The Modern Marketing Blog covers the latest in marketing strategy, technology, and innovation.
Have Consumers Bought Into Bots? A Look At The Current State Of Chatbots
It might be too early to proclaim the rise of the global chatbot economy, but the chatbots are something to keep your eye on.
Recent Posts
Customer Experience
3 Ways Retailers Can Heat Up Their Summer Email Campaigns
A customer-centric, data-driven approach to email marketing will add sizzle to your summer email campaigns, while generating the highest ROI and lifetime value.
Customer Experience
Can Data be Exciting?
Curiosity about how we can improve the ability for our customers to achieve success is a driving force behind Oracle’s efforts to pay close attention to how our...
Cross Channel Marketing
Why Inconsistent Messaging is Undermining Customer Experience
Delivering a great customer experience isn't rocket science, so why does it still trip up so many marketers? Disconnected data systems and data access –...
Customer Experience
The Music of Great Design
Sara Shuman shares the secret to how her team, much like good musicians, change and adapt the Oracle brand to keep up with tastes while maintaining our unique...
CMO Corner
Talking Talent, Creativity, and AI at Cannes Advertising Festival
Can't go to Cannes Lions this year? Follow along as Amanda Jobbins keeps us updated what Oracle and other modern marketers are doing this year.
Data-Driven Marketing
Putting Dynamic Back into Email Design
You don’t have to compromise on email design to send a relevant, data-driven email when data drives the design.
CMO Corner
GDPR: Why CEOs Need to Lead from the Top Down
The fines for GDPR non-compliance can be significant, but there are less obvious consequences, including reputational cost. Who is responsible for getting it...
Email Marketing
The Cost of Free: Subject Lines and Email Deliverability
Can using traditionally spammy words like free and money in a subject line sink the performance of a sender otherwise adhering to best practices?
Customer Experience
Identify and Rejuvenate Your Inactive Customers
Here are two things you can do to understand your inactive customers and increase the chance that they will reengage with your brand.
Data-Driven Marketing
When Did Data Become So Valuable?
GDPR brings some long-overdue structure to today’s data economy, and the public is clearly eager for greater transparency into how their information is being...
Cross Channel Marketing
4 Ways Chatbots Can Increase Engagement and Improve the Customer Experience
How can you employ chatbots to get consumers more engaged with relevant and personalized marketing messages?
Cross Channel Marketing
Experience, Not Conversion, is the Key to the Switching Economy
Only by getting to know your customers across all of your various channels can you future-proof your brand in the switching economy.
Content Marketing
Whatever Happened to Copyright Laws in Social Media?
The sharing and re-mixing mentality of social media has made it socially acceptable to use someone else’s work without permission. Or has it?
Customer Experience
How Can Marketers Achieve Personalization in 2018?
Why is personalization so hard? In a nutshell, it's because we think like marketers not customers.
Customer Experience
Millennials Are Taking Over, And It’s All Right
Millennials want flexibility, simplification, speed, involvement, transparency - the same things our Voice of the Customer program revealed that all customers...
Cross Channel Marketing
Silo Busting is Essential to Delivering Personalized Experiences
Customers’ expectations have accelerated, fueled by the improvements digital technologies provide. But marketers still struggle.
Cross Channel Marketing
How 1:1 Email Experiences Help Retail Marketers Drive Results
Achieving next-level personalization is a challenge for resource-poor marketers. Consumers expect it, though. What can you do?
Data-Driven Marketing
Segmentation Must Be Connected to the Data and Technology Stack
With an integrated data and technology stack, you will gain customer knowledge to use in segmentation and data-driven marketing.
Content Marketing
3 Storytelling Tips for Marketers in the Age of Social
Here are three steps marketers can take to connect with their audience in a credible and interesting way.
Product News
Oracle Marketing Cloud Named a Leader in Gartner's Multichannel Marketing Hub Magic Quadrant
Oracle is honored to be named a Leader in Gartner’s first Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs. Being a leader, of the 'Leaders' is particularly...
