a vision of perfect

harmony

Technological achievements are happening at an unprecedented rate, resulting in evolving and changing business models, technologies and solutions that alter the way we live, work and play.

In the last few years alone, we’ve seen innovations such as smartphones, Facebook, Big Data solutions like

Hadoop, and the Internet enablement of everyday life. According to ABI Research, more than 30 billion

devices will be wirelessly connected to the Internet of Things by 2020, enabling data collection from a wide

variety of products from cars, to medical devices, to even toilets.1 As technologies rapidly evolve, so too

does the sophistication of consumers.

Today’s consumers communicate in real time, on their terms, across an abundance of channels in the

physical and virtual worlds; making relationship-building efforts for brands more complicated than ever

before. These digital savvy consumers also expect more personalized and engaging relationships with

their brands of choice. In this new environment, marketers must build connections between brands and

customers that are based on engagement and differentiated experiences that can only be achieved through

a deep understanding of customers both rationally (what they do) and emotionally (how they feel). Gaining

this customer intelligence requires listening to, recognizing, and anticipating the needs and desires of the

customer. It requires interacting with them on their terms and in their channels of choice. And it requires

doing all of this in a complex, real-time, data-driven digital ecosystem.

When Epsilon had the opportunity to create a new digital messaging platform, we put ourselves on a path

to revolutionize digital communication — to create an intelligence platform that would enable marketers

to delight their consumers with a personalized experience. We set out to help marketers overcome the

challenges of data-driven marketing and Big Data to achieve a relevant, omnichannel experience. But how

does one get there? How do you give consumers the personalized consistency in communication and

brand experience that they really want? And what does this all mean for the marketing professionals of

tomorrow? This is the story of Agility Harmony and its vision for the future, as told by the Epsilon team who

imagined and created a new generation of digital messaging to help the digital marketing professionals of

today and tomorrow.  

BY MARKETERS, FOR MARKETERS. FOR REAL.According to CMO.com, marketing has changed more in the past two years than in the past 50.2 Rapid

changes in technology, new innovations and customers’ online behavior pose new challenges and exciting

opportunities for today’s marketing professionals. A comprehensive understanding of these issues is critical

when creating the business and functional requirements for a new digital marketing platform. That is why

when Epsilon set out to create Agility Harmony, our first step was to partner with our clients. By engaging

them in an ongoing series of interviews, workshops and demos, we were able to gain valuable insight into

the realities of the sea change occurring in marketing. “Our client co-developers and internal services team

have provided a continual feedback loop and are a huge advantage for us during this process,” explains Bob

Zurek, Epsilon SVP of Products. “Epsilon is the first company in this space that has been able to design a

product from the ground up using both the point of view of the omnichannel marketer and the knowledge

of customer behavior.” This process also confirmed our notion that to truly create the data-driven digital

messaging platform of tomorrow, we would need to start fresh.

“The digital messaging industry needs to be a champion of change. The power, measurement and effectiveness of multichannel marketing can only be measured by companies who are at the forefront of collaboration, those that foster an interconnected culture through their people, processes and providers.”

David Daniels Founder & CEOThe Relevancy Group

 

 

NOT A RENOVATION. A REVOLUTION.

As the email channel has matured, so too have the underlying platforms and technologies that support it.

In fact, most of today’s top email service providers’ (ESPs) platforms have been around since long before

the advent of smartphones and tablets or the proliferation of social media. While many ESPs have tried to

fight the aging process by acquiring companies and technologies, and cobbling them together in an non-

integrated fashion, Epsilon opted instead to start with a clean slate. “Think of it like building a new home

versus renovating one,” explains Art Souza, VP of Epsilon Product Management. “A renovation can work,

but you are always limited by the confines of the pre-existing structure. Likewise, it is hard to innovate

in Big Data on old data technology.” Charlie Pendleton, Epsilon VP of Product Marketing echoes the

sentiment. “We were fortunate to have the opportunity to create something new, as opposed to the typical

‘Frankenstein approach’ of bolting things on.”

With the infinite possibilities of customer data sources, Epsilon believes that open platforms are the future

of data management and digital marketing. We designed a cloud-based digital messaging platform with a

flexible and dynamic architecture that is easily integrated with other systems without compromising the

user experience. It is built to be scalable to grow with the ever-expanding multichannel experience. New

channels emerge regularly, and it’s clear that Facebook and Twitter are not the end of the social landscape.

