Real-time interaction management (RTIM) isn’t just what’s hot right now in marketing; it’s the epitome of marketing right now — communicating with customers in the moment and based on what’s actually relevant in their lives.
Defined as “marketing that is based on up-to-date events,” real-time marketing represents a clear evolution in brand-consumer interaction because it allows for strategy focused on current, pertinent trends and immediate feedback from customers.
Rather than adhering to a fixed plan formulated well in advance, RTIM operates and responds to trends, customer preferences, and personal context in the present moment, constantly generating relevant touch points for each individual customer.
For example, let’s say an email with an offer for designer sunglasses is sent out to a customer based on a scan of her purchase history and preferences. Right before she opens the email, however, the weather has turned. RTIM allows the content of this message to dynamically change based on the time of day, location, and environmental factors — such as the weather. In this case, the customer would open her email and find an offer for an umbrella from that same designer instead of an ad for sunglasses.
Forrester has recently released a first-of-its-kind report on this important new area of marketing. INSERT LINK. Forrester defines RTIM as, “Enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually relevant experiences, value, and utility at the appropriate moment in the customer lifecycle via preferred customer touchpoints.” It also highlights how RTIM is now an essential part of powerful, relevant brand strategy. It’s no longer simply a “nice-to-have” component, but rather an integral element that customers now expect.
Here’s why:
- Customers Like Customization
- When something is relevant and useful to customers’ lives, it has a greater chance of grabbing their interest. In fact, 74% of consumers get frustrated when website content appears that has nothing to do with their interests, and 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers customer content, and are more likely to buy.
- Privacy Concerns are Disappearing
- Millennials’ attitude toward privacy is markedly more liberal than any other generation in history. They’re willing to give up more personal information to brands in return for more personalized service. 61% of consumers prefer personalized offers even if this results in less privacy while 34% of millennials say they don’t worry at all about digital privacy. This means that as more young consumers are trusting companies to keep their data safe, businesses are given more and more access to consumer information and preferences in exchange for relevant content.
- Real-Time Marketing Increases Revenue
- With personalization taking the marketing sphere by storm, real-time content delivery is the logical next step and key to engaging customers. As opposed to traditional omni-channel marketing, SmartFocus’ Message Cloud provides complete RTIM functionality and uses individualized insights to send the most relevant and timely communications that go beyond strategy and into the here and now.
- Research conducted by Econsultancy found that “businesses that use real-time personalization technologies see an average uplift of 19% in sales.” This revenue boost makes sense because the ability for marketing messages to adapt in real-time enables them to more accurately appeal to customers’ needs, preferences, and circumstances — ultimately encouraging them to follow a call to action all the way to purchase.
