Can you remember when you first heard about Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs)? I believe it was 2008 when I first started hearing buzz about the emerging leaders: Eloqua, Marketo and Silverpop. Some due diligence opened my eyes to a new way of marketing.
Fast forward just thirteen years and MAPs are ubiquitous, essential and mostly owned by “Big Tech”. They form the core of increasingly sophisticated MarTech stacks that young marketers can’t comprehend working without.
Is there another game-changer coming? Yes, and like the early MAPs, the ecosystem is still swirling and forming. This future borrows elements from “Account-based Marketing (ABM),” “Intent Monitoring,” and “AI-driven Marketing.” Let’s call this future technology “Customer Experience Platforms (CXPs)” for now.
Elements likely to merge into game-changing CXPs:
- Account-based Marketing – orchestrated engagement of key accounts in a personalized way that optimizes each contact’s experience
- Intent Monitoring – Using intent data to understand what contacts at key accounts are shopping for and deliver targeted promotions across channels
- AI-driven Marketing – Using AI/ML to predict a target’s next need and deliver the next-best offer (NBO) wherever they are.
CXPs will mature as MAPs did – or perhaps they will merge. In thirteen years we are likely to have Marketing tools that let us routinely achieve the often-stated nirvana of “the right message delivered to the right contact in the right channels at the right time.”
In other words, Marketing may truly become one-to-one. Even now, customer experience sits at the intersection of ABM, Intent Data and Artificial Intelligence. As those come together more seamlessly, we will all receive the most relevant marketing messages wherever and whenever we are.
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