Top 4 Upcoming Martech Trends that Demand Your Attention

As the role of the CMO spirals up for all businesses and brands, marketing teams are slowly taking the helm of utilizing digital transformation, to improve the customer journey. Therefore, the importance of marketing technology (MarTech – as commonly coined) has increased, manifold. Gartner states that MarTech claims more than a quarter of the annual marketing spend, at corporate enterprises, in present times.

Let us delve into the Top 4 trends that will rule the MartTech realm in the times to come:

1. Increased Personalization of Customer Experience

With the predominance of chatbots, livechat, self-service, and customized products/services – customer experience couldn’t be more personalized. Therefore, sending marketing emails to customers is a passé, and an Omnichannel approach is the need of the hour for all businesses.

The primary purpose is to let customers feel more connected to your brand, and not let them think it is their money that you are after. In this context, sentiment analysis holds special significance – to help marketers increase personalization and thereby drive better customer experience.

2. Adopting Virtual Reality in Marketing Strategy

Marketers are in a never-ending race to catch more eyeballs and retain an increasing number of customers, and adopting Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality what will give brands the edge over competition. Already, a considerable number of businesses have been experimenting with VR. IKEA’s VR app that lets consumers see how an item will look in their household, before making an actual purchase – stands as a prominent example of how to use this technology to elevate customer experience.

Since VR offers an immersive 360-degree perspective, a virtual design of products can be easily a luscious offering for customers who want an interactive experience, and thereby simplifying the buyer’s journey.

3. Indispensable Role of IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data & Analytics

It has been predicted that by 2020 - 75 million devices would be connected to the Internet of Things (IoT). This precisely means almost boundless amount of consumer data for marketers to make use of – to predict customer behavior, use sentiment analysis derived from big data analytics. Thereby, customized offerings can be easily the order of the day. Moreover, the relevance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in MarTech is intensifying, as chatbots have already begun to handle complex transactions.

4. Rising Need for MartTech Architect Roles

Now, this might come as a precursor to future happenings in the MarTech space, but the role of a marketing architect is set to rise steeply in the coming times. Thus far, the need for such a role has been slow to gain acceptance among firms. However, as an increasing number of companies are investing in creating a highly efficient MarTech stack – doing without a marketing architect will be unmanageable task.