A walkthrough of our update to some 2012 research (both in partnership with Tealium) on tags and tag management. Covers some of the practical impact (ROI, speed, etc.) of moving to a managed approach and touches on the larger state of mar-tech and how decisions in tag management play a role.
3. The ROI of Tag Management,
2015 Edition
Stefan Tornquist, VP Research, Econsultancy
4. The study and some context
A look at the marketer study behind this talk
Findings
Top findings on the impact and implementation of tag management
Looking ahead
Tag management at the center of martech evolution
Q&A
Today
5. The study
• Over 300 respondents in January 2015
• 63% in marketing management (21% EVP+)
• Spread of revenue (36% $1B+)
• Spread of industries (B2B+B2C)
6. The role of tag management
“Effectively managing website tags is fundamental to
digital marketing.”
7. Martech explosion
“How has the number of digital marketing technology vendors
your organization uses changed in the last 12 months?
8. Brands still investing in martech
“How has the number of digital marketing technology vendors
your organization uses changed in the last 12 months?”
9. Growth in heavy martech usage
Rise in average number of vendors (2012 vs 2015)
10. Martech categories
“How has the number of digital marketing technology vendors
your organization uses changed in the last 12 months?”
Attribution modelling
Audience measurement
Data management
Display
advertising/Networks
Personalization/Location
Retargeting
Search engine marketing
Social
Testing/Optimization
Web analytics
60% saying they’ve increased…rises to 85% for those with revenue over $100MM
When we add a revenue component, you see the share of those with over 20 climb to roughlyl 75%
This list is very much a partial one…recent investment has been surging in customer experience management…but that extends into nearly every corner of the industry…data…testing/analytics…mobile data collection…
Toss to Erik…where does Tealium see the most shift right now?
Another factor that’s drives the view that tags are fundamental to digital is that they bind the data from an increasing number of platforms…
Complexity is the key driver in the move to get tags under control…that complexity obviously comes from Martech proliferation…and trying to get those systems talking…but it’s also contributed to by having groups outside marketing control tag management. Sometimes that control is exclusive, sometimes it’s shared.
One of the recurring themes…in 2012 and today…is that the decision to move to a managed service can be as much about independence for marketing as about the increase in efficiency.
That independce comes from becoming independent of IT/tech involvement.
Tag management is boring
Boredom introduces resistance and inaccuracy
Resistance breeds delays
Inaccuracy breeds mistakes, gaps in data, etc.
We see these and other challenges to efficiency…
Takes the valuable tech resource away…they could be improving your shopping cart or figuring out why registered users are still getting page overlays inviting them to register…
Too long…this was the #1 problem in 2012 and it’s still a strong second…marketing doesn’t move slowly, but tag implementation does…there’s always something more interesting on the list for IT/tech…and campaigns suffer for it
Incomplete…this goes to the accuracy problem…and it’s a big one…once an implementation is “done” there are still problems.
To the question of speed…
You’ll see a dramatic difference…over 75% get it doen the same day…and we see that the remaining 25% of companies are those wehre marketing doesn’t own TMS…so it’s really a version of the old problem…even through the TMS allows for very quick implementation, marketing is still waiting on someone else’s queue.
With better, cleaner data that’s easier to use, you see a variety of benefits to marketing and the business…most cites is better measurement because marketers can access and trust their data…
The two of most interst are financial…with greater efficiency comes better campaign ROI…and increased revenue…and some of that result is coming from the next point down…when they don’t need to worry about tag implementation and have better control, marketers do more optimization of their campaigns in all channels, and performance increases.
The other way to look at that is the cost of time…our most precious recource in marketing…over 80% of those who have switched to TMS say that it’s made tagging less expensive, with 56% saying that difference is significant.
That’s cost…the other side of efficiency is speed…78% say campaign deployment is faster…
61% see that speed on their websites themselves, as the loading of tags gets taken out of the equation…
Going back to how tags are now used beyond the primary website…mobile campaign management also beneifts, with 76% saying it’s got a somewhat or very positive effect ontheir capability in this area.
For these final few charts We’ve split out the folks who are using a TMS from those still doing manual tagging and exploring their options.
Often in tech expectations don’t match up well with the reality…but with something as straightforward as TMS, we see a pretty strong match…marketers expect faster time to market…and they get it…they expect to be more agile as they get free of IT/Tech…and they get it…one area where they don’t match up exactly is reduced costs…more companies realize that benefit than expect to…goes to the question of “what is free”…nothing…time isn’t free…
Again we split the audience…for those complemplating TMS, it’s worth looking at the experience of those currently using it, and where they see their vendors bringing value…obviously it’s a company to company question…but worth notinmg in particular….abilty to unify data and vendor neutrality
What’s stopping those who haven’t gone forward…use cases for many…they haven’t take the time to do the analysis…the fact that there is a cost associated slows others…but as we’ve seen, that’s a false argument for most…unless tags are sparse or static on your sites and mobile platforms, it’s highly unlikely to cost more to move tomanaged systems…
Finally…taking it up one level…let’s think about where mar-tech is today and where it’s headed….
Incresaingly as an industry we’re agreeing that the future is real time…it’s dynamic…it’s personalized to the user…and it’s remarkably rich in data…
It’s a world where experimentation and the ability to implement new tech and platforms will continue to be part of our everyday lives as marketers
And it’s a world where the ability to move from one vendor to another will matter…if you’re an organization that wants to work with the best-in-class for a given channel or platform, you want to be able to bring it in seamlessly…or get rid of one that isn’t working for you…that’s an important consideration in approaching tag management….