Researching identity resolution vendors

Once you determine an enterprise identity resolution platform makes sense for your business, spend time researching individual vendors and their capabilities by doing the following: 

• Create and prioritize a list of identity resolution use cases, from essential to not necessary. 
• Use that list as a basis for your research — many of the vendors profiled in this report also provide blogs, ebooks and interactive tools that can help. 
• Make a list of the vendors meeting your criteria, reach out to them and set a deadline for replies. 
• Decide whether or not you need to engage in a formal RFI/RFP process.

Identity resolution is not only critical to marketing success but is essential for compliance with consumer privacy laws such as CCPA and GDPR. Explore the platforms essential to identity resolution in the latest edition of this MarTech Intelligence Report.

Click here to download!

RFI/RFP process

The RFI/RFP process is an individual preference, however be sure to give the same criteria to each vendor to facilitate comparison. The most effective RFPs only request relevant information and provide ample information about your brand and its identity resolution needs. It should reflect high-level strategic goals and KPIs. For example, mention your company’s most important KPIs and how you will evaluate the success of your efforts. Include details about timelines and the platforms in your existing martech stack. 

When written properly, an RFP will facilitate the sales process and ensure everyone involved comes to a shared understanding of the purpose, requirements, scope and structure of the intended purchase. From the RFP responses, you should be able to narrow your list down to three or four platforms to demo.

Demo the platforms

Schedule demos as close together as possible for the best comparisons. Make sure all potential users are on the demo call and pay attention to the following: 

• How easy is it to use? 
• Does the vendor understand our business and marketing needs? 
• Are they showing us our “must-have” features?

Questions for vendors

Here are some questions to ask vendors that touch on important considerations in your identity resolution search:

Data onboarding and privacy 

• Does the platform support first-party data onboarding? 
• Can we incorporate any of our private customer IDs into the platform? 
• Do you use probabilistic, deterministic or a hybrid approach to matching? 
• How do you validate the accuracy of your deterministic matches? 
• What match rate can we expect, given our vertical market and database size? 
• How do you comply with privacy regulations and consumer choice? 

Identity graph 

• Do you own or license your referential identity data? 
• What are your identity data sources? 
• How do you validate the quality of your identity graph? 
• How much of your data is addressable? 
• How is your identity graph linked to offline PII? 
• Do your identity capabilities apply to non-U.S. markets? 

Martech and adtech integration 

• How does the platform integrate with martech platforms (i.e., CRMs, DSPs, CDPs)? 
• Does the platform feature any built-in data activation capabilities (i.e., personalized email or ad campaign execution)? 
• Do you have APIs available for data import/export? 
• What reporting do you provide that will document the ROI from our identity efforts? 

Customer support 

The post 24 questions to ask identity resolution vendors during a demo appeared first on MarTech.

Does our customer data reside in disconnected silos throughout the organization?

Organizational silos between departments such as sales, marketing, procurement or customer support can lead to inconsistent customer experiences with a brand. An identity resolution platform can connect these systems. It will integrate consumer identifiers across channels and devices in a way that is accurate, scalable and privacy compliant to create a persistent and addressable individual profile.

Do we have customer knowledge gaps that could be filled with trusted second- and third-party data?

First-party data is essential for building a strong relationship between your brand and customers. However, identity graphs using anonymized second- and third-party data can provide valuable demographic, location, financial and other information that can fill gaps in customer insights. As data collection and matching techniques improve, creating a 360-degree view of customers through identity resolution platforms may make sense.

Are we in compliance with CCPA, GDPR and other data privacy regulations?

Data breaches and misuse of consumer data continue to make headlines, leading to an increase in privacy regulations. It’s crucial to ensure your data governance practices comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and/or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). While collecting and using consumer data is an essential part of marketing, it also escalates the risk of damaging your brand and incurring legal consequences.

Can we successfully integrate our existing customer data systems with an identity resolution platform?

Your various martech and ad tech systems absolutely must be able to communicate with each other. If they can’t, your organization likely would benefit from an identity resolution platform. This platform can incorporate identifiers and profiles between and within these systems for consistency and accuracy, creating a persistent and addressable individual profile

Does our C-suite support identity resolution initiatives?

