2014 CMO Guide: Social, Mobile & Analytics. The new frontiers in Marketing By ComputerWorld Hong Kong | 2014-11-08

1. CMO Guide November 2014
Social, Mobile & Analytics.
The new frontiers in Marketing
Brought to you by

2. Creating a data-driven
organisation to improve
the customer experience

3. 4
4
12 17
5
5
contents
14 Analytics
6 View Point
Another executive fired
over social media remarks
Creating a data-driven
organisation to improve
the customer experience
10 Overview
The top 5 mistakes that
email marketers make
11 Overview
Study confirms that a slow website is
the best way to lose m-commerce sales
Market Trends
Report suggests that
Asian CMOs have it tougher
Study: Users in Singapore,
Hong Kong, own an average
of 5 digital devices each
Strong growth expected for
mobile broadband in Asia
Pacific
Advertisers quietly shifting
TV ad money to the Web
8 16
18
Mobile
Undersranding how
mobile is changing
everything
Soical
The top social media
mistakes made by
marketers
Outlook
Chief digital officers on
the rise in HK
Verint Advertorial
The Importance
of Improving
Customer
Engagement
Improving
Customer
Engagement
through Analytics
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4. market trends
Report suggests that
Asian CMOs have it tougher
A
new global research report by digital marketing agency Razorfish
shows that Asian consumers are not only reporting higher owner-ship
and usage of technology, but also hold higher expectations of
brands, e-commerce experiences, mobile apps and technology.
This means that CMOs and marketers in the region must be
more innovative and forward thinking in order to meet the technology-driven
expectations of consumers in this region, according to Razorfish.
“CMOs need to match the technology tenacity of their consumers
by creating useful and engaging consumer-centric experiences to meet
the expectations of Asian consumers,” noted Erik Hermanson, senior
vice president of Business Consulting, APAC at Razorfish. “In the case
of mobile and ecommerce, smart marketers are ensuring their branded
experiences are directly linked to revenue.”
Below are some snippets of key findings from the report.
Early adopters: The study found that Chinese consumers are at the
top of the list in terms of being tech-hungry, as well as welcoming of
technological advances and lifestyle changes into their day-to-day lives.
Indeed, consumers in China are more likely to wish they could control
their household devices through the Internet. (84% of Chinese versus
52% in the U.K.)
Study: Users in Singapore, Hong Kong,
own an average of 5 digital devices each
A
dults around the world remain hooked on TV, but the consump-tion
habits are changing rapidly, according to a study by research
consultancy TNS. While it found a significant number of people who
still watches the TV, the growing appetite for content is driving the
growth of online media and what it calls “screen-stacking”.
The study involving more than 55,000 internet users around the
world found that almost half of those (48%) who watch TV in the evening
simultaneously engage in other digital activities, such as using social
media, checking their emails, or even shopping online--activities pegged
as screen stacking.
The Asia Pacific (APAC) region is ahead of this trend, with 54% of
people across the region taking part in screen-stacking activities, which is
higher than the global average. Here are some statistics for the countries
in the region, namely Hong Kong (72%), Malaysia (50%), Singapore (61%),
Taiwan (59%) and Thailand (66%). Falling below the global average would
be Indonesia (38%), Philippines (41%) and China (37%).
The study also found that the average number of digital devices per
4 l CMO Guide
Brands: Asian consumers show a strong
preference for useful, rather than interesting
brands. Useful brands preferred over interest-ing
brands. (U.K. 79%, U.S. 51%, Brazil 81%,
China 88%)
Ecommerce: The vast majority of Asian
consumers would prefer to do all their shop-ping
online. Consumer preference to shop
online in Asia is almost double that of U.S.
counterparts. (82% of Chinese shoppers wish
they could make all their purchases online,
compared to just 49% of those in the U.S.)
Mobile: Mobile commerce via branded
mobile apps drives loyalty and could be the
key to fighting losses from showrooming. Most
Chinese shoppers believe their phone is their
most valuable shopping tool while they’re in
a store. (Less than half of U.K. consumers
prefer using a brand’s mobile app, compared
to almost 80% of Chinese shoppers)
user cross the Asia Pacific stands at four
devices each, fuelling the trend of screen-stacking.
Indeed, users in countries such as
Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand,
Singapore and Taiwan, were found to own an
average of 5 devices each.
“It’s no surprise that we are seeing such
a big trend towards screen-stacking in Asian
markets--the appetite for online content is
huge and growing all the time,” said Joe
Webb, Head of Digital, TNS Asia Pacific.
“What’s clear is that media multi-tasking is
here to stay and the implications for adver-tisers
are significant--there’s a real opportu-nity
for those that understand how to really
integrate their activity in our increasingly
connected world.”