CMO Corner
What GDPR Means for CMOs: Is All the Hype Justified?
In this Q&A, Oracle’s Marie Escaro and Kim Barlow discuss how GDPR affects marketing teams.
Cross Channel Marketing
How to Speed up Your Cart Recovery, Increase Sales & Revenue
Getting a visitor to add a product to their shopping cart isn’t enough. Statistically, 77 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned before the sale is...
Marketing Automation
From Direct Mail to Predictive Intelligence: Riding the Technology Wave
This week we got to chat with Bence Gazdag about the many shifts he's witnessed in data-driven methodology and customer-centric marketing.
Customer Experience
Picking Up the Pieces: How Companies Rebuild Brands Post-Crisis
Every company makes mistakes every now and then. It’s inevitable. Whether it’s a marketing campaign that falls flat and generates backlash, a serious collapse...
Customer Experience
Great Customer Experiences Rely on Robust Identity Management
This is article is part of our series on customer experience where we focus on topics relating to connecting data, intelligence and experiences. Further...
Content Marketing
Is Content Marketing Still Relevant In Today’s Marketing World?
Over the past 24 months, content marketing has swept over the digital marketing world. Brands have been encouraged to think and act like media companies,...
Data-Driven Marketing
Do Marketers Really Want to be Data Scientists?
It is a challenging time to be a marketer. Consumers demand more personalised experiences than ever, and for marketers if feels like the customer's expectations...
Marketing Automation
Congratulations to the 2018 Markie Award Winners!
Celebrating a Magical Night Honoring Old and New Marketing and Commerce Legends Last week at Modern Customer Experience, we celebrated our 12th Annual Markie...
Day Three From Oracle Modern Customer Experience
The final Day of Modern Customer Experience has come to a close, but not without an energy all its own. On this day, the keynotes focused on what happens when...
Product News
Oracle Eloqua and LinkedIn Deliver Unified Buyer Insight Through New Sales Tools Integrations
We’re excited to share that our highly anticipated new integration between Oracle Eloqua Sales Tools and LinkedIn Sales Navigator is now available for joint...
Day Two From Oracle Modern Customer Experience
Highlights from Day 2 at Modern Customer Experience 2018.
Day One from Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2018
Modern Customer Experience 2018 is officially underway in the great city of Chicago, home to the Cubs, deep-dish pizza and chilling winds sweeping across the...
Product News
Oracle Eloqua Delivers Unified Buyer Intelligence Through New Sales Tools Integrations
Oracle Eloqua is excited to announce ‘Extensions’ for Oracle Eloqua Sales Tools, bringing brand new partner integrations to Oracle Eloqua’s Sales Tools...
Product News
Tomorrow’s Marketing Analytics Today - Oracle Infinity™
Oracle InfinityTM is Oracle Marketing Cloud’s new data analytics platform for capturing, processing, storing and interrogating unlimited datasets for companies...
Data-Driven Marketing
Apply Big Data to Create Irresistible Customer Experiences
In 2013, research by Walker predicted that by 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the main differentiator. While most organizations and...
Marketing Automation
How To Win The Markie Award
Honoring excellence in marketing since 2007, Oracle’s Markie Award is a recognized global pillar of success. Companies of all sizes share their most innovative...
Email Marketing
How to Convert Consumers into Loyal Customers
Customers are a business’ most valuable asset, which is why they spend a lot of money to acquire new ones and work hard to retain the ones they have. This is...
Marketing Automation
Forget The Hype And Really Understand What AI Can Do For You
Technology is transforming marketing faster than ever before. Add AI to the mix and marketers experience another layer of complexity. But according to the...
Modern Marketing Resources
Tips for the Right Marketer Mindset in 2018
The new media environment is here. Or really, it’s been here long enough already that we should be used to it by now. The one constant in the marketing world of...
Marketing Automation
Building the Foundation of Digital Marketing Success
Welcome to the first installment of Makers of Modern Marketing at Oracle! A brand new blog series featuring interviews with the creators, architects and...
