How “human” is your digital marketing?
I had a chuckle when famed UX designer Jared Spool told about his recent purchase of 8 razors from Amazon.com, and then two weeks later getting an email asking him to buy six more razors.
“How much beard do they think I have?” Spool Tweeted.
Misfires like these occur in the gap between digital experiences and human experiences. The success with which we bridge that gap is the success by which CMOs and Chief Experience Officers are measured in today’s world. In other words, how easy can the average human relate to your digital marketing?
Scott Brinker of the Chief Marketing Technologists Blog identifies five new rules of marketing technology and operations. Specifically, he speaks about embracing continuous change, while balancing centralization with decentralization, and automation with humanization. While seeming paradoxical, success comes from those who operate with two opposing paradigms, synthesizing what works with each.
“But the more machines handle on our behalf, the more we can lose touch with the humans on the other side of those machine-managed interactions. A manual process of sending an email, from one human to another, forces some modicum of thought about the recipient in the mind of the sender. An automated email nurturing algorithm that can fire off dozens of messages to thousands of recipients without any direct human decision-making at all has no such inherent empathy.”
— Scott Brinker
Encourage your teams to rigorously inject empathy in your digital marketing, even at the base automation level. Your default must always start from your user’s perspective, or else friction will take root in the user experience.
Amazon needs to rethink their recommendation engine algorithm.
— Jared Spool (@jmspool) April 23, 2019
I bought a package of 8 razors 2 weeks ago.
Today they send me an email suggesting I buy 6 more razors.
How much beard do they think I have?
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