5. market trends
CMO Guide l 5
Strong growth expected for
mobile broadband in Asia Pacific
he total mobile services market rev-enue
in A sia-Pacific region will reach
US$271.4 billion by 2014, according
to IDC. While voice services will see
slower growth, data connectivity and
T
mobile broadband revenue are expected to
experience a strong growth pace.
“From 2012 to 2017, International Data
Corporation (IDC) projects that the growth rate
for voice services revenue in APeJ will slow
down and achieve a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 2.5%,” said IDC in its press
release. “However, data connectivity or mobile
broadband revenue will grow at a CAGR of
19.3% from 2012 to 2017.”
Advertisers quietly shifting
TV ad money to the Web
dvertisers are quietly shifting their TV
ad budget to the Web, according to a
new report published on The Wall Street
Journal published in May 2014.
Conscious that viewers are more
A
frequently watching video online, several
major advertisers such as MasterCard and
Verizon Wireless have in the past year moved
a portion of the money they previously spent
on television to online outlets.
Verizon Wireless, for example, was under-stood
to have a shifted more than 10% of its
TV dollars to online video last year, according
to a person familiar with the matter. The ma-jority
of these dollars are going to online ad
portals and online video ad exchanges.
Starcom MediaVest says it shifted more
than $500 million out of TV over the past 12
The growth in data connectivity and mobile broadband was attributed
to three key areas, namely smartphones penetration due to their afford-able
prices, rollout of 3G and LTE licenses, and mobile user behavior
towards what is termed as “Over-The-Top-Players” (OTTP) services.
IDC defines OTTP as the delivery of instant messaging, video, audio
and other media over an open Internet/broadband connection directly to
user.
While the report focused on the impact of 3G and 4G infrastructure
deployment on traditional messaging services, there is no doubt that
access to faster mobile broadband will play a large role in increasing the
use of mobile devices.
The message is clear: The potential for mobile engagement is huge
and set to grow larger, and CMOs need to put a mobile strategy in place
now, not later.
months, three quarters of which went to
online outlets. Put into perspective, this isn’t
likely to put the networks out of business, considering that the ad-buying
firm buys roughly $40 billion in ad time and space annually on behalf of
marketers.
And while the major TV networks remain appealing for their ability to
draw mass audiences, it is clear that ad executives are conscious that
younger consumers are gravitating towards online content.
Don’t expect the dam to burst soon though, given the lack of pre-mium
online content at the moment. However, that shift in thinking marks
an important start to what could eventually become a flood.

6. view point
Another executive fired over
social media remarks
I In reality, social
6 l CMO Guide
t has happened again. A public relations
and media executive from Chow Tai Fook,
the world’s largest jewellery chain, had re-signed
in the wake of a public outcry over
inflammatory comments that was posted
on social media.
As reported on the South China Morning
Post, Joanna Kot had earlier mocked some pro-democracy
protestors in Hong Kong who had
complained that they were victims of violence
and sexual assault.
Among other comments, Kot responded
to a female student protester who had been
indecently attacked with: “Molested? Remem-ber
do not go to the police; revolution requires
sacrifice, fighting for democracy is beyond ev-erything.
They (anti-occupiers) are ‘peacefully’
molesting you. Be considerate! LOL!”
Not the first time this has happened
This is hardly the first time that executives
were fired, or forced to leave after ill-conceived
remarks on social media. Of course, some
would argue that Koh should have known better
as a trained PR professional.
For example, Amy Cheong, an assistant
director with the The National Trades Union
Congress (NTUC) in Singapore was fired after
she posted a racist comment on her
personal Facebook page in 2012.
Cheong had directed her annoy-ance
at Malays who were holding a
wedding ceremony in the void
deck of a public housing
block, presumably for the
noise that the celebration
generated. In her tirade,
she told them to “pay
for a real wedding”
and wrote that “maybe
then the divorce rate
won’t be so high”.
media networks are
really publishing
platforms, even if you
tag your updates as
non-public
In January earlier this year, Anton Casey, a
Briton working in wealth management in Singa-pore
lost his job in the wake of comments that
ridiculed those who were less well to do.
It started with a picture of his son with the
caption: “Daddy where is your car and who are
all these poor people?” Casey later followed-up
with a picture of his son in a silver Porsche
with the caption: “Normal service can resume,
once I have washed the stench of public trans-port
off me.”
The elitist comments struck a deep nerve
among Singaporeans at a time when many
were grappling with increasing costs of living,
and quickly went viral. The ensuring uproar saw
Casey leave the country one week later, having
lost his job and with anonymous death threats
being made at his family.
Social media is a publishing platform
So what is it about social media that could
result in people being fired? After all, I’m sure
most of us know of at least one colleague,
friend or relative who hold similar types of in-flammatory
opinions, and who are not at all shy
about vocalizing them to friends and acquain-tances
alike. Yet you don’t see them get into
trouble over them, much less get sacked from
their jobs.
I think the heart of the matter with such
social media debacles is the misunderstanding
that sharing our thoughts on Facebook is akin
to conducting a private conversation. In reality,
the truth is that social media networks are
really publishing platforms, even if you tag your
updates as non-public.
And unlike a magazine or newspaper where
everything has to pass through the watchful
eyes of an editor, social media networks offer
no checks and balances against colossal,
career-ending blunders like those highlighted
above.
So the next time you want to post a rant, or
go on an online tirade on Facebook or Twitter,
pray stop and consider: Is what you are writing
really suitable for publication?

