assess the overall stack fitness and readiness to support business objectives.

These assessments help to identify opportunities for optimization and can limit the switching costs associated with new leadership and improve operational efficiency. Through careful cost containment and investment, organizations can position themselves for sustainable growth and profitability in the dynamic business landscape.

Arturo Mendiola is the Chief Growth Officer at Shift Paradigm, a digital marketing agency.

The post So, You’ve Inherited A Martech Stack: Now What? appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The General Data Protection Regulation ushered in a new era of consumer rules and regulations regarding the processing of personal data. Since its adoption in 2018, a dozen states have enacted privacy legislation — with some such as Montana and Oregon set to take effect later this year, while those in Tennessee and Delaware will be enforced beginning in 2025. Several other states across the nation have introduced — but not yet passed — similar bills.

In addition to navigating this complex patchwork of privacy legislation, marketers are now grappling with the “death of third-party cookies.” On Jan. 4, 2024, Google started to phase out third-party cookies and plans to roll out the restrictions to all its users in the second half of the year.

In response, many marketers are turning to first-party intent data as a primary method for gathering deeper intelligence on prospective customers. These insights can provide real-time updates into buyer engagements with the company website, content assets and other marketing materials. According to the “2024 State Of Database Strategies & Contact Acquisition Report,” companies plan to ensure data compliance by:

• Becoming more transparent regarding data privacy;
• Enforcing limitations and more protection around the information they collect from customers;
• Training employees regarding data privacy;
• Updating data protection programs as instructed; and
• Using state-of-the-art encryption methods.

To keep up with the modern B2B landscapes, marketers need to deliver highly personalized content that buyers can peruse at their own pace while also keeping abreast of ever-changing privacy rules and regulation.

The post Protecting Privacy: Understanding The Role Of Data Restrictions In B2B appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

According to the company, there are two key features of Performance Center:

• Identifying gaps in buying groups and gaining insight into buying group behaviors to help identify the accounts that have the most/best buying group coverage; and
• Leveraging big data and machine learning to create Integrate’s proprietary trust and reliability score for media partners, which is based on an algorithm running on millions of data points that track media partner campaign performance.

“B2B marketers are faced with doing more with less, and doing it faster, and everyone is looking to AI to raise the threshold of what’s possible and accelerate decision-making and productivity,” said Aaron Mahimainathan, Chief Product Officer at Integrate, in a statement. “With millions of data points passing through our platform each month, we’re building AI capabilities from the ground up into our product to enable B2B marketers to make informed decisions so they can deliver more meaningful impact to pipeline, revenue and business outcomes.” 

The release of Performance Center is hot on the heels of the debut of Pipeline360, Integrate’s new media arm that seeks to offer an all-in-one integrated media solution for content syndication, enhanced account intelligence and digital advertising.

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This leads to what we call “analysis paralysis,” or the inability to derive insights from the information available to marketers due to the sheer volume of data being presented. We need to reckon with the fact that truly effective data-driven marketing strategies are not powered by simply having the data at our disposal — we need the right data to reach customers early in the buyer journey.

Let’s explore the phenomenon of analysis paralysis and how go-to-market (GTM) teams can pare back the noise to focus on the information that really matters.

Quality Over Quantity

For years, we’ve been operating in a world where we believed more data meant better insights. As the current artificial intelligence (AI) craze has given algorithms and AI-powered tools a vast array of data sources to pull from, it’s emerged as a strategy to combat systemic data bias. This is why AI exists in the first place: To process extensive amounts of data more efficiently than humans ever could.

But now that data-driven strategies have become the standard and most business is conducted digitally, it’s well past time to pivot to a quality over quantity mindset. More data does not necessarily mean more accuracy or better insights; if anything, it leads to the potential for more conclusions being drawn, all of which are up to interpretation, and many of which may be ineffective or irrelevant.

Let’s say your marketing team is using a tool that ingests third-party data with the aim of telling you where a prospect is in their buyer journey and what next steps are best to move them through the pipeline. Destination and source (i.e., website visited and the information collected) aren’t necessarily the best indicators of influence — what matters more is the behaviors that took place before your prospect landed on that site.

There’s no value in capturing anonymous behavioral traffic because that information isn’t indicative of a future purchase. Ambiguity won’t get you anywhere — data-driven insights will only be as valuable as the data itself. When there’s too much data to consider, marketing teams wear themselves out trying to craft a compelling story, but this uncertainty and guesswork can lead to imprecise conclusions.

The right tools will limit the number of different interpretations teams can make from the data available by using only the most viable authoritative sources.

Peer-To-Peer Interaction

Today’s B2B buyers are heavily influenced by their peers. As such, some of the most vital information marketers can tap into lives within prospects’ online interactions with their trusted colleagues and professional counterparts.

These conversations can prove even more valuable than third-party content analytics, as buyers are more likely to dive into specifics like their unique pain points and the solutions they’re considering with their peers. Forums like social media groups, review platforms, virtual conferences and more are a gold mine for teams looking to develop a keen understanding of their audience.

By leveraging tools that grant visibility into a potential buyer’s peer influences, revenue teams can hone their strategies and serve up the right information at the right time. This ultimately leaves them better equipped to deliver highly personalized and relevant content that’s more likely to resonate and lead to conversions.

This information also helps teams segment their target account list, devote energy and resources to leads most likely to convert and predict future purchases — an absolute must for those striving to scale reliable strategies in our persistently turbulent economic climate.

Guesswork Begone

Today’s GTM teams have mountains of data at their fingertips. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they have mountains of quality insights to guide their campaigns. Instead of trying to interpret every single click and keystroke a prospective buyer makes, revenue teams must zero in on the behaviors that actually matter — namely, prospects’ online interactions with their peers.

The right technology will eliminate analysis paralysis by identifying true signals of buyer intent from only the most viable sources, taking guesswork out of the equation and ensuring teams are able to meet prospects where they are in their unique buyer journey.

Kevin Green is the President and CMO of Truent, a revenue intelligence platform. He is a growth-focused marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience building and leading diverse teams across marketing, product and sales at companies like Dell and T-Mobile before Truent.

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