By Gibu Mathew, VP and GM APAC, Zoho Corp.

As Southeast Asia transitions to the digital economy, many businesses that have digitized are in a better position to leverage technology to achieve realistic and measurable business outcomes. Consumption across online platforms is now ingrained as the way of life in Southeast Asia with the region’s digital economy projected to be worth $360 billion by 2025.

With consumer behavior firmly shifting into the digital space, it is imperative that businesses move their operations and marketing into digital channels. Businesses that are just dipping their toes in digitization will face the harsh truth that 57% of digital transformations fail to hit the initial target that they first set out to achieve. For larger businesses managing multiple retail and communication channels, a more holistic approach is required for them to utilize data insights and act on data-driven decisions.

With increasingly complicated marketing needs, how can the enterprise make sense of a unified marketing platform to successfully come out on top in the digital race?

2022 Predictions: How will CX adjust to the evolving business norms?
Transforming Customer Experience: What will the future of CX look like?

The right Unified Marketing Platform to manage fragmented customer journeys

According to a survey conducted by Mckinsey, Asean consumers were more likely to make online purchases during and after the pandemic, with Indonesia recording 60% of consumers intending to continue shopping online after the pandemic. The same survey also discovered that 68% of Thais and 80% of Filipinos are dropping brand loyalty in favor of new products and services.

With customers becoming more fragmented in the places they shop, businesses have found that spending on digital marketing increases the likelihood of an effective call-to-action being placed when the consumer is considering their options online and this results in higher conversion rates. As businesses take the first step toward all-in-one platforms, and are able to harness a more powerful mix of marketing capabilities, marketers can now anticipate the customer’s journey and provide personalized experiences across multiple channels that will delight the customer.

Modern-day, high-speed marketing effort requires coordination between teams simultaneously across campaigns with different messaging across numerous channels. This requires a level of close-knit collaboration to keep up with the lightning-fast customer landscape, analyze data and extract meaningful insights from an array of information silos.

Data-Driven Marketing, creating hyper-personalized experiences

Business intelligence is expected to explode in Southeast Asia. According to Ernst & Young, technology platforms and the monetization of data can create customer stickiness if it solves the needs of the masses. Businesses with data analytics and personalization engines can provide superior experiences by offering a one-stop solution to potential customers.

Data analytics can enable businesses to track the performance of each marketing effort, and evaluate the trajectory of each program in meeting the business objective. A unified marketing platform with business intelligence will enable businesses to process data into knowledge and spot trends and opportunities enabling organizations to stay nimble, and also ready to tackle new market segments.

In pairing data analytics with artificial intelligence, businesses unlock further capabilities including predictive analysis, cognitive analytics, and the proficiency to foresee future customer behavior. As analytics are integrated into the customer relationship management platform, businesses will have a tool that can find value throughout the customer lifecycle and across multiple customer touchpoints.

This increased competition in “hyper-personalized experiences,” will drive a gap between businesses that can stay relevant and delight the customer vs businesses that eventually fall behind. It is only through the automation of marketing efforts can brands really go the distance to anticipate the customer behavior and provide experiences that surprise, convert and satisfy the customer in the way ordinary digitization cannot. “Unified marketing platform” helps brands deliver on these expectations and challenges, resulting in seamless experiences that engage with better results for the bottom line.

Automation to improve processes and allow for more creativity

By having insights throughout the customer lifecycle, businesses can then automate processes and personalized experiences to generate quality leads. The demand for marketing automation is growing in the Asia Pacific, with 79% of marketers investing in marketing technology. This has enabled e-commerce growth and an increase in indexed sales across Southeast Asia, further fueling the need for marketing automation.

Marketing automation helps marketers and CMOs to manage marketing activities across multiple channels, and generate more leads and conversions to deliver desirable campaign objectives and revenue targets. Monotonous and repetitive tasks can be automated to reduce the margin of error, and save time, so marketers have more space for critical thinking and ingenious marketing. Marketing tasks from simple customer FAQs and weekly e-newsletters to advanced tasks such as the generation of dynamic content can be fully automated, allowing marketers to focus on the right contextual engagement for each customer lifecycle.

As consumers continue to conduct their daily activities online, it is increasingly important for brands to move toward data-driven and automated personalized experiences, businesses can build the resilience and persistence to address any challenges as the digital economy continues to mature. Unified Marketing Platforms are here to stay, and businesses can manage, connect and automate better, doing what they do best — solving problems for the everyday customer.

Updated to correct name.