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8. The Importance of Improving
Customer Engagement
Having access to the right tools can go a long way towards
harnessing analytics data to improve customer engagement.
While businesses will agree that good customer service is an important
way for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors, they are
faced with the challenge of effectively engaging customers with person-alized,
contextual service in a world where consumers are taking to an
increasing number of communication channels and devices.
Unsurprisingly, what this means is that savvy companies have to
constantly explore new processes and tools in order to stay ahead of the
competition and remain at the forefront of customer engagement.
“Organizations need to be enriching customer interactions, optimizing
their workforces, and improving processes,” said Ryan Hollenbeck, Senior
Vice President, Global Marketing of Verint. “In doing so, organizations
can benefit from increased customer loyalty, enhanced performance and
revenue, and reduced risk and operating costs.”
On employer and customer satisfaction
With everyone talking about becoming customer centric and improving
customer engagement, what are some common ways that businesses are
failing on this front, and what are some ways that they can improve?
According to Hollenbeck, today’s enterprises find themselves orga-nized
in functional and departmental silos, leading to myopic manage-ment
practices across customer touch points. Moreover, organizational
silos also frequently operate at cross-purposes, which increases costs
and result in squandered opportunities to improve customer satisfaction.
This lack of alignment ultimately results in organizations missing a holis-tic
understanding of how to engage with customers effectively to achieve
more profitable outcomes.
Hollenbeck also pointed to how employee expectations are also
changing in that they want to have a voice as well, even as some may
not necessarily be furnished with the tools they need in order to serve
customers. Taken together, this can be problematic at a time where com-panies
are challenged with keeping the best, highly engaged, productive
employees in today’s competitive job market.
“Providing employees a way to express their opinions, collaborate
effectively with peers, and the right tools to do their jobs goes a long
way toward driving inspired, engaged, empowered employees,” said Hol-lenbeck,
who pointed to studies that prove there is a direct correlation
between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.
Measuring customer engagement
What are some activities and metrics that forward-thinking compa-nies
should be looking at as they embark on their specific customer
8 l CMO Guide
Ryan Hollenbeck at Verint:
Organizations need to be enriching
customer interactions, optimizing their
workforces, and improving processes
engagement activities? Hollenbeck outlined
some best practices that organizations can
consider.
• Track customer journeys across interaction
channels and share this insight across the
organization to help create a better cus-tomer
experience and increase revenue.
• Use previous customer interactions and
predictive outcomes to deliver contextual,
highly personalized service.
• Manage and resolve customer issues at
any point in the journey.
• Surface insights from data in organization-al
silos to help determine where to focus
customer engagement efforts to gain the
most impact.
• Align customer feedback with insights
from engagement tracking to predict cus-tomer
behavior and help reduce churn.
Verint Advertorial

9. CMO Guide l 9
• Deliver “next best action” guidance, knowl-edge
articles, and coaching to employees
to help enhance responsiveness and
revenue opportunities.
Harnessing analytics
It is well known that the first step to
progress begins from being able to measure
it. So how should forward-thinking companies
measure customer engagement today, and
what are the metrics that they should use to
measure where they stand?
Not surprisingly, analytics is a topic that
is increasingly mentioned when it comes to
customer engagement. Yet is it the sole con-sideration
here? Hollenbeck cautioned that
data trapped within silos could impede even
the best analytic tools.
“Customer engagement data is often
trapped within departmental silos, leaving or-ganizations
without visibility and understand-ing
across channels, interactions, processes
and outcomes,” he said. “This disconnected
data makes it impossible for organizations to
deliver a cohesive, omnichannel engagement,
reinforcing the critical need for a consolidated
analytics platform to deliver an end-to-end
view of customer journeys and business
outcomes.”
Obviously, having the right tools could
smooth things out significantly once the perti-nent
data is extricated from the various silos.
Hollenbeck points to how the Engagement
Analytics software within Verint is able to offer
a more cohesive view by capturing seemingly
disparate data such as customer, employee,
transaction and interaction data, and aggre-gating
it into a single view.
“[The software] then applies powerful
algorithms that create cross-channel metrics,
maps customer journeys and delivers action-able
intelligence to understand behaviours
and predict outcomes,” he said.
Deploying the right tools
Hollenbeck described several aspects of
the tools by Verint, outlining key capabilities
such as customer engagement optimization,
workforce optimization and analytics.
Customer engagement optimization can
enrich customer interactions by helping orga-nizations
segment, target, and track customer
journeys across interaction channels, noted Hollenbeck. Using the direct
and indirect voice of the customer, the tool can help organizations predict
satisfaction and loyalty drivers across customer transactions and interac-tions
to effectively engage customers and employees.
Indeed, Verint and KANA offer a desktop that can help improve the
productivity of sales and service employees with its many capabilities. For
example, staff can access comprehensive customer interaction histo-ries
and customer-related information. And whether by phone, email, or
instant messaging chat, “next best action” guidance is provided to help
employees deliver fast and effective customer service.
In terms of workforce optimization, Verint allows organizations to ana-lyze
customer interactions and employee activities, and use this insight to
better engage them. This could range from improving employee support
systems, offer targeted coaching, or as a means to gauge productivity.
“As employees grow more engaged and productive, they are more apt
to deliver high-quality service that can better engage customers,” noted
Hollenbeck.
Finally, the company’s product suite is capable of delivering strong
analytics capabilities that runs the gamut from voice biometrics, speech
analytics, text analytics, enterprise feedback management, performance
management, desktop and process analytics, and social media monitor-ing.
In conclusion
So how does an organization know if they have been successful with
their foray to improve their customer engagement?
Hollenbeck pointed to the presence of a customer engagement
optimization maturity model as a good guideline, which he says describes
how effectively current people, processes, and technology support a
customer engagement optimization strategy.
“The model cascades an over-arching customer engagement optimiza-tion
strategy to key capability areas that are required for organizations to
optimize customer engagement,” he said. “Relative to best practices, the
model identifies capability strengths and areas that are less mature and
require focus and investment.”
According to Hollenbeck, areas include strategy and alignment, organi-zation
culture, as well as governance and measurement, and is all about
“knowing where you stand in these areas against not just industry best
practices, but also against your own internal goals, will help gauge ongo-ing
customer engagement success,” he concluded.
Customer engagement data is often
trapped within departmental silos, leaving
organizations without visibility
– Ryan Hollenbeck, Verint

