By Brooke Larson, Strategic Account Manager
I came to Numeric from a $100M online software company where we changed marketing leadership frequently and with each changing of the guard came new vendors, new processes, new channels and new approaches to marketing. In an agile marketing world, you want to be able to try new ideas, and to test and change vendors seamlessly to drive incremental revenue and growth. However, we struggled to keep up with all our changes, which meant we weren’t very agile (tags could take months to get through the Dev queue and pushed to production). We agonized over data accuracy when launching new campaigns and we suffered site performance issues from lack of process around tag clean-up and maintenance.
…This was three years ago.
Now there are a plethora of tag management offerings in the market place that could more easily solve the problems we were having. In addition, these tools can build upon this basic gain of process efficiency and provide deeper understanding of your customer and greater, more flexible ways to use your customer data. So then, even if your needs today are fairly basic, you will find that the premium tag management systems will support your evolution as a marketer trying to provide more targeted and personalized experiences to your customers.
To answer the initial question, I would say, yes, a TMS will enable marketing to have more autonomy to track and measure their initiatives. Marketers are adopting TMS and are learning to do this, and it is becoming routine.
However, as I mentioned, the functionality of the TMS continues to evolve so that the TMS really becomes the cornerstone of your big data strategy. Think data layers. Think about not just tagging campaigns or adding tracking pixels, but capturing customer behaviors to create segments that allow you to offer targeted content. Then, as marketers look to get more sophisticated and use a broader, deeper set of capabilities, there will likely be engagement with IT to ensure success.
At least internally, we often compare the advent of the TM solutions akin to the onset of CMS’s ten years ago. The notion was that once you implement this tool, you have now enabled broad access to content and graphics that will free up your designers and developers from having to be involved in every marketing request. What we found after the CMS revolution was that it wasn’t a silver bullet. In fact, in some cases, the openness created more problems. So, I think with the advent of TMS it is important to set expectations.
Hopefully, you can take a partnering approach with IT as you think about TM. You can woo them with the notion that you will take tagging off their plate, but in exchange, you will need solid QA processes and more partnering to ensure security and performance are fully vetted in the solution.
But, maybe we are asking the wrong question? As it seems clear that with the proliferation of tools, we will actually be fostering the need for more collaboration with marketing and IT. Look at the trend, “By 2017, the CMO will spend more on IT than the [CTO].” – Forbes.com. For companies to be successful, the functions will have to find common ground to support each other in advancing the needs of the customer. Tag Management is potentially a great win for both Marketing and IT, but they must both explore deeply what they stand to gain. Do they want a great UI that makes adding tags seamless? Are they looking for a solution with lots of pre-built tags so it’s plug-and-play (Tealium has over 600 pre-configured integrations)? Are they concerned about security of data? What about site performance – how will this tool comply with or impact IT’s commitment to uptime and reliability?
Numeric has helped clients big and small, simple and complex navigate the TMS discussion and decision. We have deep experience with implementations from the top vendors in the space and we can provide the real-life insights that you may not be exposed to in the sales process. Please consider a conversation with our consulting team a first step or a necessary review as you explore the TMS opportunity on your doorstep today. Contact Us Today!