Most C-level executives overestimate their marketing organization’s customer identity accuracy and persistence, according to a Forrester study. This can lead to inadequate budgeting, campaign measurement and performance, and broken customer experiences. Therefore, it is critical to secure C-suite support for identity resolution initiatives across the organization.

Identity resolution is not only critical to marketing success but is essential for compliance with consumer privacy laws such as CCPA and GDPR. Explore the platforms essential to identity resolution in the latest edition of this MarTech Intelligence Report.

Click here to download!

How would we use identity resolution?

Identity resolution has many marketing use cases, from complying with data privacy regulations to developing more accurate lookalike audiences to improved marketing segmentation and targeting. Identifying the use cases that would most benefit your organization is fundamental for establishing and prioritizing the capabilities you’ll need.

What KPIs do we want to measure and what decisions will we make based on the data?

It’s critical to measure the impact of an identity resolution platform on your marketing ROI. Resolving customer identities will provide new cross-sell and upsell opportunities because your marketing team knows more about your customers. Although KPIs vary by organization and/or industry, you should be able to measure incremental lift in metrics such as average order value, average revenue per user, basket size, response rates or customer retention.

What is the total cost of ownership?

Most of these platforms use on-demand pricing, meaning customers pay a monthly subscription price that will vary by usage. Pricing is typically based on the number of data records or customer profiles under management or the number of matches or API calls. Some also have add-on customer support options.

The post Does your organization need an identity resolution platform? appeared first on MarTech.

Why we care. Can marketers or consumers trust CARU’s seal of approval? If we take Walmart at its word — and so far there is no reason not to — CARU reviewed and approved Universe of Play. The retail giant likely thought this would protect them not just from the FTC, but from charges like those made by the consumer groups. 

Those complaints were significant and should arguably have been foreseen. Now both marketers and consumers must wonder if CARU is providing meaningful oversight or just a fig leaf?

What it was. Universe of Play was one of two Walmart marketing efforts launched in Roblox, a metaverse platform, last September. It featured interactive games where users could win virtual coins to buy virtual merchandise. 

The company said the marketing was aimed at consumers between the ages of 17 and 24. However, the key brand tie-ins for Universe of Play were Jurassic World, Paw Patrol and Razor Scooters, which appeal to a significantly younger audience.

Dig Deeper: Walmart launches Roblox metaverse experience 

The complaints. In January, the ad watchdog truthinadvertising.org and several other consumer groups, sent a letter to CARU saying Universe of Play targeted young children and was marketing products without providing proper disclosures that site and its content are actually ads. 

The groups also said Walmart’s use of CARU’s COPPA Safe Harbor Program seal conveyed the message the game was compliant with the organization’s guidelines.

CARU is one of a dozen industry self-regulation programs run by the nonprofit BBB National Programs. In 2001, CARU’s advertising program was the first to be certified by the FTC as a Safe Harbor under the U.S.’s children’s online privacy law, COPPA. Participants who adhere to CARU’s guidelines are considered to be in compliance with the law and protected from any FTC enforcement action.

An unsafe harbor. The consumer groups’ letter also asked CARU to audit Walmart’s Roblox games. The retailer issued a statement saying this had already been done: “In December 2022, Walmart was approved to join CARU’s COPPA Safe Harbor Program after demonstrating that Universe of Play, a new immersive Roblox experience, complies with the stringent requirements of COPPA and CARU’s Guidelines.”

Some time after that Walmart removed the game from the site. Walmart hasn’t responded to a request for comment. CARU has refused to answer questions.

The post Walmart pulls Universe of Play off Roblox platform after consumer groups’ complaint appeared first on MarTech.

There have been indications that other European regulators may swiftly follow suit. Reports suggest that France is conducting its own inquiry; Ireland has asked Italy for more details about the basis for the ban; and the German data commissioner has said that the same action could “in principle” be taken in Germany.

Why we care. Given the immense excitement created by the availability of ChatGPT and similar tools, it was perhaps too easy to overlook warnings emerging from the legal profession over the last few months that it could run afoul of European data regulations — regulations which, in many ways, have become a de facto global standard.