10. overview
The top 5 mistakes that
email marketers make
E veryone just loves to hate email, especially as a marketing tool.
use a service or software that can manage
Yet it continues to feature heavily at work and play, and it is for
this reason that it has remained a timeless platform for B2B
marketers.
Certainly, there is no question that the humble email is a fast
and cost-effective way to reach out to specific target segments and to get
the word out.
When it comes to email marketing, a B2B email campaign that isn’t
attaining an open rate of at least two percent implies a problem some-where.
Below are five of the most common mistakes that marketers
make.
Using a bad email list. It is crucial that marketers get their email
lists from a reputable company, lest they find themselves blacklisted by
irate recipients. Target the right audience by narrowing down your target
demographics as much as possible, and also have your lists cleaned by a
credible vendor.
When using a retention service. It is important to be careful with the
emails you provide to retention services because providing fake, invalid or
mistyped email addresses can end up getting your account locked. Spe-cifically,
stop sending to old email addresses that have never responded,
since inactive email addresses are a red flag for email providers to iden-tify
senders that should be blacklisted.
Not having a process to track opt-outs. There should be a way for re-cipients
to opt-out of a particular mailing list. Don’t do this manually, but
10 l CMO Guide
opt-outs and streamline the process to facili-tate
recipients who want to opt-out. This will
also serve to avoid legal traps with unwanted
email messages, such as in countries like
Singapore with its Spam Control Act.
Not being hygienic. It is important to
continually clean up your email list. Using
specialized programs that can help find alter-nate
email addresses when one ages off the
database can be very helpful. Some of these
apps can also track hard bounce records and
other hygiene drops to avoid spam traps and
eliminate emails associated with questionable
IP addresses.
Double-check everything. The devil is
often in the details, so make sure you all
pertinent details are at hand and correct
before hitting the send button. The subject
line needs to grab the attention of recipients,
the offer should be tempting, the call to action
is clear, and the link takes people to the right
place--and should be working.

11. overview
Study confirms that a slow website is
the best way to lose m-commerce sales
C • Nearly all consumers (93%) said their perception of a brand is af-fected
CMO Guide l 11
onsumers in the Asia-Pacific are using
their smartphones to browse and pur-chase
from m-commerce sites, with
84% of consumers using their smart-phones
to browse on a weekly basis,
according to a new study commissioned by
managed cloud company Rackspace.
The research was conducted by Toluna
and involved surveying 1,200 consumers aged
from 22 and 44 across Hong Kong, Singapore
and India to gain insights into mobile habits
and behaviors. 24% of those polled say they
make weekly online purchases, while 11% say
they make purchases on a daily basis.
The study found frustration running high
as 78% of consumers say they have experi-enced
technical issues when browsing sites
on their smartphone, affecting their purchas-ing
decisions and their perception of the
company.
Below are some notable points gleaned
from the study.
• Over a quarter of consumers (28%) said
they would not make purchases from an
m-commerce site if they experience a
technical issue.
if its website consistently has problems.
• Slow page loading ranked as the most prevalent issue for server-relat-ed
technical issues, with 61% of consumers citing this as the number
one problem.
• Scaling issues in which webpages do not look to scale on smart-phones
is another major issue with 39% of consumers on average
complaining of this.
In response to issues such as slow page loading, poor scaling of
pages and other glitches, nearly all consumers (97%) say they have expe-rienced
some level of frustration with websites. One-fifth would close the
webpage and move on if they experienced a technical problem; almost
one-third said they would visit the website on their desktop.
And while the majority of consumers (40%) said they would wait 6-10
seconds for the webpage to load before leaving the site, only a quarter
said they would wait longer than 15 seconds for a webpage to load before
leaving. Indeed, it was determined that even a five second delay in page
loading could mean the difference in a sale happening, or not.
The findings are not new, but confirm well-established best practices
such as need to build websites that are responsive, the importance of
keeping page load times down, and how catering to mobile devices is not
optional.
Businesses that fail to do that run a high risk of users moving on to
other sites--and negatively impact their own e-commerce initiatives.
Even a five second delay in page
loading could mean the difference in
a sale happening, or not