As others gain traction and marketers look to engage with consumers across these new channels, we have

created a platform that will adapt and integrate across these evolving channels in a seamless manner with

scale and reliability.

“Think of it like building a new home versus renovating one. A renovation can work, but you are always limited by the confines of the pre-existing structure. Likewise, it is hard to innovate in Big Data on old data technology.”

 

DECONSTRUCTING THE DIGITAL MARKETING ORGANIZATION

For years, marketing, IT, and customer service have been segmented into rigid silos that hinder collaboration

and integration between departments. Now, some digital marketing organizations are experiencing silos

within a silo, housing various disciplines including email, website, display, mobile, social, analytics, creative,

development, and more. Others are moving towards full stack marketing; hiring a “Jack of All Trades” with

experience across marketing disciplines. While the structure of the digital marketing organization varies

by industry and business size, many of their challenges are the same — multiple stakeholders, executing

individual campaigns, with disparate data. And sadly, more than half of digital marketers do not feel proficient

in digital marketing, and two in three marketers don’t think their companies are proficient in digital marketing.3

“Connecting various data sources and types has been so complicated for marketers,” explains MK Marsden,

Epsilon Epsilon SVP Client Solution Center. “You cannot break down organizational silos until you have a

platform like Agility Harmony that can quickly ingest jagged and varied data and make it actionable across

channels.” The difficulty in obtaining consistent data across the organization inhibits marketing directors and

managers from being strategic and creating effective workflows for their campaigns.

Traditionally, digital messaging platforms have been broken down by channel; one platform for email, one

platform for SMS, one for display and so on. Epsilon does not look at the digital marketing organization in a

singular way. We put considerable thought into how digital marketing teams actually work, regardless of silo,

integrated, or full stack organizational structures, and what the workflow of a digital messaging campaign

really looks like. As the marketer’s proverbial plate overflows with mounting responsibilities, Harmony’s

automation eases the load. The result is an experience that enables your team to spend more time being

collaborative, efficient, and productive, and less time wrestling with outdated technologies. Instead of

being organized around the typical channel silos, permissions and functions are organized around roles

and responsibilities. Whether you are a digital marketer, a database analyst, or a business manager, Agility

Harmony can be tuned to your specific needs regardless of how these roles flow through your organization.

Like today’s digital marketing teams, the digital messaging platform that will succeed must perform across

business units, brands, third party agencies, and regional and global office locations.

More than half of digital marketing professionals do not feel

proficient in digital marketing, and two in three marketers

don’t think their companies are proficient in digital marketing.

Source: CMO.com, “15 Mind Blowing Stats”, September 23, 2013.

“With Agility Harmony, marketers will have the freedom

and flexibility to use the data how and when they want to,

including access to cross-channel data… without the typical

roadblocks.”

TRANSFORMING TMI INTO ROI: THE CHALLENGE OF BIG DATA

Big Data. Everyone’s talking about it, but does anyone really know what it means? And are they doing

anything about it? We’ve all heard the expression “TMI” — too much information. In the simplest terms,

this is the ultimate challenge of Big Data. While digital marketers hunger for customer data, most would be

challenged to make sense of the deluge of information they have collected. The complexity of integrating

data from multiple sources in various layouts and languages has been the digital marketer’s major roadblock

to capitalizing on it. According to a 2013 survey from compTIA, 73% of US businesses and IT executives

agree that converting the volumes of data into actionable intelligence is a challenge, and 74% feel that they

need much better real-time analysis of incoming data.4 A 2013 Forbes Insights survey of senior marketers

found that less than half of respondents (45%) think that their companies are able to pinpoint the right

audience most of the time, and just over half (51%) agreed or agreed strongly that they were able to

monetize their audience sufficiently.5

Epsilon’s expertise and proven success in database management combined with the capabilities of Agility

Harmony is about to change all of that. “We are building something new that attacks the problems of the

52% of marketers send the same content and product offers to all

consumers, while 65% of marketers do not differentiate how often they

send emails.7

Source: AgilOne, “The State of Personalize Email Marketing”, June 12, 2013

past while planning for the future”, explains Bob Zurek. The amount of available data for analysis will only

intensify as the sources of information continue to proliferate. Not only do marketers need to address the

channels and devices of today, but they need to prepare for new technologies such as sensors placed on

cars, airplanes, delivery trucks, medical devices, health trackers, appliances and more. IDC predicts all digital

data created (and replicated) in 2013 will reach 4 zetabytes, 50% more than 2012 volumes and nearly a

quadrupling of 2010 volumes.6 The digital marketing platform of tomorrow will ensure the uncomplicated

import of massive volumes of structured, semi-structured and unstructured customer data, and enable real-

time analysis and action. But how do we solve that? Start by looking at someone who already has.