If the questions that arise need to work their way through the European legal system for adjudication, that could take some time, of course. But it’s clear that regulators in European nations can take swift action in the meantime.

Dig deeper: ChatGPT: A marketer’s guide

Lawful bases for processing data. One fundamental challenge for large language models like ChatGPT is that under European law, specifically the GDPR, there are only six lawful bases for processing personal data at all (data that can be used directly to identify an individual or indirectly to identify an individual in combination with other information). The bases are:

• Consent.
• Performance of a contract.
• A legitimate interest.
• A vital interest (a matter of life and death).
• A legal requirement.
• A public interest.

To the extent a large language model is being trained on data obtained without explicit consent, it’s by no means clear that any of these bases are applicable — unless, perhaps, one makes the bold assumption that the availability of AI solutions is in the public interest.

Data erasure. Another challenge is whether a solution by ChatGPT is competent to support the “right to be forgotten.” Under GDPR, in certain circumstances, an individual can request the erasure of their data. To be clear, ChatGPT is not scraping the web and heedlessly collecting large quantities of personal data. But it is being trained on very large sets of texts, and the question OpenAI might have to address is whether it knows what’s in those sets in terms of personally identifying information or data it might be asked to erase.

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“Once brand marketers began to truly adopt TikTok, the two became inseparable,” says Kyle Wong, chief strategy officer of customer experience platform provider Emplifi. “The platform offers brands a way to show a side of themselves that isn’t possible on the more traditional platforms. Now that TikTok has officially become an important piece of a brand’s overall strategy, marketers and users would be the ones taking a hit if a ban were implemented.”

Why we care. Public concern about data protection is real and substantial. An Ipsos poll last year found 84% of Americans at least somewhat concerned about the safety and privacy of the personal data that they provide on the internet. 

Several states, including California, Virginia, Illinois, Colorado and Utah, passed privacy protection laws and many others are considering doing so. Each of these means a different set of requirements digital marketers must follow. A national law would eliminate this problem and make it easier for consumers to know exactly what protection they have.

The argument for a ban. Those who want to ban TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, say it poses a national security risk. They are concerned China’s government, which wields a lot of power over the nation’s businesses, could exploit user data to spy on American users and feed them misinformation. 

The ban was first proposed by President Trump, and President Biden supports a ban if TikTok’s Chinese owners don’t sell their stake in the company. A number of members of Congress from both parties support it, as do some current and former national officials. However, Congress — like the public at large — remains divided on the issue.

The argument against a ban. Excluding TikTok executives, those who oppose the ban mostly agree with the charges made against the company. However, they believe banning TikTok wouldn’t solve the real problem.

Dig deeper: 5 reasons why marketers should consider TikTok for B2B

“Nearly all social media platforms and other online businesses collect a lot of personal data from their users,” The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Adam Schwartz and David Greene recently wrote. “TikTok raises special concerns, given the surveillance and censorship practices of its home country, China. Still, the best solution to these problems is not to single-out one business or country for a ban. Rather, we must enact comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation. By reducing the massive stores of personal data collected by all businesses, TikTok included, we will reduce opportunities for all governments, China included, to buy or steal this data.”

Everyone else is doing it. In short, they say the real problem with TikTok is it is behaving like every other social media platform. It’s not an unreasonable accusation. Consider, among the things the company has been criticized for is spreading misinformation on climate change, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, the neurodevelopmental disorder ADHD and eating disorders. Facebook and YouTube have been criticized for doing exactly the same.

Support for national privacy law. Last year, a federal data protection act with substantial bipartisan support died in Congress because it was opposed by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). It looked likely to stay that way as the incoming GOP majority in the House of Representatives said nothing about it before, during or after the election. TikTok has given it new life.

It isn’t impossible that Congress would ban a popular, profitable private business, but it is far from a sure thing. As noted previously, while the ban has bipartisan support, it also has bipartisan opposition. There’s also the substantial number of users and businesses on TikTok to be considered.

