Spacetime marketing: the wheres and whens of customer experience

Telstra Australia recently published a whitepaper on their research into connected consumer marketing - intriguingly called Spacetime Marketing (available for download here, free registration required). So what exactly does Spacetime Marketing entail?

We know that to succeed in any customer-facing business, you need to reach your customers where they need you, when they need you. The right message at the wrong time just isn't as effective as one delivered when your customers are most likely to act on it - usually pretty close to your location, if not actually inside it (check out this post for more on getting real time right).

So Spacetime Marketing is about understanding how customers function in space - their 'wheres', and in time - their 'whens'. Once you have a firm grasp on those factors (because you have the data...) it becomes easier to deliver them just the right message that encourages them to take beneficial action - visiting a store, buying a particular product, joining your loyalty program etc.

The Spacetime stats

When you consider the enormous mountain of work out there extolling the virtues of real-time data for shaping customer experience, this is mildly concerning: 63% of brands don't use real time data in marketing, and 31% lack the capacity to monitor customer behavior entirely. Without the ability to know what your customers are up to, you have no hope of reaching them in the moment - so no wonder real-time marketing isn't happening. Possibly of even greater concern: so you can measure customer behavior? Why aren't you using it to its best advantage?

And it's not like brands don't understand the value of technology in marketing: 66% agreed that technology creates new opportunities for brands to talk to customers, and 50% agreed it is an essential element of new market offerings. So it is important, just apparently not being consistently used for one of the most important functions of a customer-facing business: creating better, more relevant, more personal customer experiences.

The number one requirement for using mobile and its ilk to reach customers is that the marketing has to be relevant and useful. If you're sending broadcast push messages on a calendar basis, you've failed to meet this requirement, and you're not going to win anyone over to the Spacetime side. Telstra found that 33% of customers were willing to receive mobile communications in-store, and that highly engaged customers were (unsurprisingly) more receptive. It's not a stretch to argue that effectively using customer behavior data to shape real-time marketing will go a long way to creating those highly engaged customers - especially since we've actually proved it to the brands we work with.

In summing up, Telstra recommends to brands that they start at the very beginning; with the technology that nearly every customer has on them nearly every moment of the day. Start with smartphones, embrace the IOT and work on getting the customer data that makes reaching customers in the right place and time so much easier. Download the whitepaper for more recommendations and Spacetime Marketing case studies.


Want to know more? Have questions?

Plexure will be taking part in Telstra's Spacetime Marketing webinar on April 19th, so come along to learn more about the new world of marketing and get some expert tips on making real-time really work.

Register here: 

Spacetime Marketing: exploring the potential of the connected consumer for retail marketers