12. Verint Advertorial
Improving Customer
Engagement through Analytics
Superior and effortless customer engagement is an important
competitive differentiator that is viewed by successful
companies as a strategic initiative.
There was a time when all it takes to ensure customer satisfaction is
to establish a call center and adequately staff it with qualified operators.
Unfortunately, such a strategy would be woefully inadequate today, given
the evolution of the Internet and the myriad of digital platforms that it has
enabled, coupled with the increasing sophistication of modern consum-ers.
For one, customers are far more proactive and often come equipped
with ample information gleaned from their own research. Sources range
from online forums, blogs, reviews at e-commerce sites, social networks,
as well as their peers--all easily reachable with the widespread prolifera-tion
of smartphones and messaging networks.
In the face of such developments, it is up to businesses to ensure
that they engage with these customers across the broad spectrum of
online platforms that they use, as well as to equip company representa-tives
to quickly respond in a manner that delivers genuine value and low
effort for the customer.
Customer engagement as a differentiator
Savvy marketers know that effective customer engagement is an
important differentiator that could be all that stands between increased
sales or a lackluster quarter--or worse. And as consumers leverage mul-tiple
communication channels to interact with companies, there is greater
need than ever to ensure that organizations have the ability to collect,
analyze and understand customer journeys across these channels and
then engage customers effectively and consistently.
Indeed, Daniel Ziv, vice president of customer analytics for Asia-
Pacific and global product strategy at Verint, highlighted how organizations
who are successful tend to review customer experience and customer
engagement as a strategic initiative, and may include the appointment of
a senior chief customer officer and team that look holistically at the end-to-
end customer experience to ensure the delivery of a better customer
experience.
“These organizations are committed to not only listening and under-standing
the voice of their customers but also acting on these insights
and measuring the impact,” he said. “Once they execute a successful
project they celebrate this success both internally and externally to ex-pand
and scale their program across the enterprise.”
Increasingly, the challenge is about how companies can effectively
engage customers across multiple communication channels, an area that
12 l CMO Guide
Daniel Ziv at Verint: Increasingly, the
challenge is about how companies can
effectively engaging customers across
multiple communication channels
Ziv says Verint excels at. Companies select
Verint, he said, “Because they’re looking for
a unified suite that can collect and mine the
voice of their customers across all channels
including phone calls, emails, chat, social
media and customer feedback, and translate
those insights into actions that impact how or-ganizations
interact and engage with custom-ers
in the call center, the back-office, branch,
and through various self-service channels.”
How analytics can improve
customer satisfaction
So can analytics be leveraged to enhance
customer engagement? According to Ziv, the
answer is yes. “The strategic application of
analytics can identify key areas for improve-ment,
directly enhance an organization’s op-erational
efficiency, help reduce risk, increase
customer loyalty, and enhance revenue,” said
Ziv.

13. 7 steps to implement analytics in
customer engagement
Daniel Ziv, vice president of customer analytics, Asia-Pacific
and global product strategy at Verint outlines seven steps
that businesses can implement analytics in their customer
engagement initiatives
1. Think big but start small: Organizations should have a holistic
customer engagement strategy supported by a unified platform.
For starters, try to pick an initial project that could generate
impact in a short-term. This could range from singular goals
such as improving sales conversion rates, reduction in cost,
a reduction in customer churn, or monitoring the impact of
marketing campaigns.
2. Data: Next, identify the data sources that are available to help
identify the root causes and drivers behind the target objective.
3. Tools: Move on to deploy the right tools to collect and mine the
relevant data identified in the previous step.
4. Analyze: Assign a dedicated team to analyze the data and
recommend suggested actions. While team members do not
need to be analytics experts, they should have experience
and understanding of the business objectives that are being
addressed.
5. Internal support: As always, obtain the requisite buy-in from
senior-level executives and gain their support for this initiative.
Another benefit of widespread support is how can ensure that
insights are acted upon quickly across different departments.
6. Monitor: Monitor the impact of any changes made and adjust
as necessary.
7. Celebrate: Success breeds further success, so be sure to
celebrate successful outcomes both internally and externally--this
will go a long way towards helping to ensure that the next round
will be even earlier to push through.
CMO Guide l 13
Though there is no shortage of analytics
tools on the market, Ziv cautioned organiza-tions
against the hasty reaction of adopting
the first workable point solution that they
come across. An organization with multiple
point solutions, for example, could result in
the inadvertent creation of multiple silos that
cannot be easily integrated, leading to chal-lenges
down the road.
On this front, Ziv says that starting with a
unified suite approach is the most frequently
recommended strategy. According to him,
an integrated solution also allows different
departments to approach the feedback as a
singular voice, and work together to improve
the customer experience with no duplica-tion
of efforts. Other advantages include a
significant reduction in the cost of ownership,
reduced time to insight and a quicker return in
investment.
“By mining the voice of the customer,
companies manage to identify low hanging
fruit such as drivers of repeat and frustrating
customer interactions that cost them a for-tune
and reduce customer satisfaction,” said
Ziv. “By leveraging these insights and driving
them through an operational workflow--our
customers are able to eliminate unnecessary
or ineffective interactions and cut costs while
improving customer satisfaction and reducing
customer effort.”
Enhancing the bottom-line
To illustrate how analytics can enhance
the bottom-line, Ziv pointed to TMJ Inc., a
business process-outsourcing firm from Japan
with operations in China and the Philippines
as an example of how its unified analytics so-lutions
can deliver measurable improvements.
With clients from the finance, telecom-munication
and manufacturing industries, TMJ
was faced with a number of unique chal-lenges
with the growing age of the population
especially in Japan and how it is affecting
their ability to sell and service their client’s
customers.
To address this, TMJ deployed speech
analytics technology from Verint to mine every
word and phrase in every call handled by the
company. After analyzing the different topics
of discussion in a sale scenario, it was discov-ered
that successful sales calls focused more
on product concepts, effectiveness of service quality, while less success-ful
sales calls focused more on product details and price.
These insights resulted in TMJ applying new training and coaching to
their sales representatives, say Ziv. The end result is the company suc-cessfully
identified a hefty 8% increase in their sales conversion rates.
Ultimately, it is evident that the requisite technology to improve
customer engagement through analytics is available, and is ready for
primetime use. It is really up to businesses to recognize their value, and
deploy them in their organizations.
“We have over 1,000 customers around the world who use our cus-tomer
analytics solutions,” said Ziv. “Early adopters of the solution have
been financial institutes and telecoms, but we see an increase growth in
healthcare, BPO’s, retailers, utilities and even government organizations.”