“One important element in this conversation needs to be around the users,” says Emplifi’s Wong. “With nearly 87 million US-based users on TikTok, it’s clear the platform and its innovative content format hold appeal to users and brands are running as fast as they can to tap into that buzz.”

Compromise candidate. There are indications that a data protection law could succeed as a compromise. Consider what Rep. Cathay McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said last week.

“Whether it’s TikTok, Big Tech, or other data brokers to restrict the amount of data that they’re collecting to begin with,” she said on CNN. “We need to ensure that individuals have the right to know what their profile might be or to be alerted if their information, their personal data is being accessed or transferred to another country like China.”

The post The fight over banning TikTok could result in something good for marketers appeared first on MarTech.

The 21st century changed much of that. Data got faster, cheaper and more voluminous. Search engines, social networks, tracking widgets and more have made it easy for even the most novice of two-bit marketing organizations to get the most direct form of customer insight — in the form of something akin to outright surveillance.

It’s not exactly a secret. One of the biggest developments to happen in the world of marketing is that the average consumer has become increasingly aware of the kind and volume of data that’s being collected, analyzed and used to market to them.

Martech bulls have clung to this realization as a justification for going further in their bids to move from buyer personas to buyer dossiers. They cite research purporting customers demand that marketers focus on personalization and seamless omnichannel experience. Marketers have entered an arms race of who can suck up and best use the most personal data.

But just as CX-focused consumers have noticed these trends, so too have the privacy-focused ones and their government representatives.

As never before, marketers need to be alert to consumer sensitivity about data and privacy issues — and need to recognize that trust is supremely important when consumers decide which brands they want to engage with.

Dig deeper: Build trust, gain sales

In this article:

• The EU’s GDPR.
• GDPR analogs.
• Common privacy law provisions.
• Other duties.
• Other laws.

The EU’s GDPR

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect on May 25, 2018. This is in no small part the culmination of European sentiment toward data handling practices in the U.S. and general antipathy towards Big Tech. The law was notable for governing behavior that did not actually take place in the EU.

One of the fundamental premises of GDPR is that if a company controls or processes data belonging to an EU subject, that company is violating GDPR and is liable for penalties. Regardless of where in the world that company is located and where in the world its data collection, controlling or processing took place.

And those penalties can be steep. GDPR drastically elevated the maximum fines for which companies would be liable under prior European privacy laws. A GDPR violator may face a fine as high as €20 million (~$21.7 million) or 4% of total annual revenue globally.

GDPR was the broadest, most severe and most sweeping data protection law worldwide — at the time.

GDPR analogs

Although it’s been less than five years since GDPR was enacted, the world has become increasingly privacy-conscious. More laws and regulations, each with their own regional (and nationalist) quirks, have sprung up, including in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere. In the wake of Brexit, the UK ditched EU governance but kept its own version of GDPR (UK GDPR).

One of the most recent and, arguably, the most significant of major privacy laws is China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL). PIPL is China’s analog of GDPR for that country’s own citizens, but stricter in some areas. For instance, the handling of “sensitive information” (i.e.,  categories of personal information receiving enhanced protection, including but not limited to data involving health, race, politics, religion and more) requires the data subject’s express consent — a high bar not even necessarily required in the EU under GDPR.

But what makes PIPL stand out even more from GDPR is the potential severity of the penalties. Under PIPL, grave violations may put a perpetrator in debt to the Chinese government to the tune of the greater of ¥50 million (equal to about $7.37 million) or 5% of their total global annual revenue, plus any and all “unlawful income.”

Additionally, employees and directors of the violating company may face personal liability up to ¥1 million (~$147,000), be suspended from the same kind of employment in China and/or have their social credit scores in China negatively impacted.

Meanwhile, the United States has gotten into the privacy act (so to speak). There are a few niche laws and regulations affecting privacy at the federal level in the U.S. For instance, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) impacts how companies can collect data involving or potentially involving minors, while a variety of other laws may incidentally overlap with data privacy concerns. But a U.S. version of GDPR at the federal level has yet to come into being.

