The roles of the CIO and CMO have more overlap than ever before. Emily Riley, Chief Operating Officer, Ghostery Inc, looks at why marketing and technology chiefs need to work closer together in the future.
When John Donne first coined the now universally famous ad age “No man is an island,” I doubt he had digital advertising in mind. Yet almost 400 years later, my mind immediately goes to the C-Suite and the need for two key digital leaders, the CMO and CIO, to work better together. Most Fortune 500 companies work with more than 70 digital vendors, and the lack of coordination between marketing and IT is costing them millions. The perfect place to start rectifying this is with marketing cloud management.
A changing landscape
The roles of the CIO and CMO have more overlap than ever before. The CIO now has value-creation goals, such as website conversions, while the CMO spends billions on technology and could actually outspend the CIO in the next few years. The CMO and CIO are unlikely to become the same job, but the importance of blending both departments has never been as apparent as it is today, particularly when it comes to managing the digital vendors in their marketing clouds.
The heightened focus on engaging customers digitally is bringing marketing and tech together, requiring new skills and setting new expectations on both sides. While marketing needs to use good judgement when it comes to applying technology to achieve marketing results, CIOs need to focus more on business strategy and less on operational maintenance.
The Marketing Cloud needs the CIO and the CMO to manage it
The typical situation goes like this: the marketing team, or its ad agency, adds a new digital vendor to its marketing cloud, say a new retargeting company or social media widget. After it is implemented, the IT team finds issues with latency or data leakage and wants to remove the vendor. Frequently, there is no way of performing a good cost/benefit analysis and it’s nearly impossible to prove which vendor is causing the problems.
Poor digital vendor management exposes businesses to risks like:
● Security breaches
The recent Reuters cyber attack reflects the rising risk of US websites having tags on their secure pages that make non-secure calls. This has huge revenue loss repercussions, with a company data breach costing about $3.5 million and expected to rise.
● Site latency
A single marketing tag on a site has been shown to increase the page latency by an average of 5%, which can result in over half of web users leaving a site. Amazon is a prime example of a website with minimal tags on any given page, resulting in exceptional site speed and performance. A website with a load time of over 3 seconds can suffer a 7% decrease in sales, amassing to billions of dollars lost in revenue.
● Data leakage
An average retailer shares 80% of the same digital vendors with its competitors, making it highly vulnerable to such leakage. As vendors are added to a site, they bring with them third-party vendors that also have access to a company’s site and customer data.
CIO and CMO collaboration equals value creation for the company
A 2013 Accenture report stated that “Information technology is not only pervasive; it is fast becoming a primary driver of market differentiation, business growth, and profitability.” As a result, it has never been so important for the CMO and CIO to work closely together and combine their strengths to deliver against digital expectations. Good marketing cloud management enables companies to continue to push the envelope by testing exciting new technology, while ensuring that monitoring is in place to maximise the value and minimise the risk of doing business online.
By Emily Riley
Chief Operating Officer
Ghostery Inc
https://www.ghosteryenterprise.com/
