Marketers have understood for a while that video has tons of potential to engage customers, but technical limitations and unfamiliarity with the medium have limited how effectively most companies have integrated it into their overall strategy. That’s about to change. Video will assume greater prominence for marketers in 2016 thanks to several factors:

1) Internet speed/mobile data plans: Faster broadband, widespread free Wi-Fi and cheaper data plans make watching videos less challenging, whether in or out of home, on TVs, desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

2) Social/mobile viewing sites: Consumption of social and mobile video has exploded over the last couple of years:

• YouTube viewing hours are up 60 percent over 2014
• Facebook video grew 94 percent from 2013 to 2014, with 50 percent of U.S. Facebook users watching at least one video a day
• Mobile accounts for more than half of all YouTube video views, while mobile viewer hours have increased 100 percent since 2014

3) Simpler video production: The popularity of amateur videos featuring everything from piano-playing cats to GoPro daredevils indicates that consumers will accept videos that focus more on content than slick production values. Also, mobile technology has evolved to the point that smartphones can capture video that approximates or matches video-camera quality. 

For marketers, these factors present a golden opportunity to use video to add value to the customer experience. And the potential is there to not only build engagement but also to drive revenue: Consumers who watch videos while shopping online are 1.9 times more likely to buy than non-viewers.

Integrating video into your customer journey communications strategy across channels can cut costs, increase customer satisfaction and move prospects closer to purchasing. Here are three strategic questions to ask in 2016 to help take your video marketing efforts up a notch:

1) What purpose will video serve? Your videos don’t live in a vacuum, so think about ways you might use video in your marketing — bringing a blog post to life, explaining how to use a product or service, promoting an upcoming event and more.

2) How can video improve the customer journey? Examine your customers’ journey and look for opportunities to leverage video content. At what points in the journey can video effectively create interest, solve buyer problems or drive brand preference and engagement?

3) How will we measure success? Depending on your goals, simply tracking YouTube video views may not tell you much. Consider other ways you might tie video to your broader objectives, such as measuring leads generated via video, reductions in calls to your call center, and increases in upgrades to your “enterprise” product.

Wide distribution, booming consumption and low entry barriers make video an evermore-important marketing channel in 2016. If you’re not taking steps to enhance your use of this medium, you could well be eclipsed by competitors who do.

Trend #6: Top companies bust the myth of the marketing suite.

Marketers are constantly on the lookout for exciting technologies and better ways to engage their customers. Buzzworthy new technology, such as Meerkat, emotional analytics or iBeacons, makes it easy to get excited – and a little overwhelmed — when creating your marketing strategy.

With platform vendors offering to solve all your marketing needs in one suite, it’s tempting to be wooed by the myth of the marketing suite — the idea that one platform can be a one-stop shop for all your diverse digital marketing needs.

To best succeed in 2016, though, marketers must understand that flexibility is key and the ability to integrate with a variety of best-ofbreed technologies can open up amazing new opportunities to innovate and engage. Moving forward, it’s crucial that you plan for the simultaneous consolidation and fragmentation of the marketing technology landscape.

What does this mean? Now more than ever, large platform vendors are building suites that consolidate marketing technologies. These platforms seek to offer everything from email to analytics to customer data management in one hub with a single sign-on and user interface. These suites are absolutely critical for building a solid foundation for your marketing stack. However, if you want to craft memorable, differentiating customer experiences, you should think beyond the traditional marketing suite.

While large vendors are driving consolidation, small “martech” companies are entering the landscape faster than ever and offering fascinating new capabilities. With a focus on agile technology, these vendors specialize in everything from social sign-on to programmatic ad buying. It’s simply impossible for large marketing suite vendors to offer all these new tools as part of their platform. And while I certainly don’t suggest that marketers invest in all these technologies, it’s important that their strategy provides the flexibility to work with some cool new technology companies.

In 2016, leading companies will take advantage of this flexibility between applications to:

• Collaborate on designing customer journeys: Work across organizational silos, break through channel silos and create journeys that will span the technologies that execute them. For example, a journey could include an email and a push message executed by the suite vendor, but a social engagement crafted by a stand-alone vendor
• Analyze journeys across channels: Regardless of what technology executed the interaction, connect the dots from one touch point to another — for example, between email marketing and social campaigns.
• Gain a contextual view of customers: Access customer information across solutions so you can provide the right data in the right system to inform the next interaction.

In today’s complex marketing technology landscape, it’s crucial that companies construct a marketing stack that brings together both a strong foundation and unique niche vendors that will support their goals and strategy. Bottom line: In 2016, look for new ways to leverage your technology mix to give you greater agility to innovate and more strongly engage your customers.

