Real-time marketing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Real-time marketing is marketing performed "on-the-fly" to determine an appropriate or optimal approach to a particular customer at a particular time and place. It is a form of market research inbound marketing that seeks the most appropriate offer for a given customer sales opportunity, reversing the traditional outbound marketing (or interruption marketing) which aims to acquire appropriate customers for a given 'pre-defined' offer. The dynamic 'just-in-time' decision making behind a real-time offer aims to exploit a given customer interaction defined by website clicks or verbal contact centre conversation.[1]
Real-time marketing techniques developed during the mid-1990s following the initial deployment of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions in major retail banking, investment banking and telecommunications companies. The intrinsic and prevailing 'heavyweight' nature of the key CRM vendors at this time, who were generally focused on major back and front office system integration projects, provided an opportunity for niche players within the campaign management application arena.
The implementation of real-time marketing solutions through the late 1990s would typically involve a 10- to 14-week delivery project with 1-2 FTE expert consultants and often would follow an earlier outbound marketing solution implementation. This relatively lightweight delivery model had obvious appeal within the vendor sales cycle and customer procurement context but was ultimately to prove a disincentive for major systems integration services providers to partner with real-time marketing vendors.