The story of the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras offers a lesson on the importance of adaptability. Completed in 1998, the engineering marvel was one of the few structures spared when Hurricane Mitch blew through later that year, causing catastrophic damage to the area.
Although the new bridge was spared, the hurricane completely destroyed the connecting road on either side, and the Choluteca River below carved a new path through the canyon. No longer connected to a road, and no longer spanning a body of water, the Choluteca Bridge became a “Bridge to Nowhere.”
A monolithic structure may perform as intended and produce expected results, but it is shortsighted to think that anything is impervious to change. The same holds true for a marketing technology stack.
Existing Barriers to Managing an Omnichannel CX
In previous articles, we’ve explored how ambitious marketers break through siloed customer data to transform customer experience, and how aspirational marketers bent on innovation refuse to be held back by organizational or architectural limitations. This article will explore some of those architectural limitations, and discuss how the Redpoint CDP solves for them.
First, consider how a typical MarTech stack prevents marketers from achieving the goal of differentiating on customer experience. In the latest Harris Poll commissioned by Redpoint, marketers were asked for the reasons why their MarTech stack prevents them from managing an omnichannel CX. A lack of data integration between systems (41 percent) and the use of a closed integrated marketing cloud (41 percent) were cited as the top reasons. In addition, 77 percent said the number of systems they have make it hard to provide a seamless customer experience, and 70 percent claimed it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage the number of customer touchpoints they have.
Quickly Adapt to Emerging Trends
A lack of data integration and difficulty managing the number of existing customer touchpoints make it extremely difficult to keep up with the evolving expectations of the customer. Buy online, pick-up in-store presents a good example, where a real-time omnichannel experience requires a cross-channel awareness between the website, email, SMS, a physical location and inventory management. Traditionally, reacting quickly to consumer behavior changes would likely entail deploying one or more new applications, sunsetting others, as well as process and change management. But with many vendors locking you into a data model and limiting connectors, a rapid change is typically measured in months.
One strength of the Redpoint CDP is that its robust native connectors and orchestration capabilities make it a valuable hub for an organization’s MarTech stack, offering a single point of operational control for any customer touchpoint. In addition, unlike a pure-SaaS offering, Redpoint can run on a data cloud as well as in an organization’s private cloud, offering added privacy and security particularly surrounding personally identifiable information (PII).
Agility extends to a composable architecture framework that makes it easy to quickly bring in additional data sources and enterprise technology, such as a generative AI application for instance. Or to quickly and easily switch out a database as a cost-effective way to more easily achieve performance benchmarks. AI is ideally accessible across a CDP, journey orchestration and real-time decisions – such as for pointing out data anomalies and missing data, to improve matching and to deliver a next-best action in the precise cadence of a customer journey. The integration of AI exemplifies the importance of having a flexible CDP that can quickly adapt to emerging trends without falling behind the customer.
In contrast, many CDP vendors tend to view AI as a monolithic entity rather than as a component of nearly every aspect of an operational marketers’ job function. The Redpoint approach facilitates embedding AI in various workflows, either building your own AI models (BYOA, BYOM) or using those included in Redpoint. As new AI solutions come into the market, Redpoint makes it easy to seamlessly plug them in and immediately connect to existing customer touchpoints and end channels.
Agility Through a Single Point of Control
As one example, consider the use of a tag management system for website personalization where an organization develops a new AI-driven use case. Whether bringing in a new model, or spinning one up in Redpoint, the platform offers the single point of operational control to deliver personalized messages in real time. It adapts to your infrastructure rather than vice versa, where you become limited by the constraints of existing technology.
As a foundational requirement of a hyper-personalized customer experience, real-time engagement illustrates the need for agility not just in a MarTech stack, but also in terms of omnichannel journey orchestration. Real-time website personalization becomes even more powerful as part of a seamless, unified experience across all customer touchpoints. And that circles back to the single point of operational control that aligns not only technology, but people and processes in control over real-time personalization as well as segmentation, journey design and interactions.
Your business requirements, your customers and their expectations, and the way your business uses real time, AI and other emerging technologies to deliver a personalized CX all share one thing in common – constant change.
The Redpoint CDP was architected to handle that change, to future-proof your technology investments, to manage the complete customer data integration lifecycle and, just as importantly, to keep up with the cadence of the customer across an omnichannel journey.