Social networking sites process petabytes (that’s a million gigabytes!) of unstructured data from thousands

of disparate systems — photos, videos, status updates, messages, wall posts, likes, etc. — and deliver them

to your news feed in seconds. By using a highly scalable Hadoop based data management hub that sits

behind the scenes for our digital messaging platform, we gain enormous flexibility and scalability in the

amount and types of data we can use, the ability to get counts within seconds, to do segmentation modeling

on the fly, and to run recency/frequency scoring. Agility Harmony enables data feeds such as ecommerce,

point of sale, purchase history, social overlays, social sentiment, call center and abandoned shopping cart,

to become actionable for segmentation or automated trigger campaigns. Art Souza explains, “With Agility

Harmony, marketers will have the freedom and flexibility to use the data how and when they want to,

including access to cross-channel data… without the typical roadblocks.”

harmony enables true

engagement and creates a deep

understanding of customers both

rationally and emotionally.

“In a rapidly evolving marketplace, the

marketers who will succeed are those who

create personalized and engaging experiences

between their brands and their customers.

This can only be achieved through a deep

understanding of what the customer does and

how the customer feels.”

Andy Frawley, President of Epsilon

“Harmony creates a beautiful view of customer behavior.”

Ed Heffernan, Chief Executive Officer and President of Alliance Data Systems Corporation

OUT OF THE WEEDS: ELEVATING THE ROLE OF THE MARKETER

According to CMO.com, reaching customers (82%), understanding whether campaigns are working (79%),

and proving campaign effectiveness, are the top three concerns for marketing staff.8 In order to address

these points, our client co-developers insisted that usability be a core tenet of the Agility Harmony platform.

While this may seem like a no-brainer, it was a common shortcoming reported from other ESPs and

campaign management tools. “When talking to prospects, workflow is one of the most important features

for them, yet many ESPs don’t do it well,” says Ben Ardito, Epsilon General Manager of Client Services.

“Many marketers tell us that they are in the weeds of production — not strategic and creative thinking.

They don’t have as much time as they would like to think about the customer’s life cycle or to pull data and

content into a design and contact strategy.”

One of Epsilon’s key objectives is to provide products and services that exponentially improve our client’s

productivity. Not only do marketers want the ability to perform basic, everyday tasks in an efficient manner,

but they need the solution to create workflows, run reports, merge lists and perform other data intensive

tasks. Past experience taught them that these tasks were too cumbersome to be worth their time and

effort. And new hurdles to deliverability like Gmail Tabs require a platform that can evolve with the changes.

“Many of our clients want to be forward-thinking but they simply don’t have time. They are focused on

tactics and just want to get the basics right,” explains Bill DeFerrari, Epsilon Senior Product Manager.

Agility Harmony flips that paradigm and makes it possible for marketers to use data to find new customer

segments, create personas, predict response patterns, and be empathic to the customers’ needs and

wants. It takes the guesswork out of execution and lessens the time-suck of focusing on tactical details.

Because usability, testing, inbox previews, and multiple approval processes are built into the platform,

we can alleviate “send anxiety” and elevate the job of the marketer to put the focus back on achieving

the aspirational customer experience. Ideally, the marketer gets smarter through every interaction with

the customer with an authentic two-way dialogue. And immediate access to the relevant data enables

more efficient production of personalized, targeted email and cross-channel campaigns on a global level.

Ultimately, this will result in a more successful marketer; one who has created the ultimate customer-

focused experience.

Agility Harmony allows the digital marketer more time for strategic thinking to create messages that are empathic to the customers’ needs and wants.