Stateside, there has been more action. It all started with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which came into effect about a month after GDPR did. The law was openly a GDPR-lite adaptation, applying not just within California but worldwide to certain businesses handling the data of California residents.

Since then, other states — Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut and Utah — have promulgated their own versions, all going into effect this year. (Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA) has already gone into effect this year, as of January 1.) 

Each state’s consumer privacy law is a bit different, not so much that you can’t glean the gist once you know the requirements of one of them, but more than enough if you’re a marketing, IT or compliance organization that has to stay abreast of these things.

California, too, has passed yet another privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). Going into effect in July of this year, CPRA updates and amends CCPA. The amendments add and more clearly define new consumer data rights. They also establish a new state agency dedicated to handling the administrative enforcement powers of CCPA and CPRA.

And it’s all just the tip of the iceberg stateside. Other states are at various stages of developing their own respective privacy laws.

“State-level momentum for comprehensive privacy bills is at an all-time high,” reads a statement from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). “Although many of the proposed bills will fail to become law, comparing the key provisions helps to understand how privacy is developing in the United States.”

Indeed, Virginia’s CDPA recognizes “sensitive information” and provides special protections for such information — but California’s CCPA in its original form does not. Now, California’s CPRA rectifies that, taking a cue from Virginia and providing enhanced rights for California residents related to sensitive categories of personal data.

Common privacy law provisions

Obviously, not all privacy laws and regulations are alike. Even laws and regulations that share similar provisions may differ in the bounds and mechanics of those provisions. 

That said, here is a general overview of some of the rights and duties that may be found in some of these laws.

Consumer/data subject rights. An individual variously may be able to demand:

• Confirmation: …that a data handler confirm or deny whether or not it possesses/handles/processes their data.
• Access: …to their data such as a data controller may hold.
• Portability: …that a data handler disclose the data subject’s information in a common file format.
• Correction/rectification: …that a data handler correct their personal information if outdated or otherwise wrong.
• Deletion: …that a data handler delete their personal data.
• Opt-out: …that a data handler refrain from or stop processing their personal information in some way, such as selling the data subject’s data, constructing a personal profile of a data subject based on their information or making decisions about that data subject through automation (i.e., without human input).

Additionally, some data privacy laws grant a data subject or consumer a right of private action (i.e., the right to sue a data handler or other entity for violations of the given law). Notably, some data privacy laws, like Virginia’s CDPA, do not grant this right.

Other duties

Under various privacy laws, data handlers owe duties not only to individual consumers or data subjects but also to the government itself. These may include duties to:

• Give consumers/users/data subjects notice about the data handler’s data practices and related information.
• Conduct a privacy and/or security risk assessment.
• Refrain from processing certain kinds of data in certain ways.
• Disclose breaches, data exposures and similar events.
• Develop and abide by policies for collecting and/or handling minors’ personal data in an even more protected manner than other personal data.

Other laws

While data privacy laws across the world are perhaps the most nascent and complex to impact marketing practices, there’s more to marketing compliance than data privacy and data stewardship. Much older laws continue to place limits on what is considered acceptable marketing.

While this list is in no way exhaustive, it is common for various jurisdictions to have laws proscribing the following:

False advertising

In general, advertising must be truthful. Marketers constantly look for ways to stretch this (under English common law, the UK and the  U.S. have long allowed for “mere puffery” — for instance, that a product is “the best”). But if you’re claiming that your product is, say, compatible with iOS devices, it better be compatible with iOS devices.

Misleading, deceptive or unfair claims

General consumer protection laws are a heightened version of false advertising laws, banning what are called “unfair” and “deceptive trade practices.” This can include misleading claims, even if “technically true.” These laws are far broader than even that, affecting business practices in general. For instance, paying for online reviews may be prohibited by such laws.

Industry-specific laws and regulations

Other laws and agencies, as well, generally prohibit misleading claims. For instance, in the  U.S., the FDA regulates advertising claims related to health and medicine, while the SEC regulates statements, disclosures and advertising about investments. 

Companies in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance are restricted not only in what they can say but the context of what they say and how they can say it. 

