This month we will look at the resolutions to keep, followed next month by those we might want to put on the back-burner. As with everything, if you have any comments please tweet or ping me! 

Resolutions you might want to keep

Experience Design

Experience design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience. From a media perspective, it is important to ensure the various data exchange, device formats and communications channels, which include media, are aligned through a common planning methodology..

Since consumers change slower than technology, this approach will help you stay ahead of the curve and ensure all media experience is relevant, consistent and consumer centric.

Investing in and connecting marketing technology

We have all seen the predictive stats that CMOs will be the biggest investor in technology over the next few years. Why not get ahead of your colleagues by lining up a few relevant conversations over the next few months?

On my list are mobile data and technology companies, next generation programmatic media companies, social data and analytics companies and enterprise CRM business that are looking to take advantage of the deep data assets. 

Device Linked Personal IDs

Programmatic technology is currently heating up in the personal ID land grab and a potentially post cookie world. Most are using a data lookup with a deepening reference pool against, in the case of mobile, IMEI IDs, device IDs, browser IDs, app install IDs etc.

I suggest checking which of your agencies and suppliers are using these various data points to cross reference cookies just in case. 

Rejuvenating CRM

Customer retention and loyalty will be the buzz word in 2014. Though it’s often seen as marketing led, this area has already merged with traditional CRM activities through enterprise responses such as Sprinklr, among others.

It makes sense to build bridges with these teams across your organisations and align objectives and budgets to achieve a far bigger impact in the year ahead. 

Understanding and integrating customer behavioural data

Big data is dead; little data is making a comeback! After all it’s the little data from site analytics and other sources that really help us understand and map consumer journeys.

Understanding these little bits of data means personalisation both from an onsite and offsite perspective is becoming a reality for retailers. I will be speaking with technology and analytic modelling companies to bring their algorithmic approach into our consumer centric media services. 

Making mobile relevant 

Finally, the year of the mobile is here! It should probably be higher up the list but then it is already a reality for most companies. One area I will be keeping an eye on in the first few months will be mobile measurement indices.

I think it is particularly important to link mobile with post view activity and GPS data sources to ensure we use the channel as more than a branding initiative and stimulator for direct local marketing. 

Appreciating owned assets 

Media agencies are starting to embrace an owned first strategy rather than the paid first approach that has driven the industry to date.

I think an owned, earned, shared and paid consideration process to planning will shift the bar more this year, as site analytics, rising costs of media, and reducing message stand out become more commonplace.

It’s important to establish metrics in these channels as you head toward the end of Q1. Start by segmenting existing audience data to establish ‘identifiers’ which correlate positively with purchase frequency/size and intent, and consumer retention and loyalty.

These proxies are useful for aligning objectives across departments to ensure you fully utilise your bottom of the funnel, owned assets.  

Next month I will look at a few conversations you might want to leave until the summer – when 82% of us will have broken all our resolutions!