With the rise of the Internet and the ability to access everything everywhere, companies have added digital channels to their existing owned outbound channels such as print, direct mail and email. Access to multiple channels and continuous engagement resulting from this has naturally pushed the boundaries in marketing.

Today, customers define when and how they communicate, and not the other way around. With this, we’ve seen a shift from clients investing highly in outbound campaign management solutions to real-time personalization for marketing (RTPM) capabilities too, enabling them to deliver plug-and-play "in-channel" personalized real-time communication. This shifts the buying criteria across marketing; new players in marketing start with digital only, often with RTPM as a must-have asset. The shift from traditional outbound batch to real-time inbound marketing can’t be ignored.

Let’s delve a little deeper. Event patterns track customer behavior and store these events, allowing marketers to define possible scenarios that might play out in a customer journey. For example, a customer may visit your website several times in two weeks and click on the same product category during these visits. To the marketer, this likely equates to an interest in that product category.

Taking into account known data about the customer, blended with that event pattern contextual data, marketing becomes much more sophisticated, and this allows you to send the right message when it matters most. Take ING Australia, for example. Launching personalized campaigns 50 percent faster, ING Australia boosted incremental sales conversion by up to 120 percent and also drove increased cross-sell rates.

Customer engagement has long ago shifted from "sales only" to a combination of service, info and sales-related messaging. And wouldn't you be more loyal to a company that focuses on you and your wellbeing rather than a company that only tries to sell to you? Mobile push lends itself very well to personalized messaging, and with geo-location you can be relevant "in place - in phone - in hand." When using mobile apps, you're also easily able to get your customers' preferences upon installing the app. By doing so, the customer tells you how they like to be communicated to, where their interests lie and so forth.

Our client Vodafone excels in personalized communication, driving a 3X increase in conversions. Deeper insight into individual preferences enables Vodofone to share highly personalized offers at the right time to capture sales opportunities. For example, when a pay-as-you-go customer tops up, they can reach out immediately with tailored offers and incentives, such as discounted long-distance calls or mobile data plans. Similarly, if Vodofone sees that a customer has almost used up their balance, it can reach out with an incentive to top up again — increasing competitiveness.