Pharmaceutical advertising, even if as innocuous as a piece of conference swag with the brand name and logo of a drug featured on it, may need clearance from the FDA. An investment firm may face SEC action if it makes embellished claims or if it makes subject claims in violation of disclosure regulations.

Trademark infringement

Trademark laws are often less about banning anyone in the world from ever using a word or phrase or logo (or sound or color or even smell) and more about:

• Avoiding customer confusion.
• Preventing businesses from trading on the goodwill of another business. 

To that end, even advertising that is deceptively similar to an in-effect trademark, even if not quite the same, can be infringing. 

Sometimes (though not always), PPC and backend SEO practices that use a competitor’s trademark can be deemed an infringement. (For instance, bidding on your competitor’s company name).

Influencer marketing disclosures

If you’re working with a social media influencer, generally that influencer should clearly and conspicuously disclose that they were compensated for posting about your company, product or service. Failures to do so may create liability for both the company and the individual influencer, as per FTC regulations.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational, educational and/or entertainment purposes only. Neither this nor other articles here constitute legal advice or the creation, implication or confirmation of an attorney-client relationship. For actual legal advice, personally consult with an attorney authorized to practice in your jurisdiction.

The post Why we care about compliance in marketing appeared first on MarTech.

“Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the lawsuit says.

Why we care. Google simultaneously acting as broker, supplier and auctioneer of online ads has always been problematic at best. As Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) put it, “The conflicts of interest are so glaring that one Google employee described Google’s ad business as being like ‘if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE.’” Cracking down on monopolistic business practices does great things for the consumer and the economy. The breakup of AT&T in the 1980s is why communication is so inexpensive and widespread today.

In the past, Google has rebutted monopoly claims by pointing to the large number of other companies which facilitate online advertising. The company did not respond to a request for comment today. 

Dig deeper: Google offers adtech unit changes to fend off antitrust lawsuit

This is the fifth antitrust lawsuit filed by state and federal officials against Google since 2020. That year a group of states led by Texas filed an antitrust lawsuit over the company’s advertising technology, while the DOJ and another group of states sued Google over claims that it abused its dominance over online search. In 2021, several states also sued over Google’s app store practices.

Dig deeper: Antitrust bill could force Google, Facebook and Amazon to shutter parts of their ad businesses

Google and other tech giants are currently under pressure from governments around the world trying to restrain their power over online information and commerce. In the European Union, Amazon, Google, Apple and others have faced antitrust investigations and charges, as well as new laws limiting the use and collection of consumer data.

The post Feds finally file anti-monopoly suit over Google’s adtech appeared first on MarTech.

Meta’s offense, the board concluded, was to incorporate user consent to use data for targeted advertising purposes within its terms of service, effectively forcing anyone using Facebook or Instagram, for example, to give up their data as a condition of using the platform. The board found this to be in violation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Why we care. The reaction of marketers to this news might be mixed. The rich trove of first-party data collected by Meta’s social media platforms allows for precision audience segmentation and targeted advertising — even if the exact processes used are largely opaque to advertisers. On the other hand, brands will expect user data to be collected, managed and activated responsibly.

Of course, the U.S. doesn’t have anything in place quite like GDPR — yet, anyway. CCPA is much less constraining.

What happens next. What the board has not done is tell Meta how to solve the problem. Rather, it has set out a three month deadline for Meta to tell them the changes they will make. The obvious solution is to separate consent from the terms of service, allowing users to refuse permission to collect data while still having access to the platforms. If large numbers of users opt out, it could have a depressive effect on the value of Meta’s inventory — but the social media giant is already dealing with the tracking opt out on iPhone apps. This just adds to the pain, and so far in only one — albeit large — jurisdiction.

The post EU hits Meta with $414m fine over advertising practices appeared first on MarTech.

How about the largest contemporary circus company in the world?

With a huge presence in Las Vegas and shows around the world, today’s Cirque du Soleil is worlds away from the small troupe of performers busking in a Quebec town almost 40 years ago.

Pierre-Luc Camirand is the circus’s director of digital customer experience. “I’m in charge of all that relates to digital, so basically I oversee everything in regard to CRM, web development, our martech project management office, as well as everything in regard to customer data.” While there are B2B elements in Le Groupe Cirque du Soleil’s business, Camirand is responsible for the individual user side of the CRM that relates to customer support.

