Markets are always on the move. They are dynamic entities that constantly change and develop as fast as the customers they represent. While markets have always evolved, the exponential growth of technology has escalated this trend faster than ever.
As a result, marketing communications—the connecting bridge between brand and customer— must be just as agile. That’s where dynamic marketing comes in. And know this: it’s absolutely crucial to any business.
Whether you’re looking to learn what dynamic marketing is, understand (and explain to your boss) the benefits of this strategy, or how to combat its common challenges, this definitive guide will be the answer to your key questions.
- Introduction
- Are Markets Dynamic? (Definitions)
- The Five Pillars of Dynamic Marketing
- Why You Need Dynamic Marketing
- The Challenges of Dynamic Marketing
- Dynamic Marketing Executed (Examples)
- Conclusion
Are Markets Dynamic?
Dynamic: a process or system characterized by constant change, activity, or progress. In other words, the perfect description of today’s global marketplace.
Every economic update, cultural shift, or even social media trend is a contextual change that affects customer opinions, needs, and preferences—and ultimately, their purchasing habits.
Take the current economic turndown. Customers all over the globe are shifting their spending habits to make do, whether that’s biking to work to save on gas money or making their daily cup of joe at home. Context governs behavior.
This also occurs at a micro-level every day; every individual customer is influenced by friends, family, and social media recommendations in a unique way that constantly evolves who they are and where they spend their hard-earned cash.
The fact that markets are dynamic is unequivocal.
What is Dynamic Marketing?
If markets are always changing, what is the best way for brands to respond? With dynamic marketing.
Dynamic marketing is a data-driven, flexible strategy that serves customers’ changing habits. Whether through the lens of global contexts or responding to individual preferences, dynamic marketing evolves alongside customers.
In dynamic marketing, data is the leader of every strategy, and marketers build campaigns around the most relevant, accurate customer information at hand.
It’s clear ever-changing markets need dynamic marketing. But what does it look like for brands to stay agile with their customers? Here, learn the pillars of every mature dynamic marketing strategy.
The Five Pillars of Dynamic Marketing
While every brand has a different focus and audience, these five pillars of dynamic marketing must always be present to support a strong foundation for your strategy:
Personalization is a Non-Negotiable
Dynamic marketing is governed by customer data, meaning that the messaging each customer receives should differ. And with the right tools in place, unique data generates various versions of each campaign.
If a brand’s only goal is to satisfy what they believe the average customer wants, they’ll be left with average results. The only thing that one-size-fits-all messaging guarantees is that no one will be completely satisfied.
To truly be a dynamic brand, iterating quickly is not enough; each customer deserves tailor-made messaging that evolves with them as a unique individual, and nobody else.
Automation Is Your Engine
Chances are, you drive a car with automatic transmission. And for good reason; superseding manual gear shifts make the journey more smooth and enjoyable for everyone involved.
Automation is a necessary tool in everyday life and marketing is no exception. Take personalization once again. Without automation, it sounds like an impossible task. Brands need to:
- Clean, organize, and segment customer data
- Interpret the data to create a personalized message
- Build campaigns with engaging, tailored creative
- Deploy omni-channel messaging on all of customers’ devices
When automation steps in, dynamic personalization becomes not only possible, but easy.
Using automation, finding the right data set is no longer like finding a needle in a haystack. Nearly instantaneously, brands can activate data before it grows stale and engage customers. To match, the right automation tool generates personalized creative that’s brand-forward and a true delight to customers.
Omni-Channel Personalization Fits Every Brand
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Know Your Toolbox
From automation to data collection, marketers need to know what tools to prioritize. There are over 8,000 marketing tools to choose from, and most brands have more softwares in their arsenal than they know what to do with. Many marketers will have a separate tool for each of their key goals:
- Tracking pixels to drive behavioral targeting
- APIs to connect the customer to the brand’s key pages and information
- Automated creative generation
- AI that learns customers’ preferences as quickly as they evolve
And the list goes on. However, more tools doesn’t equate to a better strategy, and marketers need to remember that less is more—if they choose the right tech stack.
Brands need marketing technologies that give more bang for their buck. Find the platforms that offer multiple tools at a time, and better yet, find one that will seamlessly link your existing interfaces for a clean data set.
Track or It Didn't Happen: KPIs
Just like every marketing strategy, dynamic marketing must be evaluated. Don’t backtrack and analyze a campaign after it's been running for months on end; set benchmarks for KPIs before messaging is even deployed:
- Clicks, impressions, and downloads
- Website traffic: quality and conversion rate
- Lead generation: MQLs and SQLs
Once the campaign deploys, brands must measure performance at scheduled intervals, analyzing successes and challenges. From there, they can smartly retarget and shift their campaigns.
While the right data is a strong security, success is never guaranteed when serving evolving customers. Prepare so you can react quickly if a campaign goes south. And if a campaign succeeds, tracking empowers you to attribute brand success to marketing efforts.
Streamline Every Process
If you say the right thing, you can say it less often. Dynamic marketing doesn’t mean bombarding customers with messaging each time they experience the slightest change. It means making each communication more valuable than ever.
Don’t host meaningless conversations with your customer. Make each campaign count and be quick to intake their feedback to shift your messaging. Dynamic doesn’t mean frequency, it means relevance at each touchpoint, solidifying loyalty for the long haul.
Why You Need Dynamic Marketing
You now know the pillars of dynamic marketing. But are these steps worth the time and effort they require?
The payoff of true dynamic marketing is well worth it in multiple facets. Here are just a few:
Knowing Your Customers Builds Relationships and Revenue
No matter the strategy, brands must remember what’s at the heart of marketing: a relationship between brand and customer, making the customer feel seen, heard, and cared for. That’s why nearly 70% of customers pledge loyalty to brands that intentionally build customer-brand relationships.
