IBM announced a new data exchange to help marketers engage customers in a more personalized manner.
The new IBM Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) enables marketers to deliver personalized experiences based on customers’ behaviors and preferences. The exchange is a key component of the IBM Marketing Cloud and it helps marketers easily connect data across their solutions so they can better understand and engage with their customers in the moment.
“On a daily basis, our marketing systems process countless customer data points, including visitor preferences on exhibits and special events,” said Rosie Judd, director of digital media for Georgia Aquarium, which uses the IBM Marketing Cloud. “With this launch, we see how IBM is addressing the industry pain point of collecting and analyzing this customer data, and ultimately helping small marketing teams such as Georgia Aquarium’s, be more efficient and stay focused on customer-entric campaigns that deliver memorable experiences.”
As customer expectations have increased so has the complexity of the marketing environment—more channels, more devices, more solutions and more data. In some companies, marketers are working with more than 30 different systems. The ability to easily connect the data stored in these solutions is key to delivering successful customer experiences across the buyer journey. Insights generated from the exchange will help marketers drive more effective campaigns on Facebook and across the Web.
UBX is supported by an open ecosystem of certified partners that include social, mobile, CRM and paid advertising solutions. At launch, this ecosystem includes companies, such as MediaMath, Spredfast, MutualMind, SugarCRM and Exchange Solutions.
“IBM is making it simpler for brands to better understand how their customers prefer to engage,” said Mike Lamb, president of the commercial side of the house at MediaMath. “We see the opportunity in connecting advertiser data to other channels to create more timely and relevant interactions. It’s this level of collaboration with IBM that demonstrates a major step toward true customer-centric marketing.”
The Universal Behavior Exchange increases marketing agility by providing click-to-connect integration that makes it easier for marketers to access and leverage customer data across all of their solutions. It also features a pre-integrated partner network which enables quick integration with a wide range of customer behavior, event and audience data across paid, owned and earned channels.
“The challenge marketers face today is the ability to deliver, at scale, customer experiences that are timely and relevant,” said Deepak Advani, general manager of IBM Commerce, in a statement. “Today’s launch is addressing this by removing a key pain point for marketers around data integration to free them up to deliver the more innovative and meaningful experiences that consumers demand.”
Vibes, a mobile marketing solutions provider, announced it is providing mobile marketing and mobile wallet solutions to IBM’s Universal Behavior Exchange ecosystem. By joining IBM’s UBX, Vibes enables marketers to gain greater visibility into key data for mobile marketing campaigns. As a result, marketing teams can significantly increase conversion and improve the customer journey—whether through mobile wallet (Apple Wallet for iPhone, Android Pay for Android phones), push notifications or text messaging (SMS/MMS).
For example, if a customer abandons their shopping cart on a retailer’s Website, an alert is automatically sent to UBX where Vibes is “listening” to these events. If the customer is a member of the retailer’s SMS text database, Vibes then sends a tailored text message encouraging the customer to complete the transaction that includes a unique link to a mobile coupon that can be saved to Apple Wallet or Android Pay. Thanks to this timely response, the team is able to re-engage the customer and give them the incentive to go back and complete the purchase. Vibes also works with other IBM Marketing Cloud systems to trigger transactional and service-oriented mobile messages, like appointment reminders and service updates.
“We’re working with IBM to bring our text message marketing, mobile wallet marketing and push notification capabilities to the UBX platform,” said Jack Philbin, co-founder and CEO of Vibes. “With UBX, marketers can drive revenue using innovative mobile marketing channels while also connecting mobile to all other digital marketing events. UBX is cracking the code on big data applied to the marketing cloud.”
IBM Launches Data Exchange for Marketers
Rocket Fuel said it is bringing its Rocket Fuel Programmatic Marketing Platform to the IBM UBX to empower marketers with control of all their customer data via an easy-to-use, integrated console. The integration supports the ability to push published segments and attributes back into the IBM Marketing Cloud through the Rocket Fuel Data Management Platform (DMP). This flow of real-time customer data delivers more targeted and personalized customer experiences through IBM UBX, speeding time to market from weeks to one day.
By joining IBM UBX, Rocket Fuel also brings its Rocket Fuel’s Moment Scoring technology to the IBM Marketing Cloud. As a result, marketers will be able to activate their IBM data across paid channels and provide an additional layer of sophistication by optimizing data to help ensure campaigns target the precise moment for a person to receive a marketing message on the right device. Moment Scoring performs a real-time calculation for each ad opportunity to determine the likelihood a consumer will engage in a desired marketing action across channels, devices and objectives.
“In today’s marketing climate, identifying your target customer is only the starting point,” Simon Hayhurst, senior vice president of products and business development at Rocket Fuel, said in a statement. “The UBX lets marketers move beyond demographics and first party data. They can now leverage contextual and behavioral factors, including device, time of day, prior purchase behavior and interests, to reach the right individual, and deliver the most relevant message on the right device, at the exact moment of influence.”
MediaMath, creator of the TerminalOne Marketing Operating System, also joined IBM’s UBX, enabling marketers to connect their ad tech and marketing technology to drive more consistent consumer experiences and increase ROI.
Through UBX, MediaMath can bi-directionally share data with IBM Commerce solutions such as IBM Marketing Cloud, IBM Engage Mobile, IBM Digital Analytics and more. This allows for seamless communication between technologies and the ability to activate insights and execute optimized campaigns across paid and owned channels.
“Industry thought leaders are anticipating the convergence of ad tech and martech, but together with MediaMath, we’re making it a reality,” Jay Henderson, director of the IBM Marketing Cloud, said in a statement. “IBM’s roots in marketing automation, customer engagement and digital analytics, coupled with MediaMath’s expertise in paid media, represent a huge leap toward true omni-channel, customer-centric marketing.”
The integration between TerminalOne and IBM will allow marketers to increase conversions with offers that are tailored to an individual consumer, whether online or in the store. As a result, teams can execute more personalized campaigns across email and paid media channels to improve customer experiences in real time, protect their brand on social channels and engage customers when they are most likely to convert, the companies said.
Gigya also plays a role in the UBX ecosystem. IBM is including Gigya’s customer identity management offering to provide a contextual view of customer buying behaviors across all channels, devices and interactions. With it, marketers can seamlessly design and deploy effective campaigns, delivering meaningful experiences in an instant, while driving ROI.
Gigya helps consumer brands create a seamless customer log-in experience—via registration-as-a-service and by automated log-ins from social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This gives brands access to first-party, permission-based identity data directly from the consumer. With that information, brands can track customers regardless of the device used to access the brand content, and they can customize the customer experience. Gigya is the customer-identity-management partner for IBM’s Marketing Cloud, and the partnership helps deliver customers’ IT departments a seamless integration experience.