‘We used to mail every Australian, alive or dead, often’, says Amex digital marketing chief
Jeffrey Evans
The relationship between IT and marketing departments has transformed from “adversarial” to one of close collaboration, while the scattergun approach to marketing is history, according to American Express’ head of global digital marketing.
Speaking on a panel at an Oracle Marketing Cloud event where companies outlined some of fundamental changes that have impacted the industry Jeffrey Evans said marketing and IT have patched up their differences and are now “speaking a common language”.
Evans told the discussion that the biggest change has seen Amex end its mass approach to marketing – “we used to mail everyone in Australia, alive or dead, often” – and begin to use data and analytics.
I killed my Amex membership this year after more than 20 odd years after they advised that their annual platinum card fee was going up by $300 pa. Service I received in the last few years from them was poor and benefits almost non existent. They are becoming increasingly irrelevant as far I am concerned. They have failed to meet the markets expectation in light of competition and if they are as slick with their IT/data it sure as he’ll isn’t obvious in retention
The issue here is that without a ‘gut’ feel what is marketing these days.
Data and Analytics can deliver the most tailored of communications though without that so called gut feeling the messaging will not resonate.
We / working in the marketing and comms field need to find the happy medium between D&A and gut feel. Otherwise we are ALL redundant – tomorrow.
To build on what Marteau said. Analytics is backward looking, but helps to support foward looking ‘gut feel’ initiatives.