Embracing Technology

Marketing departments will automate repetitive tasks such as website updates, mobile campaigns, emails, newsletter marketing, social media, etc. to simplify, to scale, and to orchestrate marketing campaigns within a holistic CRM strategy across multiple channels by embracing technology. Automation platforms and services like Oracle´s Eloqua, Marketo or Hubspot, have become already more intuitive and affordable.

Multiple Partner Relationships

In parallel to “Automation“ and to complement their scaling efforts, I expect that in 2019 more and more brands will be embracing technology by giving into increased and reasonable pressures to rationalize their multiple partner relationships to reduce complexity and to benefit from consolidation. As a result, there might be some excellent opportunities for watchful marketers to acquire, e.g., smaller research or advertising companies to strengthen their technology and data know-how.
To find and prioritize high-value customers, marketers need to develop and embrace a profound understanding of how to market to the right customers. Ten years ago, the first volume was by far the best metric available to measure marketing success. In 2019 marketers will have access to excellent data sources and superior analytics, which allow them to generate high-value pipelines.

Leverage Blockchains

Further embracing technology, I expect that marketers will try to leverage blockchains in 2019 to increase the organization´s security systems and to develop new products and markets. A blockchain, the underlying technology in bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies is a shared digital ledger, or a continually updated list of all transactions. This decentralized ledger keeps a record of each sale that occurs across a fully distributed or peer-to-peer network, either public or private. The end game for blockchains isn’t just digital currency; it’s a new digital business model and flow. As such, a blockchain goes far beyond the “cryptocurrency” application. It can disrupt financial services (banks, insurances, clearinghouses, etc.), health care, music and publishing industries (e.g., royalty and content management), energy, etc.