Trend #7: Leading marketers use predictive technology to further distance their companies from the pack.

Over the last few years, marketers have had to really step up their analytics game to not only improve their results but also facilitate higher revenue achievement. Some companies have done a good job of taking advantage of innovation, using new technology to drive competitive advantage.

In 2016, much of this innovation will come in the form of predictive technology, which leading marketers will harness to separate themselves from the pack by using it to spot trends, prevent bottlenecks, identify retention leaks and capitalize on opportunities before they occur — not after the fact.

Consider multichannel customer journeys, for example. They can involve smartphone apps, personalized emails, SMS text, mobile push notifications, sophisticated websites, webinars, events and more. Behavioral and other data is being created through every button click, download, page visit, video watched and shopping cart purchase — to name a few.

To manually analyze all this data in a timely manner is both time- and resource-intensive. Given that every contact’s path to purchase is unique and data-rich, how can marketers make sense of all this information?

Thankfully, new analytics technology is emerging that will enable companies of all sizes to collect pertinent data, use advanced statistical modeling to identify causal factors, and provide recommendations for proactively addressing a problem or seizing a revenue opportunity. You might, for example, tap the power of predictive marketing to:

• Determine the best channel or content with which to interact with someone
• Retain your most valuable customers by detecting gradual loss of engagement or sudden likelihood of churn — and the best response
• Determine the most effective offer based on other customers’ responses that share the same characteristics

Here are three tactics to consider in 2016 to help prepare you to harness the power of predictive marketing:

1) Up your department skills. Statisticians and research analysts will no longer be the sole property of academic institutions and think tanks. Make head count plans for hires who can use new solutions to not only gain insight from what’s happened in the past, but to also uncover issues before they become a problem or discover amazing opportunities to capture revenue and market share.

2) Employ the latest technology. Look to move beyond basic reporting and spreadsheets to make predictive capabilities a strategic weapon for your company. Allocate budget dollars to invest in new solutions that will give you the valuable insight you need to stay ahead of your competitors.

3) Institutionalize new analysis findings. The way many businesses assess their results, forecast future business, and determine marketing and sales success is deeply rooted in the corporate DNA. Now is the time to shake up those processes and introduce new analysis and predictive approaches so the executive team embraces these methods and accelerates smart decision-making.

Trend #8: Internet of Things appliances and sensors become a real factor in customer engagement and data collection.

For most of the “smartphone age,” digital marketers have enjoyed the relative luxury of thinking of customer engagement as binary: a relationship between marketers and their target consumers. The marketer had a message to deliver (offer, coupon, etc.), and the consumer had a device on which to receive it.

In the coming year we can expect to see this calculus undergo a significant transformation. As more “things” become connected, marketers will be challenged to act and react based on their customers’ interactions with a growing variety of connected and addressable “things.” Gartner predicts that by 2020 we’ll have 26 billion smart and connected products in use.

So what will this transformation mean for your business? For starters, marketers will need to change the way they look at the customer journey. Whereas before you could engage your customers when they were “in store” or “on screen,” you’ll now be challenged to engage them with the right message at the right time as they interact with the newly hyper-connected Internet of Things.

Home

Let’s start with the home. In addition to the playful part of the Internet of Things (connected refrigerators, washing machines and microwaves), we have begun to see a more serious penetration into the home by Google (with its Nest products), Amazon (with its Echo device) and Apple (with the Siri capabilities of its newest Apple TV). This means these brands may now have an unprecedented presence in your customers’ homes.

Amazon’s Echo device — while still in its infancy — is currently the most ambitious. Sure it can be voice-summoned to play Billy Joel, update the news and provide the weather. But more importantly for marketers, it’s already collecting shopping lists (“we need more ketchup”) and adding them to a mobile app . . . owned by Amazon. If you’re a retailer or even a consumer goods manufacturer, what might this mean for your business? How do you prevent further disintermediation by Amazon, Apple or Google?

Business

Outside the home, the challenge of the Internet of Things is also a great opportunity. Ironically, perhaps, the Internet of Things is now diminishing the divide between “bricks” and “clicks.” Marketers will be able to “tag” zones in their businesses much the way digital marketers have been tagging their websites and apps. In addition, retailers and other venue owners will be tracking “entry” and “dwell” events — similar to how digital marketers track website visits — and adjusting their marketing and product mix in real time to maximize efficiencies and customer experience.

