Oracle invited me to its Marketing Cloud event in New York City this week. While it was showcasing its growing portfolio of assets like Eloqua, Vitrue, BlueKai, Responsys and Compendium, I was as impressed with the range of conversations the event allowed with a number of high-powered marketing executives and Oracle’s own thought leaders.
John Harrobin, Chief Marketing Officer, Verizon Enterprise Solutions touched on the data analysis and transition from traditional to digital ad spend they started back in 2009. He said they have seen a 50% decrease in cost per acquisition. Not just the impact on its own marketing budget, as an ISP it also impacts their product thinking. Maryssa Miller, Director of Digital Commerce, JetBlue Airways highlighted how their email campaigns promoting available “Even More Space” seats have become more timely and targeted with demonstrable revenue improvements . Later I put in a personal request for similar emails which highlight flights which offer their gradually rolling out but blazing fast ViaSat wifi. Luci Rainey, Vice President, Acquisition and On-boarding, Comcast described the 40% increase they have seen in their email open rates. Clay Stobaugh, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Wiley talked about his experience with Eloqua campaigns (as a Wiley author I spent a few minutes with him afterwards about marketing support authors can provide and would benefit from).
The conversations with Kevin Akeroyd, GM of the Oracle Marketing Cloud and Reggie Bradford, SVP of Product Development covered an even wider range of topics. The continuing role of agencies who in many ways play a bigger role than systems integrators when it comes to marketing technologies. The competitive landscape for Oracle in the space –particularly vis a vis Adobe, Salesforce and Microsoft . The growing opportunities for marketers for rationalization of omni-channel CX across in-person, web and mobile platforms. The complexity of social listening and sentiment analysis across borders and cultures. The growing importance of content marketing as B2B buyers do more of their research in self-service mode rather than wait for product details from salespeople.
I also had a short conversation with Judith Sim, Oracle’s CMO about how she is using all this new technology in-house and how it is improving sales field productivity. It should make for a very interesting story - I hope to have a much longer write up when I spend more time with her.
Of course, all this was in a savvy digital setting.
A few blocks away the billboards in Times Square and the major network studios are proof traditional advertising is not exactly dying. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal today profiled Laura Desmond one of the largest ad buyers in the world who explains why TV advertising continues to be resilient (with over 12X global spend compared to that on online video). If you talk to marketers at Coke and Colgate or Ikea they explain why cricket stadium sponsorships in India, storefront campaigns in Indonesia, radio and catalog marketing in other markets are not disappearing any time soon.
All this just makes for an exciting time for a modern marketer. So many channels to optimize, so many technologies to evaluate, so much customer and product data to crunch.