Customer Experience
What is a Reputation Management System & Do You Need One?
Most Marketers today are looking at new ways to improve brand advocacy through online crowd sourcing platforms. These platforms can be classified under one of...
Modern Marketing Resources
Here are the 2018 Markie Award Finalists
We are excited to announce the Markie Award finalists for 2018! This year marks the 12th year that we have celebrated the best in Modern Marketing. We were...
Customer Experience
3 Digital Trends Driving Improved Customer Experience in 2018
Customer Experience (CX) is not just a buzz word. Businesses are operating in a saturated market where brand loyalty is decreasing, price competition is rising...
Cross Channel Marketing
Why Putting the Business Focus on Experience Pays Off
Despite numerous articles and opinion pieces promoting the need for brands to adopt customer-centric commerce, the business realities and commercial pressures...
Modern Marketing Resources
Five Pre-Conference Sessions You Can’t Miss at Modern Customer Experience (ModernCX)
Modern Customer Experience (ModernCX) 2018 once again offers registered attendees the opportunity to arrive early for a high-value, free pre-conference training...
Content Marketing
Are You Tracking Your Content Marketing’s Effectiveness Yet?
In my recent blog post I shared with B2B marketers 5 Steps to Content Marketing Success in 2018 and the ultimate key to success: a documented strategy. But...
Data-Driven Marketing
Making the Case for a Chief Data Officer to Leverage Your Most Valuable Business Asset
Our approaches to serving customers have become so disconnected that it’s stunning. There’s a real opportunity for companies to gain a competitive advantage by...
CMO Corner
CMOs Should Leverage Identity Confirmation Tools to Validate Stakeholder Sign-Off
As an outside marketing consultant working in the corporate arena, much of my day is spent chasing down approvals for campaigns, ad schemes and promotions. Even...
Email Marketing
What we think about Google’s AMP for Email
Heard about Google’s recently announced AMP for Email project? Currently being tested by Pinterest, Doodle and Booking.com, it’s being used to include dynamic...
Product News
Digital Ad Optimization with Oracle Maxymiser
The customer journey in today’s digital age is anything but straightforward. The marketing funnel is no longer a linear path from generating leads to...
Email Marketing
7 Practical Building Blocks of a Strong Email Deliverability Strategy
Email marketing is a powerful way to connect with people with many marketers still counting it as their primary channel for lead generation. In fact, there are...
Email Marketing
Work Smarter, Not Harder: 5 Steps to B2B Content Marketing Success in 2018
We are only two months into 2018 and I already hear some B2B marketers say that they work harder, not smarter, and only see limited results. So what...
Social Marketing
INFOGRAPHIC: Worldwide Social Network Users
We all know that social media has significantly changed the way the world operates, from the way we interact to the manner in which we conduct business. We have...
Social Marketing
Renting vs. Owning – A Marketer’s Guide
The proliferation of social media, in addition to traditional media channels, has created a seemingly endless list of channels in which brands can reach their...
Content Marketing
4-Step Content Marketing Process to Grow Your Business
Content marketing, which was a mere buzzword several years ago, is now one of the most popular and effective online marketing strategies today, and rightfully...
Customer Experience
When Segmenting Customers, Don’t Forget Your Silent Majority
Richard Nixon popularized the expression, the silent majority, when he used it to label the broad swath of Middle Americans who are reticent to publicly declare...
Cross Channel Marketing
3 Steps to Defining Customer Experience
2017 was the year that brands truly embraced ‘experience’, with Customer Experience, User Experience and even Brand Experience all becoming common terms within...
Customer Experience
Top 10 Reasons Modern Marketers Should Not Miss Modern Customer Experience
Spring is just around the corner. Along with flowers and warmer weather, spring brings a fresh season of marketing conferences. Do you know which ones you will...
Marketing Automation
Going Back to Basics to Achieve True Transformation
Transformation has become an archetypal buzzword. Its connotations are hardwired into technological change, but there’s more to it than simply plugging in a new...