Dynamic marketing is a crucial cog in the mission to show customers that the brand cares. When customers receive tailor-made messaging in the moment they need it most, that personal touch has a lasting effect.
Finding the Key Customers That Want Your Brand
Acquiring a new customer can cost up to 5X more than retaining your current client base, while retaining only 5% more of your customers can lead to a 95% increase in brand revenue. The good news is, serving the customers you already have is a crucial step in finding your future brand loyalists.
By focusing on serving your customers with the most dynamic, relevant content possible, other customers who resonate with that content will be drawn to your brand. It’s a win-win; by using dynamic marketing to better know and serve your customers, your brand can find more like-minded customers that’ll be your biggest supporters down the road.
Get the Most Out of Your Data
Data has limitless potential, but brands often don’t maximize its use. Especially with its fast-aging process, postponing the use of key data points is as good as throwing them away.
A benefit of dynamic marketing is that its flexible, ever-changing strategy uses and activates data quickly—in fact, the strategy depends upon that process. Dynamic marketing is the push every brand needs to finally use the mountains of data they receive every day to produce truly data-driven marketing that’s relevant to customers at every touchpoint.
The Power of Attribution
Dynamic marketing stays close to the data—by using, activating, and tracking customer data, brands are empowered to show the value they bring to the table. From incremental wins to groundbreaking results, marketing teams can prove their impact.
It’s not just the celebrations, either—with attribution comes accurate evaluation, urging brands to retarget or re-strategize before customers are negatively affected across the board. Minimize risk and maximize success.
Stay Relevant
Nearly 40% of customers cite irrelevant messaging as the reason they opt out of marketing communications. That’s why dynamic marketing’s constant activation of data at an individualized level is so key to a brand's company-wide strategy. Without relevance, customers will be quick to say goodbye.
Dynamic marketing is common sense and its benefits are undeniable. So what are the blockers preventing brands from creating agile marketing? Here are the most common challenges when it comes to dynamic marketing—but have no fear, none of these roadblocks are insurmountable with the right tools and methods.
The Challenges of Dynamic Marketing
Every new strategy has initial challenges. In the case of dynamic marketing, overcoming these obstacles are well worth it. Get a leg up on the competition and learn the clear-cut solutions:
Too Many Customers, Too Little Time
One of the best features of dynamic marketing is the fact that it moves as quickly as the customers it serves. While that sounds great in theory, marketers feel the weight of constantly iterating. Not only do campaigns need to evolve along with customers, but every campaign will have countless versions to serve each customer’s individual needs.
While the problem can seem all-consuming, the solution is clear: automation. No matter the size, focus, and goals of your brand, every facet of your business will benefit from automation—not just marketing. While automation puts dynamic marketing into practice, the cycle of gathering and activating data will empower every division of your business, from sales to strategy.
Collecting Usable Data
No campaign can incorporate every single data point a brand gathers, nor should it. Marketers need to home in on their most powerful data sources to power the strongest, most engaging campaigns.
Without data, dynamic marketing cannot exist. Yet data is often a brand’s biggest blocker:
- Data silos
- Inaccurate, ineffective data
- Too much data to translate before it ages
And this is just the beginning. How do brands combat these common data challenges? It’s well within their grasp:
- Having one source of truth is crucial for useful data. Invest in tools that connect all your data platforms rather than opting for yet another add-on software that promises to bring in another layer of data.
- Data is only as good as its source. Brands need to gather zero- and first-party data for the most accurate view of their customers.
- Automation is truly the foundation of any mature marketing strategy. To capitalize on data, it must be activated while it's still true to the customer.
Get Your Team On the Same Page
Your data isn’t the only thing that needs to be unified—marketing teams need to have one goal and the same set of steps to get there. If only part of the team is on board for automation and data-driven initiatives, strategy will be inconsistent—and your customers will notice it.
That’s why attribution is key. When implementing dynamic marketing, record wins big and small to advocate for marketing strategies with true longevity. Let the data speak for itself and teams will follow.
Dynamic Marketing Executed
There’s no better way to advocate for dynamic marketing than showing its power in action.
True dynamic marketing takes customers on a journey towards loyalty. Here, targeted messaging guides Quinn towards key CTAs—food orders and downloading the mobile app—that grow loyalty and move him towards brand evangelism.
In the first message, Quinn receives a welcome discount for opting into brand communications. Alongside the picture of a savory sandwich suggested for his lunch, Quinn is alerted that loyalty members receive a welcome discount of twice the value. To make the process even smoother and incentivize action, nearby stores are included on a local map.
Inkredible Eatery pivots its personalized creative after Quinn’s initial order, showcasing a hearty soup to remind him of the good meal he can enjoy through the site. In another shift, Inkredible Eatery also changes the offer to motivate Quinn to join the loyalty program. Rather than a one-time discount, Quinn can earn double the points on his next order. The benefits are now more customizable to Quinn, who can either splurge to rack up the points or enjoy a bonus from a smaller order.
After receiving that new marketing messaging, Quinn opts into the loyalty program. Thanks to the dynamic messaging, Inkredible Eatery can now move Quinn to the next stage in brand loyalty—downloading the app. With the offer of a free fresh-baked cookie, he’s sure to opt in. And on the off chance he doesn’t, his unique data trail will inform Inkredible Eatery as to how to adjust their messaging to serve up the motivation Quinn needs to make that next step.
Conclusion
Dynamic marketing works because it’s data-driven and evolves right along with customers. Remember that your customers and prospects are people who enjoy relevant, engaging creative just like you. The time to implement dynamic marketing is now—what are you waiting for?