Winning

The key to a successful Internet of Things strategy will require adopting a marketing orchestration platform from which you can consume and leverage the data from increasingly connected “things.” With this new power, marketers in 2016 and beyond will be able to execute effective, contextually cognitive marketing campaigns that will serve to influence consumer intent at unprecedented levels.

Trend #9: Loyalty programs expand across channels and touch points.

In today’s super-competitive, customer-centric landscape, quickly building loyalty and increasing brand advocacy is critical. True, loyalty programs aren’t new to the marketing landscape, but in 2016 advanced capabilities around customer data management and unified customer identities are giving savvy marketers the ability to create loyalty programs that reach across channels and touch points to foster deeper levels of brand advocacy and play a more critical role in brand success.

In the past, loyalty programs were typically driven by purchases and limited by data silos. Today, marketers can pull in behaviors from across systems and devices to inform loyalty programs and create custom offers for consumers. From web to in-store, loyalty programs have expanded far beyond a simple card swipe at checkout. Smart brands are creating loyalty programs that are accessible across channels. Whether receiving bonus coupons via a mobile app or earning points for sharing a new purchase via Twitter, consumers are eager to participate in loyalty programs. But, in order to keep clients engaged, brands must construct programs that bring a consistent experience across channels.

The multichannel nature of loyalty marketing creates new opportunities for brands to personalize customer loyalty programs. Instead of sending all frequent flyers drink tokens, airlines could focus on using customer purchase data to personalize tokens based on past purchase behaviors. Similarly, not all customers value a loyalty program centered on discounts.

For example, some consumers might be less likely to come in store for 10 percent off women’s outerwear and more motivated to venture in for an exclusive pre-season trunk show party. By crafting custom loyalty programs that break the status quo mold, brands can create loyal customers who will serve as brand advocates.

Finally, brands must remember that loyalty programs won’t captivate your clients unless customers can use them and they add value. Companies that create an easy sign-up process, friendly user experience, and simple interface will maintain loyalty members.

Generally, customers surrender valuable personal data when they sign up for a loyalty program, so brands should offer value in return (special events, discounts, offers, etc.). That value-add can also come in the form of dynamic content that enables consumers to make the most of their loyalty points or offers. For example, when a member visits the brand’s website they might see a dynamic content block with the latest tally of their points. Or, members who opt in for text messages might receive an SMS that alerts them when a special loyalty event is happening in their area. If a program is challenging to navigate or doesn’t offer tangible value, customers will likely abandon your program for a better option.

Bottom line: In 2016, loyalty programs should be multichannel, personalized and user-friendly to capture the attention of your best customers and help you succeed in the competitive marketing world.

Trend #10: Look-alike modeling transforms the role of social in list growth.

In today’s world of accelerating expectations and continuing tight budgets, the smartest marketers are constantly in search of the new growth edge — that next tactic that will drive acquisition for the next four to six months before they have to reinvent the effort yet again.

During the coming 12 to 18 months, the most progressive marketers will begin to think about social channels — particularly Twitter and Facebook — as a primary acquisition source. And the good news is the stars (and business model pressures) are aligning to make social an epic channel for list growth.

Here’s the deal: The biggest social sites have developed paid advertising products called look-alike models that might just be your new best friend. The easiest way to summarize these products is that they allow you to match the attributes of your best buyers to millions of potential buyers across the social sites. This enables you to deploy paid media dollars in a much smarter way — far beyond simple targeting metrics like lowest CPM bid or a single element like geography.

Let’s use a specific industry and Facebook as an example. Say you run marketing for a newish children’s clothing brand. On the competitive spectrum you’re more like Daily Tea than Old Navy – that is to say you offer premium pricing for premium products that are likely to last long enough to be handed down to a sibling. Your business currently looks something like this:

• You sell primarily via ecommerce but are looking for additional scale and audience reach.
• You’ve likely tested the product in largescale alternate distribution channels like the flash sale site Zulily so you know your value proposition is on-point.
• You have a clear set of repeat buyers and understand how your products are bought together.
• Your own ecommerce successes give you the key attributes of your customers like ZIP codes, purchase frequency and average order value, and you can make some basic assumptions on affinities.

This is the absolute perfect case for look-alike models. And by uploading all the data you have on your best segment of customers in a CSV file, you can power the search for similar buyers – and target both content and offers to an incredibly more focused audience. Imagine being able to directly reach mothers with more than one child, who match the geographic mix of your best customers, and who have interests that match newer mothers like parenting and online shopping.

In the race to increase relevance across all your marketing channels, social-powered look-alike models are an absolute win/win proposition for you the marketer — and social network users. You get direct access to more customers, and they get more offers and content directly related to their interests.