14. ANALYTICS
14 l CMO Guide
Creating a data-driven
organisation to improve
the customer experience
T he role of the Chief Marketing Officer
analytics in marketing, as well as how it can be
(CMO) is not only the most varied today,
and is also the most at-risk, according
to Gartner research director Gareth
Herschel at the Gartner Customer 360
Summit held earlier this year. Herschel pointed
out that CMOs have the shortest tenure in the
C-suite at the moment, at just two to three years.
So while some marketers may view analytics
as another convoluted and hard-to-understand
topic that they are being forced into grappling
with, it is in this context that more enlightened
executives will see it as an invaluable tool to
quantify the value that they are delivering to
their organisations. After all, executives are no
doubt familiar with the adage “what get mea-sured
gets managed”.
Indeed, Herschel also thinks that analytics
can be leveraged to improve marketing perfor-mance
as well as innovation within organisa-tions--
thereby helping to extend the tenure of
CMOs. We take a deeper look at the role of
practically applied to improve performance.
The role of analytics in
marketing
In an interview with John Zanni, who is the
CMO of the service providers business at Paral-lels
Inc., he explained that the CMO has to be
fairly data orienteered and analytical. “Marketing
activities need to become very measurable,”
stressed the executive who placed enough
importance to social media to build his own in-house
social team.
“The age where companies produce
brochures and hope they translate to sales is
gone,” said Zanni, noting that Parallels closely
tracks the visitors to its website. “When we run
campaigns, we look at the results from those
campaigns.”
To be clear, marketing analytics is not
about merely keeping a close eye on the
statistics of a website or even e-commerce

15. ANALYTICS
In an increasingly growth oriented
economy where marketing is expected to
contribute to measurable results on the sales
front, there is no question that analytics is
becoming an essential component of the
marketing skills base.
CMO Guide l 15
site, but tracking how actual marketing efforts
and initiatives are performing. It also pays to
go beyond on-site indicators to include offsite
metrics and even some non-digital channels-
-the idea is to adopt a big-picture view to
measure the marketing.
So rather than focusing only on the out-comes
that could be tracked with tools such as
Google Analytics and Omniture, marketers will
do well to also explore the way that campaigns
are executed, including the time of day they
were initiated, parameters used, and the various
real-life engagements that may be used by the
campaign.
Improving the customer
experience with analytics
One of the key challenges with analytics is
translating ever-increasing amounts of captured
data into strategically relevant and immediately
useful action. For example, marketers can use
analytics to measure the business cycle, and
then use that information to calibrate to busi-ness
realities.
In this context, what are some practical
areas that analytics can be harnessed to make
a difference? Specifically, how can analytics be
harnessed to improve an important and often
overlooked façade of marketing--the customer
experience?
• Unearthing customer sentiments about
products and services
Many customers share a great deal about
their likes and dislikes of the products and
services that they come across, as well as the
ease or challenges of doing business with com-panies.
This could be gleaned across multiple
channels such as feedback forms, call centres
and online, putting the onus on CMOs to act
on these insights to defuse potential customer
dissatisfaction or churn.
• Identify customer microsegments to better
meet their needs
Given that every customer is different,
analytics can help CMOs uncover similarities be-tween
different niche groups of customers--such
as teenagers, singles, parents, or retirees--and
leverage that to create personalized offerings to
meet the unique needs and interests of each
microsegment.
• Analysing customer behaviours to deter-mine
what they are likely to purchase
Analytics can reveal powerful insights about
customer behaviours that can allow their unique
needs and preference to be identified. CMOs
can utilize these insights to direct targeted of-fers
at them based on their past and anticipated
behaviours. A well-known example of this would
be Amazon’s recommendation engine.
The bottom-line here is that marketers
should be involved in their organization’s cus-tomer
strategy, and leverage analytics to help
not just with table stakes like segmentation and
audience targeting, but also by using the gained
insights as a competitive differentiator. If there
is one common denominator here, it would be
about using analytics to deliver value to custom-ers.
And analytics do not necessarily have to
be a cost centre either. For example, the cost
of analytics for Tesco – the online retailer – is
effectively zero as it sells its data. When one
considers this, it is clear that analytics isn’t sim-ply
about thinking strategically, but is also about
thinking differently.
Conclusion
Far too often, analytics is seen as separate
from the traditional marketing activities in most
organizations. However, in an increasingly growth
oriented economy where marketing is expected
to contribute to measurable results on the sales
front, there is no question that analytics is be-coming
an essential component of the market-ing
skills base.
Ultimately, CMOs who are able to leverage
analytics improve their customer experience will
gain an invaluable edge for their organization-
-and themselves. So if you’re not yet seriously
looking at analytics as a means to improve
performance, you should do start to do so now.

