Dell At MarTech Conference: Customer Experience Must Drive Marketing Technology Decisions

If there’s been one overarching theme at the MarTech conference, it’s the need for marketing technology (and the marketers that use it) to focus on the customer first. Speakers from major brands like Coca-Cola and Kimberly-Clark, along with those from smaller digital agencies, have almost universally emphasized a customer-centric approach to using marketing technology.

Dell’s Corey Craig continued that focus with her presentation Wednesday morning that explained how she helped develop an “always on” marketing program that the company calls Solutions Nurture.

Craig, the Customer Experience Design & Innovation Lead at Dell, said the project began by mapping out an entire customer experience that looked for all the different touch points that a consumer might have with Dell, and identified the customer’s intent at each point.

“Let the experience drive technology decisions,” Craig said, explaining that Dell is using seven systems to manage how it reacts to customer intent.

Dell’s Content Framework

Once the customer experience had been mapped out, Dell began to work on creating a content framework based on providing the solutions that the customer needs.

Dell uses logic to drive personalized content to match the customer’s pain points. “This is your ‘If X, then Y’ system,” Craig said.

Craig began writing out this content framework by hand and, by starting manually, learned where the company had opportunities to use marketing automation. “Don’t be scared of the manual work,” she told the audience, “it will teach you what to automate.”

The final step in Dell’s development of the Solution Nurture platform involved internal storytelling — using education to achieve organizational adoption. Visualizing complex ideas was a key factor here, Craig said.

Craig wrapped up her presentation by encouraging conference attendees with a simple message: “Action begets action.”

Here are the slides from Craig’s talk. (For slides from other speakers, see the MarTech Conference Slideshare page.

About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee is the Editor-In-Chief of MarTech Today. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. After leaving traditional media in the mid-1990s, he began developing and marketing websites and continued to provide consulting services for more than 15 years. His SEO and social media clients ranged from mom-and-pop small businesses to one of the Top 5 online retailers. Matt is a longtime speaker at marketing events around the U.S., including keynote and panelist roles. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. You can reach Matt via email using our Contact page.