Bonus Trends: Partners

CMOs lead their organizations like CEOs.

The pressure on CMOs to prove the effectiveness of their marketing efforts has reached a tipping point. No longer is it enough to report on campaign metrics or even marketing-generated leads. Today, success is determined by pipeline: How much revenue is your marketing organization driving and how can you prove it?

To answer these questions, marketing leaders need to think and act like CEOs. In 2016, the marketing organization will be led like a business unit that is aligned with both corporate goals and revenue targets, and will be held accountable for its contribution to the bottom line

This shift will be made possible by nextgeneration marketing platforms which integrate Marketing Performance Management (MPM) with customer engagement delivery. Sometimes referred to as “linking the back office to the front office,” connecting the tools for building and delivering customer-facing activities to the marketing plan and the budgets funding them enables organizations to demonstrate ROI. As a result, absolute alignment between marketing initiatives and corporate goals (and between marketing and finance departments) becomes a reality.

Ownership of this mind-set will also change. In 2016, it’s not only the CMO who will be held accountable for driving revenue, but every marketer. As MPM systems empower each member of the marketing organization to participate in planning, budgeting and measuring returns, the result is not only amplified collaboration but a heightened sensitivity to the impact of each strategic decision.

Social media will take over your office in 2016.

For years now, the top minds of business and tech have been heralding the demise of email. Why does it persist? Because most efforts to improve office communication with more social software encounter adoption challenges. A time-saving tool that demands too much time from your team to learn is doomed to fail.

2016 promises to be the year the workplace social network finally solves this conundrum. With Facebook at Work, the social giant is leveraging its biggest strength to overcome the adoption hurdles that stifled previous attempts to make office communication more efficient. Because most of us already use Facebook, onboarding friction is virtually eliminated.

The toughest competitor for Facebook’s workplace communication offering is likely to be Slack, a collaboration tool that owes its rapid growth in 2015 to the same kind of bottom-up adoption pattern. Both tools are becoming entrenched in office culture by being familiar, fast and sticky. Other software has offered similar feature sets, but 2016 is going to be the year social finally takes over office communication because adoption of tools like Slack and Facebook is being driven by users, not from the top down.

Retailers use predictive tools to take personalization to the next level.

Consumers are becoming more and more tech-savvy and expect a certain level of personalization in their regular communications from retailers. Because of these higher standards, retailers are going to be challenged in 2016 to take personalization to the next level. Predictive marketing is going to be integral to success for retailers in 2016.

To achieve this end, retailers need to have access to actionable data in their email marketing platform. Once that has been accomplished, being able to use that data to create even more relevant and timely messages will be key to developing lasting relationships and retaining customers. Essentially, the goal of a retailer will be to show customers what they want before they know they want it.

Predictive campaigns can be as simple or indepth as you see fit. From enabling browse abandonment and replenishment messages to beat Amazon at their own game, to incorporating dynamic product recommendations into regular email promotions, predictive marketing will be a major game changer for retailers in 2016.

Programmatic marketing moves from concept to reality.

“Programmatic” has revolutionized digital media transactions, bringing automation to process, and more critically, data-driven decisioning. In 2016, “programmatic” is pushing beyond the historical boundaries of paid media into the realm of earned and owned experiences for two primary reasons:

1. A CMO-level imperative to contextualize the customer journey requires alignment between ad and marketing tech stacks. In fact, “89 percent of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience in 2016,” which requires uniting siloed marketing programs.
2. CMOs have greater accountability to the CFO and CTO as budgets increase and more dollars are allocated to technology. Thus, maximizing utility and scope of marketing technologies is essential.

Advertising and marketing technologies, typically found on opposite sides of the equation, are aligning. With this, “programmatic marketing” – marrying advertising and marketing technologies that seamlessly interact, inform and influence one another – is expanding.

In action: A retailer looking to increase click-through rates targets email openers with ad creative that echoes the subject line. A consumer’s email experience automatically informs their advertising experience; they see the ad, purchase a sweater online, receive a confirmation email, and begin seeing ads promoting the sweater in other colors and a discount code.

In a converged scenario, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 2016 will be the year that “programmatic marketing” initiatives move from water cooler conversations to reality.

Bonus Trends: Customers

Customized digital ads make it easier to extend personalized journeys.

2016 will see an explosion of marketers utilizing more relevant display advertising targeted at specific customer lists. Facebook calls it “Custom Audiences,” Twitter calls it “Tailored Audiences” and Google AdWords calls it “Customer Match.” Each of these gives you the ability to limit the exposure of your ads to only the people on your lists, even if they have don’t have a cookie from your site.