MESSAGING THE ALWAYS MESSAGEABLE CONSUMER “Always messagable”, “always connected”, “always addressable”… Whatever you call them, these people

are online more often, on multiple devices, and in more places than ever before. A recent Forbes article

estimates that these customers will account for 50 percent of all online adults, worldwide, by the end of

the year.9 To reach this always messageable audience, marketers need rethink their idea of “omnichannel”.

Instead of looking at omnichannel as a disparity of channels through which you share content, try looking

at it the way the consumer sees it — as a device. “The always messagaeble consumer doesn’t think about

marketing in terms of online or offline, omnichannel or single channel,” says MK Marsden. “They really

want consistency in communication and brand experience.” How, when, and where a customer interacts

with your brand on her smartphone, tablet, or PC could prove to be to the most useful information in your

marketing efforts.

The best way to lift email, mobile and social campaigns above batch-and-blast is to apply context. It is no

longer about push messaging; it is about pull to drive higher degrees of personalization. “Don’t use the same

message and tone in different channels”, suggests Quinn Jalli, Epsilon SVP Digital Marketing Technology.

“Facebook is more of a soft sell and engaging, where email is more promotional. The messaging should

be tailored to the particular device or channel, as well as a time of day.” For example, use your attribution

data to deliver a mobile-friendly sale reminder email when your customer is glancing at her smartphone on

the train in the morning, then a follow up email with a strong call-to-action like a coupon code when she is

home on her PC at night, ready to shop. Send an SMS promotion when your customer is close by your store,

then a mobile push when he walks in the front door. Or tweet a coupon to your customer after he shares a

good (or even a bad) experience with your brand.

The digital marketing platform of tomorrow will help marketers make intelligent decisions to serve relevant

content in the right context. With device detection for optimized viewing and detailed cross-channel

reporting for insights, you can personalize any campaign and target your messages right down to the

individual using dynamic content. “Good marketing is really about knowing your customer in the moment,

and being able to act on that knowledge” says Eric Presbrey, Epsilon SVP Sales. “Customers are saying, ‘just

know me and give me what I want, when I want it’.”

How, when, and where a customer interacts with your brand could prove to be to the most useful information in your marketing efforts.

OPEN ARCHITECTURE, INFINITE POSSIBILITIES

The Internet of Things is already having a staggering impact on our daily lives. Home security, thermostat

temperature, and household chores can be executed and monitored with the touch of a button on a

smartphone. Prescription medication instructions, reminders and automatic refills can be issued with a

chip-enabled bottle cap. Retailers can run real-world A/B tests using networked cameras and sensors

to detect how customers are engaging with specific products and the store’s layout. Marketers’ ability

to collect this real-time customer intelligence, and to use it to create timely, responsible and relevant

marketing communications, will dictate whether they sink or swim. Taleen Ghazarian, Epsilon SVP of

Strategy precisely states, “Data is the fuel to intelligence and understanding your customer. The channel

can change tomorrow, but what you know about your customers is eternal.” Old technologies, antiquated

platforms, and closed systems simply cannot support this new model.

The demand for an open architecture platform to harness cross-enterprise data has never been stronger. As

marketing channels proliferate and Internet-enabled products in our everyday lives collect more and more

reams of data, the already difficult goal of omnichannel marketing becomes even more elusive without a

platform like Agility Harmony. No matter how far the Internet and Big Data go, Epsilon’s Agility Harmony

will be there to give the power back to the marketer.

1. https://www.abiresearch.com/press/more-than-30-billion-devices-will-wirelessly-conne 2. http://www.cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/9/23/_15_mind_blowing_sta.html 3. http://www.cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/9/23/_15_mind_blowing_sta.html 4. Improving Customer Experience Leads Big Data Priorities, eMarketer, October 2, 2013 5. The Big Potential of Big Data: A field Guide for CMOs, Forbes Insights, 2013 6. http://www.idc.com/research/Predictions13/downloadable/238044.pdf 7. http://www.agilone.com/email-marketing/infographic/ 8. http://www.cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/9/23/_15_mind_blowing_sta.html 9. http://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecrandell/2013/10/22/the-always-connected-customer-has-killed-marketing-finally/

“Data is the fuel to intelligence and

understanding your customer. The channel

can change tomorrow, but what you know

about your customers is eternal.”

digital messaging in a consumer-driven world

Copyright © Epsilon 2014 Epsilon Data Management, LLC. All rights reserved.