Managing an entertainment portfolio

The need for this technology came out of an onslaught of too much complexity. “In 2017 and 2018,” said Camirand, “we went through an acquisition phase. We bought different entertainment companies like Blue Man Group; so we had to manage all these platforms. Sitecore allows us to manage a dozen platforms with a pretty small team of engineers.”

Unlike the publisher Wolters Kluwer, another Sitecore user, Cirque du Soleil wanted to preserve the individual branding of their new companies, rather than migrate them all to a central, common destination. “Each brand has its own website, but when you look in the back-end behind it, it’s the same for everyone.”

Initially, the plan was for each website to be operated separately. “We quickly realized it was way too much work, so the strategy quickly became to use the same baseline, re-use the same modules from one site to another, but keep a certain flexibility with the front-end and design.”

Cirque du Soleil used Sitecore’s technology to make this happen. Their relationship with the tech company precedes the acquisitions. “I think we started back in 2009 with Version 5,” said Camirand, “so it’s been a while.”

The key Sitecore modules

In keeping with Sitecore’s offering of composability, Cirque is using some Sitecore products and not others. “Definitely the multi-site infrastructure,” said Camirand. “We are now able to do release and deployment for all our websites at the same time. This is a huge advantage for us because it allows our development team to work faster and be more efficient.”

In 2018, building a new website could take six months; a new page or section, two or three months. “Now we talk about weeks,” said Camirand. “Also what’s really important is the multi-language capability of Sitecore, because have shows everywhere on the planet — South Korea, South America, Europe — so we need to be able to manage, I think, ten different languages.”

Marketing teams use drag-and-drop functions within the CMS to create content on their own. More complicated challenges end up with a webmaster expert.

They are not yet using the Sitecore DAM. Their vast trove of assets reside in Widen which does have the potential to connect with Sitecore (something Camirand hopes to have in place next year).

The system lets Cirque visitors to third-party ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster content from its own sites related to the shows people are looking at.

“We want to go further than that,” Camirand said, “using other sources of data; for example, if you’re looking at family packages, when you come back to cirquedusoleil.com we want to show you family content. Pushing the right content to the right person at the right moment is really key, so personalization is something we need to do.”

The international nature of the business means privacy regulation is a minefield. To tackle this, the company plans to create a CDP, not only to handle customer data from multiple sources, but consent records too. They are currently looking at several possible solutions and do not expect to use Sitecore’s CDP.

The key channels

Perhaps surprisingly, it chooses not to have a mobile app. “It’s not easy to attract people to download your app and re-use it,” Camirand said. “Most apps are not used; people use maybe 10% of the apps on their phone.”

Instead, about a year ago, they launched a platform they call the “interactive program.”

“It’s a mobile platform; a website optimized for mobile. The goal was to improve the pre-show and post-show experience of our guests.”

The program offers “fun facts” about the show, character descriptions and storylines. Unlike an app, the mobile website can’t do push notifications. However, it does allow Cirque to re-target customers elsewhere such as the main website.

That website has a blog to bridge the gap between customers and individual performers. Performers are encouraged to create content for the blog that can then be amplified on their own social media feeds. “They’re quite happy to do it because they want the exposure.”

Down the road?

On Camirand’s informal roadmap, he plans to look at Sitecore connectors going beyond Widen. “I know there’s a connector for Salesforce and Sitecore.” (Cirque is using Salesforce CRM.) “There’s probably a good way to connect both platforms together and better run our campaigns.”

The post Cirque du Soleil spotlights its digital strategy appeared first on MarTech.

That consumer group is people with disabilities. More than a quarter (26%) of adults in the United States have some type of disability. Their annual disposable income is nearly $500 billion. In the U.K. 22% of the total population have a disability. They and their families are a $288 billion market, according to We Are Purple, a U.K. non-profit supporting people with disabilities. Globally, disabled people, on their own, have $1.15 trillion in annual disposable income, according to the same report. 