16. mobile
16 l CMO Guide
Understanding how mobile
is changing everything
t started innocently enough, when a busy
restaurant in New York City found itself
getting bad reviews for slow service. Given
how service did indeed seem slower than
in the past despite a simpler menu and a
I
higher staff count, the restaurant owner decided
to hire some external consultants to investigate.
The consultants requested that the res-taurant
locate old footage from its surveillance
system to compare how employees behaved
in the past. A surveillance tape from 10 years
ago was fortuitously found, and it was quickly
determined that the average time spent by a
customer in the restaurant in 2004 was 1 hour
and 5 minutes.
Yet a snippet from 2014 revealed that the
average customer is taking almost twice as long
in the restaurant today, to the tune of 1 hour
and 55 minutes. So what changed? A closer
examination revealed what typically transpires in
a typical day.
• Before even opening the menu, customers
take their phones out to snap some photos,
while others are seen fiddling with their
phones. The latter spend long periods of
time, often with their phones placed over
the open menu, and typically asks the waiter
to wait--sometimes more than once--when
approached if they are ready to order.
• Seven out of the 45 customers had waiters
come over right away, and takes up an aver-age
of five minutes of their time getting Wi-Fi
working (The restaurant offers free Wi-Fi).
• When the food arrives, 26 out of 45 custom-ers
spend an average of 3 minutes taking
photos of the food. Another 14 out of 45
customers take pictures of each other with
the food in front of them or as they are eat-ing
the food. 27 out of 45 customers ask
the waiter to take a group photo, while some
are not satisfied and would ask for a retake.
• When eating, customers are constantly busy
on their phones, and hence take an average
of 20 minutes more from when they are
done eating until they pay. It also takes 15
minutes longer on average for them to pay
and leave after the check is delivered.
If there is one lesson that brands can
glean from the anonymously posted but entirely
plausible account above, it is how consumers
are now spending a disproportionate amount of
time with their smartphones--even during non-working
slots such as their mealtimes.
With this in mind, it is clear that the suc-cessful
marketer must have a strategy in place
to take full advantage of the mobile phenome-non.
Among others, this may entail the adoption
of a “mobile first” strategy in marketing endeav-ors,
which could range from tailoring advertise-ments,
websites for mobile devices, and the
creation of mobile apps--among others.
Of course, a mobile first approach should
not be mistaken with a “mobile only” one. The
former is about blending traditional marketing
with an emphasis on mobile devices, while the
latter approach of focusing only on mobile may
or may not work depending on your brand and
industry vertical.
It is worth noting that gaining an “app-hold”
on a smartphone may not be as cut-and-dry as
some application developers would have you
believe, what with apps numbering in the millions
today. Even for entrenched players, the battle is
an on-going one seeing how most apps do not
get launched regularly. For the winner though, the
rewards in terms of increased screen time and
brand awareness can be unimaginably huge.