This gives marketers the ability to bring the same levels of personalization and relevancy present in more sophisticated email marketing efforts to display advertising. In 2016, you’ll see more marketing automation platforms start building out connectors to display advertising and social networks with this functionality.

These connectors will enable marketers to automatically add and remove people from these “custom audiences” based on where they are in the customer journey. This kind of technology will cut down tremendously on the human resources required to pull off these types of relevant campaigns. What used to take hours will now only take minutes to manage. The future of personalized, automated digital marketing has never looked brighter!

Responsive email frameworks evolve

The last several years have seen email marketers embrace the device-neutral email by building on any number of free responsive email templates. While the heavens may have rejoiced at having an enjoyable (or at least legible) mobile experience, the construction of a responsive email can still be a painful process. And any time there’s a pain point, there’s someone looking to make life easier

2016 and 2017 will see the embracing of responsive email CSS frameworks, such as Zurb’s Ink. Similar to Bootstrap and Foundation on the Web, a designer use these frameworks to quickly knock out a responsive layout that “just works” for all devices. Like a giant bandage, these frameworks not only allow for the quick creation of emails, but also open the door for a dedicated email WYSIWYG editor focused on email creation.

As we continue to see open rates climb on mobile devices, the need for device-neutral email designs will also increase. Certainly, relying on a canned email template will always be an option. That may work in some scenarios, but it may be worth the time and effort to become familiar with the available options and create that marketing masterpiece that ROI is made of.

The email creation process becomes streamlined and more nimble.

A key marketing trend in 2016 is going to be moving to a shorter “runway” for creating new emails. I hear a lot of digital marketers talking about the bottlenecks in the email creation process, whether it’s design, copy, approvals or QA. Digital marketing should be nimble, though, especially if the company’s voice and branding are well-developed.

If these elements aren’t fully thought-out, start there. Not having these in place will hold the process up, because there are so many options to consider with each new email. If you’re solid in these areas, make sure everyone agrees on the email’s goal before you start developing. Also, if you don’t currently wireframe the email first, try that to speed up the process or use an online whiteboard.

Email creatives need to be more “templatized” than ever due to the variety of screen sizes. Limiting your options can be helpful when you’re looking for a faster turnaround. Your content might be awesome and highly targeted, but if you miss your window because the email took too long to develop, you lose.

As digital marketers we live and breathe the adage of “Right Person, Right Email, Right Time.” To nail the last part in 2016, we need to identify and address any barriers in our creative development process.

Authenticity and relevance become more critical for engaging contacts.

Working in the enrollment sector in higher education, our audience is primarily high school students and their parents – a pretty skeptical group. A key part of our marketing and communication has to be authenticity, and that’s true for marketers of all verticals. You can’t be afraid to talk with your audience in your real voice.

For example, we use technology to reach our contacts on a wider scale, but the language we use to invite them to an open house must also reflect the warmth and humor they will experience walking around campus with one of our student tour guides.

Families know we’re using the same type of tools as their favorite brands, so we need to connect with them as individuals rather than the old single stream of communication. If they’ve already sent in their application, we need to acknowledge them and provide them content that is relevant and engaging for where they are in their college search process.

Regardless of industry, 2016 will be a big year for finding new ways to incorporate more authentic, relevant content into your marketing efforts.

Conclusion

Recent technological innovations have given marketers many new tools to work with, but have also led to some challenges as businesses race to keep up with purchase habits and buyer needs. With customers generally plugged in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across a variety of channels and devices, how can you create those perfect customer moments that make them feel like they’re in that elusive zone?

Without a doubt, the pressure is on marketers in 2016 to get attuned to what customers need, how they want it and when they’d like it served up. Executives have noticed: Eighty-one percent of CxOs anticipate more digital interaction with customers by 2020, and 66 percent expect more focus on customers as individuals.

To win in 2016, challenge yourself and your team to get more collaborative and innovative to create stronger omni-channel experiences for your customers and prospects. Evolve to gain more speed and agility. Take steps to access and harness real-time, cross-channel data. Pay closer attention to analytical, predictive and cognitive tools. And strive to deliver more personalized interactions throughout the buyer journey.

By paying attention to the trends outlined in this white paper, assessing how your organization can pivot to best succeed given these changes, and keeping a sharp focus on enhancing the buyer’s journey, you’ll be well-positioned to improve the customer experience, drive deeper loyalty and make a powerful impact on revenue growth. Are you ready to raise your game to ensure you’re among the top performers in 2016?