Connecting with them requires implementing accessible marketing. That’s when products, services, media and marketing are consciously designed so everyone (including people with disabilities or impairments) can experience them. 

Dig deeper: Inclusive marketing resources to strengthen your brand’s messaging

Optimizing your digital marketing this way is a win/win, says Anastasia Leng, founder & CEO of CreativeX, a provider of a creative data platform for brands. 

“It has both performance and brand benefits,” says Leng, who is visually impaired. “For the cynical marketers who aren’t convinced of the value of making their ads accessible for social inclusion reasons, think of it this way: Providing alt text, adding subtitles, checking ads for contrast, and ensuring a minimum text size for readability will make your content more readable, digestible and accessible to everyone, especially on mobile devices.”

Different types of obstacles

She says making inaccessible ads is like putting up physical hurdles to get into a brick-and-mortar store. “Most consumers are spoiled for choice and will simply go somewhere else when presented with hurdles to … actually engage with the message of your content,” she adds.

The statistics back her up. Some 43% of people with disabilities said accessibility issues quite often force them to abandon an online shopping attempt without buying, according to the U.K.’s Business Disability Forum.

If the moral and monetary arguments aren’t enough, consider the legal one. Businesses whose websites aren’t accessible to people with disabilities can be sued under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

The ADA, the DOJ and You

“One in four Americans have some form of disability, and then you project that out to the world and we’re talking about billions of people,” says John Hendricks, CEO and founder of ERGO, an email content automation provider. “And, strangely enough, corporate America has not gotten on board with this stuff. Amazon, Hulu, Burger King, and others have been sued for digital violations of the ADA.”

And what makes a website inaccessible to people with disabilities? According to the Department of Justice it includes:

• Poor color contrast.
• Reliance on color to provide information.
• Lack of text alternatives, or alt-text, on images.
• No captions on videos.
• Inaccessible online forms.
• Mouse-only navigation rather than keyboard navigation.

Fortunately, a lot of marketers get it. Nearly 70% believe providing accessibility is important to executing successful marketing campaigns, according to a study by Capterra, an online marketplace vendor. Also, 83% say their company is doing more to provide accessibility in digital marketing than it did in the past.

As the report notes, “Compliance is not the main focus among marketers. Companies appear to be driven ultimately by the need to better serve customers.” It’s certainly not concern about lawsuits. Half of marketers in the survey said there’s no U.S. law requiring website accessibility. 

Not all impairments are equal

For the most part companies are focused on making changes to accommodate physical impairments rather than cognitive ones. Marketers say they are more likely to provide visual (66%) and hearing (56%) accessibility features than ones for people with learning issues such ADHD and dyslexia. That’s because they incorrectly believe that more people have the former than the latter.

While some accessibility features overlap for all these groups — high contrast text and alt tags for example, optimizing for cognitive issues requires more focus on design simplicity and consistency. This includes:

• Have a clean, well-organized, uniform look.
• Avoid clutter; include sufficient white space.
• Avoid too many choices, or too much information on one screen.
• Avoid lengthy scrolling; provide links to additional content.
• Provide easy-to-find and clearly identified buttons and links.
• Standardize navigation controls; be consistent.
• Avoid large blocks of text.
• Use clear language and short sentences.

Different types of accessibility

As Anastasia Leng points out, design improvements aren’t the entire story here.

“Content accessibility should be thought of in two ways: an emotional one and a practical one,” she says. “Emotionally, we want to see people in ads that look like us, live like us, behave like us — this is typically described as the representation issue. Practically speaking, we must be able to engage with a piece of content by being able to see it, hear it, or interpret it.”

It’s also important to note that providing an accessible online experience is going to be more important as time passes. As the Congressional Budget Office notes, the U.S. population is “projected to become older, on average, as growth in the number of people age 65 or older outpaces that of younger age groups.” And an older population is a more impaired one.

“When we turn 50 the amount of light that hits the back of our eyes drops by 50% no matter what,” says John Hendricks. “That’s without any sort of congenital or other type of disability. So we’re not just talking about a small subset of people.”

Eventually, impairment comes to us all.

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