Customer Experience
Three Questions Travel Marketers Should Ask to Create the Right Customer Experience
It is no secret that travel is one of the most mature online markets in the UK. Unlike emerging industries, which are still growing and have yet to settle into...
Social Marketing
Put Influencer Marketing to Work for Your B2B Brand
Influencer marketing is like word-of-mouth on steroids: people trust influencers just as much as their friends and family, but influencers have a lot more reach...
Customer Experience
Capitalize on Success with Change
When is the best time to improve an existing product or service? When customers are complaining about it? When sales wane? When it has become so predictable it...
Content Marketing
How To Use CRM Data Mining For Smarter Content Marketing
Content marketing isn't easy to do. There's no doubt that it's effective, but it's very hard to do it well. It's a little like publishing a book blindly. You...
Email Marketing
What’s on the Menu? A Balanced Email Content Diet
For most people, the key to a healthy and sustainable diet is balance. Eating the same thing every day can be miserable, and it’s usually not effective. Most of...
Data-Driven Marketing
3 Steps to Build Reports that Drive ROI
The combination of data and technology are the fuel behind marketing and sales. One of the challenges for companies, though, is how that data provides...
Data-Driven Marketing
Sifting Data to See the Customer
In a world awash in data about a person’s behavior, their characteristics, and their likes, how can marketers ensure the work they do doesn’t lose sight of the...
CMO Corner
Stuck on Autopilot? Ask These 9 Questions to Shift Gears
Some of my favorite childhood memories are centered around drives with my father. What always surprised me was that sometimes those drives would last for hours...
Product News
Don’t Get Lost in Translation: How to Make Multilingual Marketing Easy
As the world moves towards greater globalization, marketing globally across multiple languages is more important than ever. English speakers accounted for only...
CMO Corner
How CMOs Are Helping Healthy Food Brands Secure Market Share
Consumer demand for healthy food is at an all-time high, leading Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) to think outside of traditional marketing channels to put...
Customer Experience
Why Next Year’s Marketing Success Will Always Follow Last Year’s Customer Experience
The measurement of customer sentiment has evolved over time. We are constantly searching for more accurate methods of understanding what customers will do in...
Email Marketing
10 Ways to Grow Your Email List Like a Boss
Email marketing has long stood in the shadow of its younger, glitzier cousin, social media marketing, as a tool for turning customers into a devoted community...
Data-Driven Marketing
Tips to Build Customer Loyalty Online
I find it surprising to find some brands talking about how to ‘be digital’. Technology disrupted the business world more than two decades ago, and advances in...
Social Marketing
How to Scale a Social Selling Program
As your B2B business enters a sustained growth phase, it presents you with incredible opportunities to use your resources to reach an expanded pool of...
Marketing Automation
Connecting at Scale: Is It Possible?
If you’re in marketing, there are days it feels like the most enviable occupation in the world and on others, the most accursed. This is a logical condition...
CMO Corner
Strategies for CMOs to Protect the Golden Playbook
CMOs have a tough enough job as it is. The way that consumers interact with their brands is changing at lightning speed. And there’s the constant drumbeat of...
Product News
Nucleus Research Finds That Retailers Prosper With Oracle Marketing Cloud
Analysts at Nucleus Research recently asked retailers how they are managing the challenges of the rapidly changing digital marketing landscape. They have...
CMO Corner
CMOs: In the Race to Provide More, Don’t Forget About the Need for Speed
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed CMOs get bullied into adding “just one more thing” the customer experience during a boardroom meeting. It’s tough...
Content Marketing
How Content Marketing is Evolving Heading into 2018
The content marketing landscape is constantly changing and evolving, and while more brands than ever are increasing their budgets, many fail to see the...
Product News
Right Place, Right Time: The Effectiveness of Send Time Optimization
In early 2015, Oracle Responsys introduced our first Send Time Optimization (STO) feature. STO gave marketers the ability to send an email at the most optimal...