17. SOCIAL
The top social media mistakes
made by marketers
T The crux of the issue, as explained by Ketchum, is how the “personal”
CMO Guide l 17
here is no questioning the importance
of social media in today’s digital land-scape,
buoyed by the strong growth of
mobile devices such as smartphones
and tablets in the Asia-Pacific region.
Yet what are some of the top social media mis-takes
that marketers are making? And what are
some ways that CMOs turn them around to be
more effective and impactful?
“One mistake is that companies don’t re-ally
spend time with their teams to talk about
what’s appropriate in terms of social media and
to create exciting and interesting stories about
the brands that employees can tell,” said David
Ketchum in an interview. “That often leads to the
very big mistakes of employees saying things
online that are directly against what the company
message is.”
Ketchum is the current chairman of the
Digital + Direct Marketing Association Asia, is
also the president of Bite, Asia Pacific, and an
industry veteran with decades of marketing and
branding experience under his belt.
identity and “employee” identity have a tendency to get mixed up. This cul-minates
in messages that may actually go against what the brand espouses
or is trying to portray. “The really interesting thing about digital is not about
the technology, but cultural. It’s about how you treat the people and treat the
team,” he said.
Another mistake that Ketchum highlighted has to do with organizations
that assert pressure on employees to meet a specific social media agenda.
Rather than asking the team to tweet about a product launch, for example,
Ketchum suggested organizing a memorable event to celebrate the launch
with the team. “If you a hire a boat around town to celebrate a launch, people
will just write about it spontaneously,” he noted.
So is it acceptable for your social media channels to be stuffed to the
grills with posts exhorting your brand? Ketchum cautioned against that, and
suggested that it such posts should be kept to a minority of updates. “About
15-20% should be about branding materials,” he said. “The rest should be
engagement and interaction with your customers.”
Hearing it from John Zanni, chief marketing officer of the service providers
business at Parallels Inc., transparency is a crucial trait when it comes to so-cial
media--which is to say that companies should not be evasive online. There
is always a risk when it comes to social media, according to him, because
“people get nervous when you are more transparent.”
Zanni’s notion of transparency is about being forthright and honest with
customers, and includes apologizing if necessary. “When somebody put
something on Twitter that is bad about your company, the right thing to do
is to engage them, on the same medium. If it is a legitimate problem, you
apologize,” he noted.
“Having to convert one person at a time may be an uncomfortable notion
for some, though companies that understand this will respond,” said Zanni.
“Social is a very powerful tool that you cannot ignore anymore. Transparency
is key. Any CMO who ignores it will see their downfall.”

18. OUTLOOK
There’s a land-grab between
marketing and IT for this digital
space but not all existing leaders are
suited to driving this
18 l CMO Guide
p to 16% of companies in Hong Kong
say they have a chief digital officer
(CDO) which is higher than the Asia
Pacific average at 11% and the over-all
global average of 7%. This comes
from the 2014 CIO Survey by the executive re-cruitment
consultants Harvey Nash.
The emergence of this role stems from
the massive wave of digital business opportu-nities
that have emerged from the prevalence
of web, mobile and social media.
Businesses since the 2008 financial crisis
have struggled for growth and in the most part
adopted cost optimization to maintain profits.
“But in the last couple of years there’s a clear
shift to seek new growth,” said Nick Marsh,
managing director, Harvey Nash Asia Pacific.
“This growth is coming from mergers and
acquisitions but also form the drive for new
revenue streams coming from digital busi-ness,”
Marsh noted.
Digital vision
The belief is that through emerging and
established digital platforms, businesses can
engage with new groups of customers, engage
in different ways and create deeper engage-ments
with existing customers. “Companies
are now seeking competitive edge in this
digital space so visionary CEOs are actively
seeking to do something transformative
around digital,” added Marsh.
This shift is creating a new challenge
which demands new skills and ideas and
hence the rise of the CDO.
“This is not business as usual with a few
digital add-ons – this is a new way of doing
business,” said Marsh.
The problem that many businesses are
finding is that this role does not always sit
well with existing CIOs or even CMOs, both
who would seem the most suited to taking up
this digital challenge.
The ideal scenario is for someone inter-nally
to step up to the task and own the digital
initiative but if that doesn’t happen then CEOs
will have to appoint someone externally to fill
the role.
According to Soni Sajnani, associate
consultant at Harvey Nash and the lead on
digital business, this CDO role is essentially
a transformation agent with very sound digital
skills. “This person is being tasked to lead
change management, be open, enthusiastic
and most importantly try new things and take
risks,” she said. “Digital is all new, nothing
is tried or trusted so it requires people who
are bold and also who truly understand what
‘digital’ business means.”
Under the CDO hood
Sajnani also emphasized the point that
the study recognized CDOs as individuals who
clearly had responsibility for digital business
within their company and did not sit within tra-ditional
IT or within marketing. Marsh added
that people should not be obsessed with the
“CDO” job title as there were companies that
likely had very competent digital leaders but
do not have a CDO job title. “CDOs could
already be digital strategy leaders or even
existing CIOs or CMOs.”
But what is evident is that there is a gap
where CIOs and CMOS are either too busy to
assume this role or the skills are such that
the new role is created to acquire the unique
mix of skills that businesses need in this posi-tion.
The study found that 50% of CIOs today
are active in digital strategy which is actually
down from last year (56%), while marketing is
increasingly trying to own the digital strategy
too.
“There’s a land-grab between marketing
and IT for this digital space but not all existing
leaders are suited to driving this,” said Marsh.
Interestingly the study found that most CDOs
reported directly to the CEO (40%) while only
22% report to the CIO and 16% to the CMO.
Both Sajnani and Marsh agreed that while
the role required digital skills, it would not be
a role for the tech geek. “The person has to
be very self-driven, confident and engaging as
they work to break down siloes but also lead
others along on the vision,” said Sajnani.
This is not
business as usual
with a few digital
add-ons – this is a
new way of doing
business
Chief digital officers
on the rise in HK
U