Social Marketing
How to Craft an Effective Social Media Strategy
As social platforms have grown in popularity, so too has the importance of building an effective social media strategy. With one click of a button, companies...
Product News
Distributed Marketing for the Modern Marketer
Today’s marketers operate in a chaotic digital environment. Daily they deal with a rash of issues they have no control over: channel proliferation, more...
Marketing Automation
Reality Check: Marketing Technology ROI
If you have never heard that Marketing became a technology-driven world, chances are you missed the memo. So, let's assume you are aware of all of this and you...
CMO Corner
CMOs Can Still Add Value to a Startup without Obliterating the Budget
The median salary for a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is reported to be $169,066 per year. That’s an expense that very few startups can afford. Some...
Email Marketing
How, When, & Why Should You Use Personalization in an Email Marketing Campaign?
Dale Carnegie, author of the famed How to Win Friends and Influence People, said in his book, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and...
Data-Driven Marketing
7 Ways to Future-Proof Your Organization With Data Driven Marketing
The way prospects buy is changing. This truth has been identified by a number of studies. Even without such studies, each of us intuitively understands that our...
Email Marketing
5 Best Practices to Get the Most out of Your Holiday Email Efforts
With a 4400 percent ROI, email is one of the most valuable marketing tools for brands. In fact, most brand marketers will tell you their sales will drop if they...
Data-Driven Marketing
Resistance to Reason: Why digital transformation is thwarted
There’s a scene in Cormac McCarthy’s book, All the Pretty Horses, in which the main character, John Grady, plays pool with his boss, a wealthy Mexican ranch...
Marketing Automation
Adaptive Intelligence: Practical Tips for Bringing AI into Your Marketing
Artificial intelligence is all over the news these days, yet it can still be challenging to figure out how to make it work for your marketing team. This post...
The Holiday Season Is Here, Are You Ready?
The 2017 holiday season is officially here. While we at the Oracle Marketing Cloud understand the importance of starting to prepare as early as possible and...
CMO Corner
Dear CMOs, Mobile Data Security Should Be Everything
Ok quick review for those who are currently out sick and thus may have missed the news. I will expect a note signed by Epstein's Mother. NOTE: If you don't know...
Dear marketers: An Open Letter About the Other Side
Marketers, suppose for a moment that you’re not who you are. Suppose instead that you’re a Customer Success Manager (CSM). Suppose you have to think of the...
Social Marketing
How to Create a Mutually Beneficial Influencer Marketing Relationship
One of the most important elements of growing a business is marketing. When it comes to getting the word out about your brand, products, or services, there are...
CMO Corner
Helping CMOs Look At The Digital Space From A Human Perspective
If continually bombarded with data and technology, it can at first feel overwhelming. Despite initially creating confusion soon after its introduction, we then...
Mobile Marketing
Geolocation-Based Marketing in 2017: The Impact on Businesses
The ongoing use of mobile devices by consumers means that companies have a much better way of tracking where their customers are going. Knowing where they are...
Customer Experience
Retailers, Personalize Your Way to the Future
If you’re a retail marketer, there’s something very gratifying about receiving a personalized, promotional email message that draws you in. Like when you got...
CMO Corner
Pipeline Marketing Helps CMOs Thrive in a Post Lead-Generation World
Is your sales team suffering from “rejection fatigue”? No matter how many times managers and supervisors spout off platitudes like “coffee’s for closers”,...
Marketing Automation
How Behavioral Triggers Are The Low Hanging Fruit of Marketing Automation
As a journey-man of marketing automation and email marketing, it still amazes me when I read surveys such as the 2017 Oracle & Econsultancy State of Marketing...
Customer Experience
Why It's Imperative Retailers Move From Next Best Offer To Next Best Experience
Historically, retail marketers have chased the next offer. Most analysis is focused on what will drive the next sale and not necessarily the customer’s big...
Social Marketing
How Retail Can Embrace Social Media For The Holiday Season
If early signs are any indication, the 2017 holiday season will look a lot different than previous holiday seasons for retailers. That has huge implications for...